On my way home from London yesterday, I was rereading Chandler Burr's A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York. In chapter 8 Burr quotes something the perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena tells his daughter Céline about creating a scent: Ne pas faire plaisir à son ego et faire plaisir à la formule, which he translates as "Don't please your ego; please the formula."

I think the exact same thing is true of writing: you have to write what a story needs and wants, and not just the thing that you want.

It's not to say that the two things aren't the same sometimes. But when I feel a narrative going astray, I have to look at what I'm doing and remind myself that the thing needs what it needs. I have to give that thing as best I can to be true to the story.

Said another way, I have to be faithful to my characters. I have to render what they would say and do, and I have to show who they are. It dictates what happens in my books.

I don't think it's unusual that a principle or a guideline for creating one thing can be useful in creating something else — I think it happens all the time in art forms. And Burr's portrait of perfumers like Ellena makes it clear they are creators.