William Faulkner, in various Interviews, describes the Nature of Characters and the Process of Writing

“You can have no more control over [a character] than you would an incorrigible child.”

When Faulkner was asked how he chose such unusual but appropriate names for his characters, he replied that he did not name them: “They tell me their names.” What about the character in Pylon who does not have a name: “He never did tell me his name.”

Q: When you first begin to write a story, do you have a sort of an outline in your mind…?

A: I would say it develops itself. It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I do is to trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does, that he is taking charge of it. I have very little to do except the policeman in the back of the head which insists on unity and coherence and emphasis in telling it. But the characters themselves, they do what they do, not me.

Conversations with William Faulkner. Edited by M. Thomas Inge. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1999