BoM/TWS Message Forum

Just want to say thanks to everyone who sent me GPs for recent chapters. I’m going to start saving them and who knows? Maybe in a year I can get a three-month membership. As a thank you, I thought that I’d post a little in depth about some of the challenges I find when writing for BoM.

This arc ended up going in a different direction to how I’d initially planned. Authors sometimes talk about characters misbehaving, but it’s not a concept I truly appreciated until writing this storyline – particularly in the last chapter. I thought I could leave someone unsupervised for a few hours and… nope. They went and broke my heart. I hope you enjoyed it and it continued the interactive’s fine tradition of characters driving the story.

[Mild spoilers below]

Where does this line go from here? I don't know: I have not written it yet! I have a good idea what comes next, but it drags me into one of several aspects of BoM that terrify me; ironically, the strengths that make BoM so compelling. Seuzz et al. have created a rich, largely coherent universe where characters drive the plot. It’s an incredible achievement, but also makes it very hard, for me at least, to write the usual suspects. I avoid, for example, Chelsea Cooper like the plague: she has hundreds of storylines, each with kernels of character detail. It’s a minefield trying to stay true to that, akin to taking over writing, say, Spiderman. You can’t read all the canon, but you can bet your ass someone else has; if I tried to write Chelsea, I’d worry I would get her wrong.

That leaves me with two options: to either bluff my way through it (as I’ve tried to do with Kim and Kelsey) or to go in unexplored directions (such as Acuna and Shelly). The problem is that, in a constant universe like BoM, sometimes you can’t dodge the main characters. Right now, it would make total sense for Will to replace Kim – she’s in a good position to find out who stole the masks from the shop, and could keep a watch on both the lives of Will Prescott and (her new mentee) Shelly Nolan. But Kim Walsh isn’t a sketch; she’s a multi-faceted character. How do you even begin writing as her? The other option I had considered was using the Acuna mask to move into Pete – a completely blank slate who could have all kinds of mysterious ties. But is that really what readers want? Or what Will would choose?

The question of who stole the masks is also intriguing. I had an initial idea, but after discussion with Seuzz realized I was being a little blinkered and considered a new approach that would still push Will and Shelly into a crucible of paranoia. I know who did it, but I’m interested who the readers think are the suspects – and where the perpetrator(s) is/are now?