The One Year Anniversary of When I Started Writing Consequence.

On this day, last year, I started writing a book.

I had no idea where the story was going. I had two characters, two settings, and a few basic storylines ideas.

I had gotten the idea the previous night, and started writing it in the first person. I failed after three or four pages.

So I started again that morning, though it was slightly different.

My original Persephone was tall with dark hair and green eyes. She was very different in personality from my actual Persephone, too.

Then I was talking to my sister about fictional characters, and she said that all female main characters these days tend to have brown hair.

So I changed how Persephone looked. She shifted in my mind, and starting looking like the actress Molly Quinn. (So red hair, blue eyes, blah blah blah)

And with the change of look, Persephone somehow changed personality. I’m not sure why, but it’s a good job that she did. Because my original Persephone would not have been stupid enough to do half the things my actual Persephone does ~ therefore, I wouldn’t have a story.

And I had another character. I was never that keen on the name Hades, so I knew right from the beginning that I would change his name to Haden. I knew how he would look right from the beginning. But I wasn’t quite sure what his personality would be.

I had Haden and Persephone, all I needed was a setting, a place for them to meet.

The vineyard had already came into mind the previous night, and I remembered something I’d heard somewhere about in China people only being allowed one child (I’m not sure if this is actually true, I just heard it on the radio or something). Obviously in China, they wouldn’t send kids to vineyards, but that was where I got the idea for the vineyard scheme.

So I had Persephone, who lived on a vineyard in Greece, and I had Haden, who I had no idea where he was from.

I’ve always had a fascination with Russia. (Not just cos my mum said on many occasions that it was a country she never wanted to go to.) And I decided that Moscow would be the “Underworld” that Persephone was taken to.

And in the original myth, the reason Persephone stays in the Underworld, is because she eats a pomegranate, and when you eat in the Underworld, you can never properly leave. That’s where the sci-fi element came in. I needed a way for fruit to control her.

Originally, it was going to be a retelling of the myth, rather than parallels between Persephone’s story and the myth, but most of my original ideas changed.

Here are some prime examples of things that were meant to happen that I thought better of:

Persephone was going to get together with Sol.

The Tsar was going to be gay.

Phoenix was meant to be a minor character. (Yeah, she’s in my head right now, laughing at me.)

Phoenix was meant to be a nice happy person without a past.

Phoenix’s only purpose was to be a friend for Persephone.

Persephone was meant to stay with the Tsar.

Phoenix was meant to die. (She put an end to this quickly. She never lets me kill her. Believe me; I have tried so many times.)

Melinoe wasn’t going to exist.

Melinoe was going to have a brother.

The reason Phoenix went to the settlements (the time she set them on fire) was because she had a boyfriend there that she wanted to check up on.

Phoenix wasn’t meant to be the settlement president’s daughter.

Persephone and Drew weren’t meant to SPOILER ALERT die.

So that would have been a very…different book. (And if you look carefully, you can see hints of storylines that never happened. I.e. when the Tsar’s talking to his father in the library, some of the things he says. Or how he reacts the first time Persephone kisses him. Or with Sol catching Persephone when she jumps out the window)

But my characters didn’t want it that way; they wanted me to write their stories, so I did.

I think the book started changing when I got my next two characters.

They popped into my head either the day I started writing, or the day after.

There was a boy. He was tall, with dark hair. He looked like a younger version of the guy who played Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. This boy was Sol.

And there was a girl. She was short, with dark hair and blue-green eyes. She looked a lot like the actress Isabelle Fuhrman, but with a different hairstyle, and a different eye colour.

This was the character that changed the book.

The character that won’t leave my head, even after a year.

This character was Phoenix (who is trying to control what I’m writing, yet again).

Phoenix was so different from any character I’d written prior to that point.

She was so…energetic. She was practically bouncing off the walls in my head. She was so full of life, so…real.

That’s what I love/hate about her: that realness. Phoenix is the one character who always manages to get the storylines she wants. She gets the dramatic ones, the horrible disturbing ones. And she gets the occasional happy one, too.

When I combined Phoenix and Persephone, I didn’t realize that those characters would form such a strong bond.

When I was writing CONSEQUENCE, I didn’t realize quite what it was about. I once decided that when I’d finished it, I’d write a book about friendship. Not about good friendship, but about why the hell do people stay friends even when one person doesn’t communicate, when one person isn’t being an ideal friend.

I didn’t realize then that I had actually done that. Because CONSEQUENCE is about friendship. And love, and science, and loss. It’s about so much more than I ever thought it would be.

