Step Two: Meet Erin, Simon, and Jack

Writing fanfic has two advantages - you don't have to obsess over who the characters are, and it usually takes only a quick round of pick-and-rearrange to know where, how, and with whom they will end up.

For me, the expectation readers develop because of that have sometimes led to disappointment. Why? Because along the way I tend to forget that the characters have started out as fanfic characters, and of course people still see them as that even through they've become completely 'mine' by now.

That's one of the fears I still have, for the new project - you know who they were, you remember what I turned them into, and I will have to write against some of those expectations to let you see who I see in them. Because for every, "I knew this would happen, after all, it's Edward!" I know I did a bad job making you forget all about the sparkling vampire.

I think this was also one of the three main reasons that kept me from heading down the road of self-publishing. In the end, the solution presented itself only after I took the plunge.

I have no idea how other writers handle their re-writes. I've only once done something similar, with SuitGuy's POV of BMBM; Because of the many dialogues that are vital for the story, where the direct speech stays the same, I had to resort to a line-by-line rewrite mode - and I hated those parts of the story, while reveling into showing every sordid detail he picked up on that BucketGirl never noticed. One might have thought that it had occurred to me much sooner what to do:

Re-read the original chapter.
Then sit down and freely write what happened again.

Sounds easily enough, right? Too easy?

Well, turns out it's the concept that works well for me, right now. After sitting down, opening a gdoc, and starting to type, the characters started talking to me again. It's a little like coming home - to people I've never met.

World, please meet Erin.
You will spend a lot of time with her, because she is the main, and single POV, character of the story. An ambition doctor in her early thirties, she has spent the last years speeding on the fast track to success - without realizing that, along the way, she forgot what it means to really live life. Now she sets out to find herself, and still has no idea who she will find.

Her best friend, Jack, knows what it means to live, because he's done nothing but live for the past couple of years. He never missed an opportunity, he did it all, and isn't shy to let the world know about it. He sees people for who they are, and isn't afraid to help them along where he thinks they should be going.

Like his roommate since college, Simon, an introverted writer who puts a new meaning to the old phrase that quiet waters run deep. Unlike Erin and Jack, he has long since come to terms with who he is and what he wants, but the problem is that one doesn't make him happy, and the other seems unobtainable.

I can only speak from my own assessment and the comments of one of my pre-readers, but so far it's been smooth sailing. I don't see much of Bella in Erin anymore, and I'm not sure that half of you would fall over yourself to slobber over Simon. But, I hope, that this time around most will see why neither of them can do without Jack for long.

So, what's with the changes?
For the most part, I want to take the sap and unnecessary insecurity out of my characters.
If you take Bella, there was only one reason why she was a lost puppy at the beginning of HBR - I needed her to be weak because I thought that was the way to write her. She had to bumble from mishap to mishap so she could grow, and I could point my finger at her and say, 'Look, don't be that woman forever!'. She was a tool, and I abused her, and I was so damn glad when we finally got to chapter 26 so that she could, if I may paraphrase LotR here, wake up and find that she is strong. In the turn of one day and five chapters she shed her training wheels, took over the helm, and single-handedly established herself as the rock Edward could cling to until he'd managed to re-assemble himself.
There is a lot of appeal in writing a character like her. And I LOVED letting her find her backbone. I just don't think I can ever again write a female character as weak and prone to stereotypical mishaps as her.

Then again, I never got to completely resolve the beef that I've always had with Edward.
Edward was, for lack of a better term, the typical romance novel hero. Don't believe me? Well, you're reading the words of the woman who still insists that TEMC Edward was the closest to original Edward that she ever wrote.
In short, he was lost and needed to be saved by the woman who'd love him unconditionally.
My problems with that? I like my men to be strong. Because they are the men my kick-ass women choose, and why should she choose someone who will inevitably drag her down the moment his foundations are shaken? He was always too soft, too needy. It was a tremendous challenge to explore his character - and one I thoroughly enjoyed, even more from his POV in ABD than through Bella's eyes before. But, like with her, I don't want to write him again.

Now, with Erin and Simon, am I not cutting away the parts that made their previous versions who they were?
To some extend, yes, but I'm not going to leave those wounds open, the empty space unfilled. Instead, I'm trying to rebuild them as more complicated characters with flaws that sit deeper (and are impossible to root out) by anything that will happen to them. You won't sympathize with them because you have pity for their clumsy ways, nor fall for them because they are so dreamy and perfect. They are older than their counterparts, they've had seven additional years that have shaped them, destroyed their illusions, made them realize that sometimes, the small things in life are what we value most.
Will you still care about them? Love them? Scream at them, cry with them, yearn for them to get the ending they deserve? I hope so, and if I have a say in it, more than you did before, because they will feel like real people, not half animated cut-outs.

I'm not sure how much of that is wishful thinking, or mostly noticeable to me because I have to know the characters in and out to write them well, but in the end what I actually write won't be that different.

Except for one thing: There won't be any confessions of undying, never-ending love in chapter 2. Or 3, as it is, right now. Think that might be a dealbreaker? You'll have to read it to find out!