Wrong main character, but at least now I know that
I've been trying to get mostly done with the Zombie Circus novel before NaNo kicks in and I start writing Papercuts (now the working title for the novel in the Segmented Library universe I've been working on), and I've come to a horrible realisation:
I've been using the wrong main character.
Bugger.
I've know for a while that Zombie Circus would need some heavy revisions before I could do anything with it. That's fine, though, because it's the first non-fanfic novel that I've written to completion, and I didn't expect to have something great the first time out.
But the more I write--because I'm determined to finish it before revising or rewriting, just so I know that I can do it--the more I realise that I'm writing about the wrong character. The one I really like, the one I want to be inside the head of, isn't my male MC. It's the woman who was supposed to be a secondary character, who didn't appear until chapter six but is so much more interesting than the male MC.
Last night, I did a little thought exercise trying to work out how I'd tell the story if she was the POV character. It would change a fair number of things, right from chapter one, but all the changes I'd need to make would probably be a stronger story. She's more alive in my mind than Jack, and her backstory is more detailed for me, even though she was a late addition to the book. There are other choices I'd make for some of the threads if she was the protagonist, and I like those choices. They're more interesting. The path the story would take feels more interesting.
It probably helps that she's got some things in her background that make her a bit more of a shades of grey character instead of an outright perfectly good character. It's one of my narrative kinks, characters who do things because the outcome will be right even if the methods and path to get there aren't. Characters who haven't made the right choices in the past and may not make them in the future, but aren't inherently bad.
This realisation hasn't upset me, oddly enough. It's made me determined to finish this version of the story, just so I know that I can do it and can see the path Jack takes to get to the end, but then I'll put it in a drawer. I'll stay away from it completely, and then in the spring I'll write it again.
Except I'll be writing it with a different main character, which will probably give me an entirely different book in the end. I think that I'll quite like the other version.
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I've been using the wrong main character.
Bugger.
I've know for a while that Zombie Circus would need some heavy revisions before I could do anything with it. That's fine, though, because it's the first non-fanfic novel that I've written to completion, and I didn't expect to have something great the first time out.
But the more I write--because I'm determined to finish it before revising or rewriting, just so I know that I can do it--the more I realise that I'm writing about the wrong character. The one I really like, the one I want to be inside the head of, isn't my male MC. It's the woman who was supposed to be a secondary character, who didn't appear until chapter six but is so much more interesting than the male MC.
Last night, I did a little thought exercise trying to work out how I'd tell the story if she was the POV character. It would change a fair number of things, right from chapter one, but all the changes I'd need to make would probably be a stronger story. She's more alive in my mind than Jack, and her backstory is more detailed for me, even though she was a late addition to the book. There are other choices I'd make for some of the threads if she was the protagonist, and I like those choices. They're more interesting. The path the story would take feels more interesting.
It probably helps that she's got some things in her background that make her a bit more of a shades of grey character instead of an outright perfectly good character. It's one of my narrative kinks, characters who do things because the outcome will be right even if the methods and path to get there aren't. Characters who haven't made the right choices in the past and may not make them in the future, but aren't inherently bad.
This realisation hasn't upset me, oddly enough. It's made me determined to finish this version of the story, just so I know that I can do it and can see the path Jack takes to get to the end, but then I'll put it in a drawer. I'll stay away from it completely, and then in the spring I'll write it again.
Except I'll be writing it with a different main character, which will probably give me an entirely different book in the end. I think that I'll quite like the other version.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenay.dreamwidth.org/511569.html. There are currently
babbles on the entry on Dreamwidth. Leave comments at http://selenay.dreamwidth.org/511569.html?mode=reply