Welcome Wednesday – Roads Not Taken

Welcome Wednesday – Roads Not Taken

Welcome to this week’s edition of Welcome Wednesdays!

Today,we’re going to talk about  things you didn’t do in your books – and what those choices led to later on.  J.K. Rowling said that her original plan was to kill Mr. Weasley in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, so he only ended up wounded.  But she went on to say that that choice led her to kill Lupin and Tonks at the end of “Deathly Hallows” instead.

So tell us about something you considered doing in one of your books that you later changed your mind about, and what consequences that choice had for your characters and your story?  Be sure to leave a link so we can learn more about your book!

I’ll begin…

 

By the time I got to the fourth book of the Dream Series,DREAM FAMILY, I felt like I had to do something to really shake up Sara. It’s not like she had an easy time of things in the first three books, but it was time to do something that threatened her to the core of who she was.  I thought about killing one of her parents, probably her father.  I also thought about having them not be her real parents at all – having her discover she was actually adopted at some point in the book.

At the same time, I was just figuring out what the plot of the book would be.  I was playing around with the idea of a nemesis – someone who had Sara’s power to visit dreams, but was misusing it.  I also had the idea that Sara would find herself spending a night in jail at some point late in the book, and i viewed that as a minor obstacle to resolving the larger story (which I hadn’t worked out yet).  I began writing the jail scene, and it quickly turned into something far more serious.  And I realized that here was both the real story of the book, and the thing that would hurt Sara worse than anything else ever had, and make her really have to find out what she’s made of.

That choice, and what Sara went through, impacts her throughout the rest of the Dream Series.  Her memories of what happened to her in jail stay with her, straight through to the final book of the series.  So that decision had a huge effect on the next six books.

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And now it’s your turn!

(when you’re done here, please stop by Exquisite Quills, where there are daily memes just like this one and plenty of fantastic authors you can discover!)

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7 Replies to “Welcome Wednesday – Roads Not Taken”

  1. My original intention was write a few short stories about village life during World War II. The first one written, the second grew and grew until it became a fully-fledged novel, then a second was begun, and then a third, until there are now six in the “Gang” series, with a seventh shortly to be published… http://www.peterstjohn.net/

  2. When I originally wrote Hiding In Plain Sight, which is a romantic suspense novel, I intended that the hero Bryan would save Kierra from her stepfather. I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I’ll just say that I decided that rather than have the hero save the day I would push the heroine, Kierra’s character to have more growth and ultimately loved the way that scene came out so much more!

  3. In my time travel romance novels I was going to follow the norm and have it just be entertainingly romantic like an Avon Or Harlequin romance. But then the little devil in me decided to add an element of the paranormal and some good and evil. Like a demon from the third realm of hell and a flock of angels. I had negative comments from my publisher and therefore was sabotaged in the genre they put me in. It was a lesson hard learned. Should I have or shouldn’t I have. I lost a lot of readers by going with my heart. But it is my heart and my books. I felt good about what I wrote and that is all that matters.

  4. That jail idea was a stroke of brilliance—and I’m sure poor Sara appreciates you sparing her parents!

    When I first started planning my South of Forever series, it was going to be over five books long and alternating POV between Jett and Koty. Since it’s rockstar romance, though, I didn’t want to drag it out over that much time. As a fan, I hate that “will they, won’t they?” tension crosses the line over multiple books or even TV seasons. So, instead, I decided to write each book in a different character’s POV and have it focus on a whole new relationship. The first book is in Jett’s POV and tells her and Koty’s story, the second book is Savannah’s POV and focuses on her and Max’s story, etc. I eventually cut it down to just four books. Though I may write more someday, I’m really happy with how it turned out.

  5. When I started writing The Secretary’s Bodyguard, my muse and I had planned on the assitant, Lennis, to be killed during the hunt through the Colombian woods. I’m very glad we didn’t go that way because Lennis was very useful toward the end of the book and in the next novels of the series, too.

  6. I cut an entire chapter from my final draft of They Mostly Come Out At Night. In my Dark Fantasy books, each chapter is separated by a story tale that the inhabitants of the world tell each other at night. I had a ‘fantastic’ idea to have a trippy dream sequence at the end where my characters from the main plot got to meet up with the storytale characters. Sadly, very little changes were needed to remove the dream sequence, thus proving it served no purpose in the overall plot (but I still love it!)…

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