Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience.

Host: The rain had been falling for hours — a slow, thoughtful kind of rain that seemed to whisper as it touched the glass. Inside the old apartment, the lamp light was low, casting a soft, amber glow across the pages scattered on the floor. A typewriter — not a laptop, not a tablet, but an honest steel machine with keys that still clacked like the echo of time — sat in the center of the small desk.

Jack leaned over it, his fingers stained with ink, a half-empty mug beside him. Jeeny stood by the window, watching the rain trace crooked paths down the glass. She had that look again — the one that lingered somewhere between admiration and disbelief.

Host: On the wall, written in chalk like a prayer, was the quote that had haunted the night:

“Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me, telling me their tales.”
— R. A. Salvatore

Host: The room itself seemed to breathe with those words. The pages murmured, the shadows shifted, and somewhere — faintly — you could almost hear the hum of imagination at work.

Jeeny: “You really believe that, don’t you?”

Jack: (without looking up) “What?”

Jeeny: “That they write themselves. That your characters actually talk to you.”

Jack: (smirking faintly) “Believe? No. But sometimes it feels that way. You start writing, and suddenly they’re just… there. Loud, insistent, alive.”

Jeeny: “Alive,” she repeats softly. “That word scares me.”

Host: She turned, her reflection in the window faint and wavering. The rain blurred her face into something half-real, half-memory.

Jeeny: “Because if they’re alive, Jack… what does that make you? Their god? Their prisoner?”

Jack: “Maybe both.”

Host: He paused, his fingers hovering above the keys, as if the next word might break something invisible.

Jack: “You think I control them, Jeeny. But sometimes they lead me. I just follow.”

Jeeny: “That’s the illusion, isn’t it? That creation is control. But maybe it’s more like… surrender.”

Jack: “Surrender?”

Jeeny: “Yes. When Salvatore said his characters sit on his shoulder — I think he meant that art possesses us. That once you open the door, the story moves in. It uses your hands, your voice, your sleep. It feeds on you.”

Host: Her voice was steady, but her eyes were full of quiet fear — the kind of fear that only comes from knowing she’s right.

Jack: “So what, then? I’m haunted?”

Jeeny: “Aren’t we all? Every writer, every artist, haunted by something that insists on being seen.”

Host: The lamp flickered, a tired bulb straining to stay alive. The sound of the rain had become heavier now — a steady rhythm, like the heartbeat of the world itself.

Jack: “Haunted is too poetic a word. It’s simpler than that. It’s just your subconscious piecing together stories.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. That’s too mechanical. You talk about the subconscious like it’s a computer program. But stories — real ones — they don’t just assemble. They arrive. They visit.”

Jack: “Visit?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Like ghosts do.”

Host: He laughed, a short, low sound, but there was something uneasy behind it.

Jack: “You make it sound mystical.”

Jeeny: “Isn’t it? Don’t you remember that night last year, when you woke me at 3 a.m. just to tell me that your character — that thief you’d written for months — had ‘decided’ to die on his own? You said you didn’t plan it. He just did.”

Jack: “That was an accident. My mind filled in the blank.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe he chose.”

Host: Jack rubbed his eyes, the typewriter quiet for the first time in hours. The silence was thick now, almost human.

Jack: “You know what I think?”

Jeeny: “Tell me.”

Jack: “I think writers like Salvatore just get lost in the world they build. They start believing their inventions talk to them because it’s easier than admitting they’re talking to themselves.”

Jeeny: “That’s one way to put it.”

Jack: “It’s the only sane way.”

Jeeny: “Sanity,” she said softly, “has never written a masterpiece.”

Host: Her words landed like soft thunder — gentle, but final. The lamp light trembled, casting her shadow across the pages, where the typed words seemed to shift, as if aware of being read.

Jeeny: “Every character is a truth we’ve buried so deep it has to come back wearing someone else’s name. That’s why they feel alive — because they’re pieces of us, broken off and sent wandering.”

Jack: “So you think every story is confession?”

Jeeny: “Not confession. Resurrection.”

Host: The word hung in the air, trembling, as if the rain had paused just to listen.

Jack: “You talk like art is some kind of religion.”

Jeeny: “Maybe it is. The only one that still believes in redemption.”

Host: He leaned back, the chair creaking beneath him. For the first time that night, he looked at her — really looked — and something in his expression softened.

Jack: “You ever feel like you’re the one being written?”

Jeeny: “All the time.”

Jack: “By who?”

Jeeny: “By the world. By choices. By the ghosts we didn’t know we summoned.”

Jack: “Then maybe the amazing thing isn’t that stories write themselves. Maybe it’s that we keep pretending we’re the authors.”

Host: She smiled, but there was something sad in it — that quiet, knowing kind of sadness that comes from seeing too clearly.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what Salvatore meant, in a way. That once creation begins, you stop being the maker. You become the medium.”

Jack: “And if you stop listening?”

Jeeny: “Then the voices stop visiting. And that’s worse than madness.”

Host: The clock struck two. The rain softened, its rhythm now like the turning of a page. Somewhere, in that dim room filled with words and ghosts, something unseen shifted — a small, invisible breath that felt almost like gratitude.

Jack: “You ever wonder, Jeeny… what happens to the characters after we stop writing them?”

Jeeny: “They live where silence keeps them.”

Jack: “And when we forget them?”

Jeeny: “They don’t forget us.”

Host: The lamp flickered once more, and for a fleeting moment, the shadows in the room seemed to move — a figure by the bookshelf, a face in the reflection of the window — as if the world Salvatore described had quietly stepped across the threshold of imagination.

Jeeny: “That’s why writing’s dangerous, Jack. It blurs the border between what’s invented and what’s inevitable.”

Jack: “Then maybe the secret is not to fight it.”

Jeeny: “No. The secret is to respect it.”

Host: Her hand rested gently on the typewriter, her fingers brushing the keys with reverence — as though she were greeting a living thing.

Jeeny: “You see, Jack… the characters don’t belong to us. We just listen long enough for them to tell their story.”

Jack: “And when they stop?”

Jeeny: “Then it’s our turn to become someone else’s tale.”

Host: The rain finally ceased, leaving the city wrapped in quiet. Jack looked at the typewriter, its keys glinting faintly in the light, as though waiting. And then — slowly, almost reverently — he placed his fingers on them again.

Host: Outside, the first light of dawn broke through the clouds. Inside, the story began to speak.

Host: And somewhere, unseen but unmistakable, a voice — gentle, patient, insistent — began to whisper from his shoulder.