writing a book means letting go of everything that book never became

I started writing this book quite a while ago, by which I mean: I incepted the idea 11 years ago, wrote the first interaction between the characters 9 years ago, and wrote a novella-length draft 8 years ago. Then life happened and I didn’t work on it again until 2 years ago.

During the elapsing 6 years, I had a lot of ideas. (see my previous post for discussion on that matter). There was one really big problem: the ideas didn’t cohere. Some of them were really beautiful: world elements that I thought were enriching, characters with wants and motivations I resonated with.

But, because I hadn’t realized that I’m only allowed to have 1 (one) primary conflict, it never worked.

Don’t get me wrong, I think side characters and subplots are very important. But ultimately, they have to have something meaningful to say about the primary conflict, or one begins to wonder why they aren’t in their own book.

I’m gonna dig into this a little. I recently (as in, in July) cut a major character whose invention occurred somewhere in that 6 year gap. His name was Tevyn. He was my MC’s twin brother, and I absolutely adored him. He represented everything Nell would have to leave behind in order to be a dragon-person. He painted himself to life very quickly in my head, complete with a beautiful queer romance with another character. Here was the problem: I loved him, but for this story to be about Nell and her agency, I needed him to make sacrifices that didn’t make sense for his character.

This is the problem with pantsing. I brought Tevyn to life, he told me all about himself, and then I realized he was never going to do what I needed him to do for the sake of someone else’s story. He wanted his own story. and the growth I had planned for him honestly deserved its own book. As I moulded the plot into a shape that would work for Nell, he got smaller and smaller — until I realized he wasn’t the character meant to fit that role. Whispering promises for a better life in a different story, I finally cut him (and his adorable boyfriend, too).

I recently let myself reread some of the lines I wrote from Tevyn’s perspective and I have to say that they are some of my favorite things. Sibling love is complicated and beautiful. But every moment I spent there actually took away from the main conflict, rather than contributing to it in a complex braid. Here’s what I mean by that:

Nell has to make a choice. That choice is about a specific relationship. For that choice to be its most powerful, it has to be made in isolation of other benefits. It needs to be about her, and the relationship. Tying it into other relationships weakens all of them.

When I realized this, I let myself mourn it for a while. but I was also deeply relieved. It meant that I’d be able to tell a sibling-conflict story some other time, and not worry about the pieces coming together. And it meant that I could craft a character willing to make the sacrifice necessary for Nell to have her story — without feeling like I was sidelining a character I’d come to love.

Writing a book means letting go of all the things it could have become.

But it means finding the thing it was meant to be all along.