Munday surprises
Tell us about a time your characters surprised you. Maybe you thought for sure they'd react a certain way to a certain situation, or that a plot would happen in such and such a fashion... and it just didn't. What came out ended up making you go 'huh!' or 'whaa?' or 'Wait no you're making me have to change the entire novel!!' but either way, you weren't prepared for what your characters said or did.
This pretty much happens each time I write about Emil. My original concept of him involved casting him as an inspiration/comrade to Marce. I originally had them meeting in an activist group during Marce's junior year. As I fleshed him out, I discovered that he and Marce met much earlier during debate club, that he was a real nerd (in the sci-fi and history genres), and that he used to run with a group of rich brats.
The biggest surprise though had to be my discovering how he confessed his feelings to Marce. I deliberately set up some tension between them, but I didn't expect them to act on it even beyond the ending of the story. But suddenly voila, Emil is writing a love letter to her and giving it to her with his Christmas present. That left me wondering, "Okay, how are we going to deal with this?" while working on the rest of the novel
This pretty much happens each time I write about Emil. My original concept of him involved casting him as an inspiration/comrade to Marce. I originally had them meeting in an activist group during Marce's junior year. As I fleshed him out, I discovered that he and Marce met much earlier during debate club, that he was a real nerd (in the sci-fi and history genres), and that he used to run with a group of rich brats.
The biggest surprise though had to be my discovering how he confessed his feelings to Marce. I deliberately set up some tension between them, but I didn't expect them to act on it even beyond the ending of the story. But suddenly voila, Emil is writing a love letter to her and giving it to her with his Christmas present. That left me wondering, "Okay, how are we going to deal with this?" while working on the rest of the novel