Doing the Character Shuffle

Revamping Stories and Slotting People Into Place

This was a post I wrote about a year ago on my Wordpress blog. I thought it would be interesting to share it because it's another part of my process. Funny story, the female character I'm mentioning in this post has been shifted to a completely different character yet again. She's still the love interest to the supporting character, and I still have ideas for the FMC mentioned in this post but I thought that was a funny thing after rereading this post.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this old glimpse into my writing journey. Now without further ado, here we go.

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Some characters don’t fit certain stories. I learned that in my first draft of The Element of Rebellion. I had a pair of mercenaries in draft 1, that a side character ran into during a subplot. My initial plan was to have them form a trio, and figure out some plot points to bring back to the main characters at storis end, and that would set up for book 2.

When I wrote that plot however, I don’t know, something just didn’t fit right. I’d gotten all the way into writing draft 1 of book 2 when I realized I needed to revamp the entire story and start completely fresh, because the mercenaries just didn’t contribute to the story in the way I wanted them to.

Another side character was married in draft 1. The reason? Really, just because when I played out this story in my head, he was married. But even then, his wife didn’t contribute anything to the story, and it made me realize that even though she was a character that was near and dear to my heart, she didn’t belong in The Element of Rebellion.

The female mercenary I thought was a good character. Her backstory was in direct conflict with the side characters, and when I wrote them both interacting in draft 1, there was just such a chemistry between them that I liked. The male mercenary was supposed to be her love interest, but he was this stoic, brooding type that didn’t fit her quiet optimism. The supporting character however, his differences fit hers well. He used shadow magic, she fought shadow magic. He had an issue with the female MC because of her power, and the mercenary was going to have an issue with him because of his. The dynamic of the two was just such a good foil to the overall plot, that I got rid of their two love interests so I could smash them together, and make them the secondary romance for the story.

What happened to the male mercenary? Well, he got shuffled over to A Bard’s Ambition. Originally, the male lead in that was drastically different. But when writing draft 1, I didn’t like how he meshed with Eve, my female lead. The story has changed very, very drastically since then, but shifting the male mercenary character into Eve’s main love interest not only worked so well, but it gave Eve more of a characterization I didn’t expect. She needed to have a bit more grit to her if she was going to be dealing with this version of her love interest, and so far I really like how it’s coming out.

But, I would have never figured that out if I wasn’t willing to move around characters I thought fit in one story, to another.

And who knows, maybe the wife character will pop up in another story later down the line. I like having the freedom of shifting around characters like this until they slot into the right story. I have so many characters I’ve used in stories I’ve created in my head throughout the years, we’ll see how many of them get brought to life on the page.

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Writing Clean Fantasy Romance with a Dash of Humor on the Side