Here’s the story of how I crushed a character mutiny and finished a book.
Back when Risuko first came out, I was hard at work on the sequel, Bright Eyes. I was cruising along, with every expectation that I’d have the book ready for publication in 2018.
Then one of my characters mutinied.
I was about to kill her off (spectacularly, I thought) in order to move the plot forward. As I began to write the scene, however, I realized that I hadn’t set up the death or the character well.
In my mind, she sat there, yelling at me, telling me the scene sucked. And the way I had written her character sucked. And because they sucked, the whole book to that point sucked. Massively.
She wasn’t very polite about it.
I realized, to my horror, that she was right. Continue reading Character Mutiny, Pt. II — The Author Strikes Back