One of the greatest joys of writing is that it allows authors to be so much more than who any one really is. The very worst cases of spirit possession and split personalities ultimately have far fewer characters than many novels.
Most of those who have grown up at some point heard the dictum: "Imagine being in the other person's situation." Wow, do fiction authors ever do that, with a vengeance. Not only do novelists - and by proxy, the stories' readers, imagine someone else's situation, they orchestrate a phenomenal number of possible scenarios and learn about how certain characters behave given those situations.
Many authors do discover even as they write, making it a mysterious process even for those involved. Some characters turn out to be a bit different from how one might have expected. People are both predictable and unpredictable in their behavior. Sometimes this makes real life easier to handle. Many authors get readers so worked up that when its done, for the first few minutes back in reality readers feel the same relief we experience when we wake up from a nightmare and start babbling, "Thank God that wasn't true," and things like that. Other times, people feel like they have experienced "a guided meditation" without limits on posture and breathing that might leave even well trained Lamas awash with a sense of 'experience'. Journeys of the mind.
This blog post can be linked with http://miriamspia.wordpress.com/ for a more complete understanding. FYI: novel writing and being great fans of fiction are not a good match for Buddhism - because they say that if you thought it has happened...in which case: OMG! you would not believe what the novelists and story writers have done! Some of it, readers have done to.
