What It Means to Be Maryam Dalir—and a Writer

When I begin to write, I step away from myself and become the characters in my stories.
It feels as though my body and soul become the person who is coming to life between the movements of my pen. My emotions become their emotions. My history becomes everything they have been through. Even my dreams begin to take on the color of their dreams.
I feel their struggles with every part of me. I know their strengths and weaknesses. I know what hurts them, what frightens them, what makes them angry, and what can make their entire face light up with joy.
For me, character development is not simply about giving someone a name, a face, a past, and a handful of personality traits.
A character has to breathe inside the writer’s mind.
I need to understand them—even when I disagree with their choices. I need to know how they would react when placed in a particular situation, and more importantly, why. What drives them forward? What can break them? What are they willing to sacrifice, and what are they unwilling to lose?
Perhaps that is why, when I write, I sometimes forget myself.
At that point, being Maryam Dalir is no longer simply about being a writer. It means living in the form of someone I have created. A character who, at the very moment they are born in my mind, also finds a place in my heart—and gradually becomes a part of me.
I have to live with them for a while.
I have to be afraid of what they fear, feel joy when they are happy, experience their defeats, and sometimes even worry about the decisions they make. I have to see the world through their eyes rather than my own.
And this is exactly where something strange happens.
The character is no longer merely a creation of my mind.
They begin to develop a will of their own.
Sometimes, while writing, I have already decided what a character is going to do. But when I reach that particular moment in the story, I realize that the decision simply doesn’t fit who they are.
It is almost as if they stand in front of me and say:
“I wouldn’t do that.”

It may sound strange, but I have experienced this many times.
Sometimes I even know how a story is supposed to end. Yet as the characters develop, they become so real to me that I find myself reconsidering the decisions I have made about their fate.
Because once a character becomes truly alive, I can no longer force them to do something that contradicts who they are.
And perhaps that is exactly why a character can come alive in the reader’s mind as well—so vividly and convincingly that the reader sometimes feels as though they actually know them.
When a reader tells me, “I know this character,” it is one of the most beautiful things that can happen to me as a writer.
Because in that moment, I know the character has crossed the boundaries of my imagination and entered someone else’s mind.
Sometimes I wonder if these characters have existed somewhere in this vast world.
Perhaps they once lived somewhere, or perhaps they are living right now.
Maybe somewhere in a distant city, there is a woman breathing with the same fears and dreams as one of my characters. Maybe there is a man somewhere carrying the same wounds and inner conflicts.
Perhaps my soul has somehow connected with them.
Or perhaps they have not been born yet.
I don’t know.
But even the possibility of it makes character development something far greater to me than simply a technique of storytelling.
That is why I am extremely careful when shaping the fate of my characters.
Rather than simply deciding what should happen to them, I try to understand what they want. What are they running from? What are they fighting for? What do they truly desire? And ultimately, what choices would they make for their own lives?
I believe a well-written character is not someone the writer can push in any direction at any given moment.

A truly strong character is created with enough depth and consistency to find their own way through the story.
Perhaps that is the secret to bringing a character to life: the writer must know them so deeply that, after a while, they no longer need to decide everything for them.
The character chooses.
The character reacts.
The character makes mistakes.
They fall in love. They become afraid. They get angry. They forgive. They betray. They run—or they stay and fight.
And in the end, they shape part of their own destiny.
I know it may sound strange, but this is a truth I have come to believe:
When the people in our stories are created deeply enough, they earn the right to choose.
They make decisions based on their past, their personalities, their wounds, their beliefs, and their desires.
And perhaps a true writer is not someone who decides everything on behalf of their characters.
Perhaps a true writer is someone who listens so closely to the people they have created that they eventually allow them to live their own stories.
And maybe that is what being a writer means to me.
Not simply creating characters—
but becoming them, listening to them, and allowing them to become alive.