Plot, Character and Negative Capability

Having so recently become a writer, I have been struggling with creating action, tension and a forward-moving plot. Today we touched on negative capability, negating or losing the sense of self as an author so that the work "speaks for itself." I only recently developed a new method of writing. I used to write with plot at the forefront and choosing characters to act out the plot I intended, but it made a lot of my characters simple, one-dimensioned and easily exchangeable with no unique qualities. Now I have been writing by developing the characters first, outlining a plot, but rather than having a 100% set outline, I have a series of events I desire to take place. Now I simply but my characters who I have created with their individual characteristics and personalities and try to honestly convey how I feel the characters would react to that situation, based on who they may be.
This ability to remove my personal affections and supplant the text with only my characters', I may dissolve myself in the story, giving all rhetoric, actions, motivations and philosophies live through my characters only. I have been putting parts of myself in each of my characters, but hopefully the remainder of their conscious selves will overpower the few quirks of my own that I have spread throughout my cast. It is hard to distance myself from my own writing as I find more and more of myself in my works or more and more of my works manifested in myself, but I feel that being able to take no preference and look objectively at the themes and ideas present within one's own writing helps let the characters take control of what is being expressed and meant, not the authors. To reiterate, as said in class, it is not Shakespeare who said anything, but his characters.