Help! My Story is More Revolved Around Setting than Character

The title still looks weird.

Anyhow, so I've been looking at other writers work, and I'm noticing a pattern that a lot of writers seem to hate: they can't seem to control their writing. I did address this (kind of) a few post back (I even linked you guys to Go Teen Writers!) Anyhow, my big thing is that you really shouldn't try to control your writing too much. You can do that in revisions, but when you start your first draft, you should never tell your characters no. Why? Your characters have a way of knowing what to do better than you do, and when you deny them, you typically end up with a mess.

I started to do that with G.R.A.Y. This summer as I was writing it, I decided that I didn't like the direction it was going, and without giving too much away, let me say, I think that me trying to reign G.R.A.Y into what I imagined really assisted me in NOT completing it. I'm not saying that it's going to remain incomplete forever, but I am saying that choking your characters help nothing. (In fact, I had to rewrite the entire thing from the prologue at one point.)

Books tend to move in their own special ways, and I'm not saying you have absolutely no control over your book. You are the author. Remember that, but don't think your characters don't have a say in it too. The balance as a writer is really figuring out where to control your writing and how to continue your writing. In reality, to non-writers that sounds insane, but I'm not talking to non-writers. I'm talking to you. For me, the first step to my writing is figuring out an idea, then a character and going from there. I've learned the hard way that for me, if I try to plot it out more than that it doesn't really work. Another thing, although I don't plot out exactly what I want to do for my book does NOT mean that I don't have goals that my characters have to achieve. For example, my first book, Truth in Lies (That book is by baby. I will not show it to you guys until it is beautifully published and amazing. If it gets that far), my protagonist Jessica was originally supposed to go to this "evil" school for the majority of the book, and I was going to tell her life story for only a little part in the beginning of the book. Well, guess what happened? My idea kind of changed a little bit, and most of the book is about what happened BEFORE she got sent to the "evil" school. I still reached my goal in getting her to the evil school, but I allowed the book to "write itself" for a little while, per say, and that was only through me being flexible about my goals.

So, basically the point I'm trying to get across is: don't be mad at your book because it doesn't do exactly what you want or be exactly as you planned, just go with the flow, and let your book lead you by being flexible.

That is the longest moral I've ever heard of and it really sounds like I'm more of a hippie writer than anything, but that's my rant.
Thanks for reading!