Before I wrote CONSEQUENCE, I was really miserable. And I think that perhaps that book cured me. It worked as a kind of therapy. And I think I learned a lot from my characters. Yes, the voices in my head/figments of my imagination actually taught me a lot about life.

And they still do, I guess. Though in the book I’m currently working on, there seem to be a few parallels with real life. I guess my subconscious mind likes to slip things into my books that aren’t actually meant to be there. I guess my subconscious mind has a lot in common with Phoenix.

Kai (and Phoenix), Perfect Characters and Imperfect Characters (Kai Being Perfect, Phoenix Being Imperfect.)

Out of all the male characters I have written, I have two favourites.

One is the Tsar. I didn’t understand him as a character until I was writing TRANSCEND. I couldn’t find out what motivated him, what made him who he was.

And the other character is Kai.

Most of the characters in CONSEQUENCE came into my head pretty early on. Kai wasn’t one of those characters.

He didn’t form straight away, but a little bit at a time. It was last summer when Kai came into my mind. I was writing CONSEQUENCE, and I had just gotten the idea for the Estonian Institute of Scientific Research (or EISR, as it’s mostly known as in the books). I knew that Phoenix would spend quite a bit of time there without Persephone, and I knew that she would need someone to keep her company.

A few ideas for characters ran through my mind, but none of them seemed…right. At least, not for Phoenix. She is the kind of character who is very picky about whom she’s friends with. And she is also the kind of character who will not hesitate to tell me that I’m writing the book wrong (or finding the wrong cover, using the wrong words, describing her the wrong way, making her react the wrong way, blah blah blah).

But Kai was perfect for Phoenix. They had stuff in common, but they were almost completely opposite.

Kai was almost perfect, and Phoenix…well, she was not perfect. She was so opinionated, and eccentric, and ALWAYS had to be right. (Oh wait, I think I just described myself…)

And Kai was like an antidote to that. He was calm and loving and peaceful. He was the kind of person who loved everybody equally. And Phoenix was the kind of person who loved a couple of people, and would be absolutely fine if everyone else in the world just disappeared.

And somehow, Kai (SPOILER ALERT!) loved Phoenix. Perhaps because she was so different from him. Or maybe because he admired her. (Phoenix tells me that she has lots of admirable qualities. She also tells me that I can’t contradict her on that, because she is always right).

Or maybe Kai didn’t have a choice…When Phoenix loves someone; she loves them with her whole self. They become her entire world. If someone was met with the full force of her love, it would be hard for them not to return that love.

Plus, Phoenix likes to get her own way. (Like, this blog was meant to be about Kai, yet, somehow, Phoenix seems to be mentioned almost as often as he is.) So if she wanted Kai to love her, he would.

Anyway, what was I saying before Phoenix hijacked my brain?

Oh yes, I was talking about Kai.

Out of my two favourite male characters, I think Kai is my actual favourite. Though sometimes I’m like “is he realistic? Is he too nice?”

In the book I’m currently writing, my main male character is not perfect. He is very far from perfect. This proves how far along my writing has come within the last year.

In CONSEQUENCE, I had three main(ish) male characters. The Tsar, who was kind of evil. Drew, who was near perfect. And Kai, who was even closer to perfect than Drew was.

The only flaw I could find in Kai was that he dated Abynechka just to make Phoenix jealous. Abynechka is actually named after a girl called Abi who was mean to me once, so I never liked her character very much. Neither did Phoenix, though that was obviously for different reasons. Jealous is an understatement of what Phoenix felt. There is a scene in AMEND which shows that Phoenix was still mad about it, even after about thirteen years.

I sometimes wonder if it’s fair that my male characters have hardly any flaws, yet my female characters have hundreds. But recently I’ve been thinking, if people can’t be perfect in books, when can they be?

Would people read a book if male characters were uncommunicative flirtaholic idiots who were too busy looking at themselves in the mirror to notice that one of the female characters had been looking at them for the past half hour?

I wouldn’t read a book like that.

Though I did realize ~ to my horror ~ that the one thing my three favourite male characters of all time had in common was that they all tried to strangle their girlfriends/future girlfriends.

Okay, so two out of three of them had been mind-controlled, and the third one didn’t realize at the time that he would later fall in love with the alien, but still…I was kind of like “If these are fictional guys that are nice…what are the not-nice ones like?”.

The thing I seem to always read about “perfect” characters, is that they’re too unrealistic, too cardboard cut-out ish. But if characters aren’t cardboard cut-out ish, then what’s wrong with them being perfect?

Fictional characters aren’t meant to be an exact replica of real people. They have to be themselves, and if they are meant to be really abnormally nice, well then that’s who they are.

And some books need characters like that. For example, if Kai didn’t exist, Phoenix would be ten times more annoying than she is when is being as annoying as it’s possible to be. (She isn’t always as annoying in the books as I say she is, but remember, I’ve had her in my head for nearly a year, so I know just how annoying she can be).

The relationship between Phoenix and Kai is one of my favourite things to write. It’s just interesting how love can change Phoenix; make her a better person (and sometimes a worse one). It’s very different from her love for Persephone, too. With Persephone, Phoenix loves her so much, but she doesn’t trust her completely. The ultimate level of Phoenix’s trust is when she trusts someone with herself.

Therefore, she trusts Kai more than Persephone. Even though she doesn’t like to talk to Kai about her friendship with Persephone ~ which implies that she doesn’t trust him quite as much as it appears. God, that girl is complicated!

In AMEND, Phoenix and Kai are married. They’ve been together for about thirteen years. And it’s really lovely to write ~ even though Phoenix is still insecure, which sometimes makes their relationship insecure.

But it’s also interesting to write just in terms of character development. I know about characters who develop on their own, but what about ones who develop together? It’s nice to see how Phoenix is when she has someone to depend on, someone who loves her for herself (despite her many, many flaws). She’s such a complex character, and being in love gives her a kind of simplicity.

The love between Phoenix and Kai is perhaps the strongest love in the whole trilogy. Yes, Persephone and Drew would die for each other. But Phoenix and Kai would live for each other. If Kai died, Phoenix wouldn’t kill herself. She would probably die of a broken heart, but she wouldn’t choose to die.

She loves Kai enough to know that he would want her to live.

And if it was the other way round, Kai would do the same.

There were several times in TRANSCEND where I was tempted to kill Phoenix. She was being particularly annoying, and I was getting rather sick of her. I’m glad that I didn’t kill her (not just cos she would be unbearable to have in my head).

But if I had killed Phoenix, what would have happened to Kai? Well, basically he wouldn’t be too great to have in my head, either (though he’s one of those lovely characters who has the decency to let me write what I want, rather than what they want).

And if I’d killed either of them, I would have lost one of my favourite storylines. So, I saw sense, and just fatally injured Phoenix. I think she’s almost forgiven me.

Another thing about my two favourite male characters: out of all the male characters, they are the ones that Phoenix has the strongest reaction to. Whether it’s extreme hatred towards the Tsar, or extreme love for Kai, those are two of the characters that she feels the most for.

Thoughts On Characters And Bravery.

In the books I read, having brave main characters is kind of a given. Most of my favourite books are futuristic/post-apocalyptic/dystopian. They contain these horrible worlds full of horrible things that the main characters try to overcome.

I never thought about my characters being brave. I knew that some of them were, but I never realized that almost all of them were.

By “brave” I don’t just mean risking their lives. I mean brave in so many different contexts. In who they are, in how they are, in what they believe in.

In Divergent (one of my all-time favourite books) there’s a line which goes “I never thought I would need bravery in the small moments of my life; I do”.  And I started thinking about that, and realized that it actually applies to a lot of fictional characters.

I always thought that if I lived in the worlds of the books I write ~ or the books I read ~ that I would be brave.

Three nights ago, I was standing on a chair, screaming; completely at the mercy of a dead mouse. I hate mice.

And thinking about it like that, I realized just how brave my characters are.

If someone even mentions the word “rat”, I start freaking out, yet my characters face things they fear on a daily basis. And they stay sane (sort of).

I spend so much time criticizing my characters, that I often forget to admire them.

There are characters like Persephone, who are brave because they would turn the world upside down for someone they love, or for something they believe in.

But there are characters that are brave in other ways. There’s Kai, who is brave enough to love Phoenix (that takes bravery, believe me).

And there’s Melinoe, the main character in AMEND.  When I was writing it, I never considered her to be brave. She was so cold, so sadistic/masochistic/horrible. But she is brave.

She went through so much, and she was mostly alone. Yes, that may have been because she alienated most of the people who cared for her, but that doesn’t make it easier.

Melinoe’s bravery came mostly in the last couple of paragraphs of the last chapter of AMEND. She lets her guard down, and perhaps that’s the bravest action of all.