How to kill a character? I have a developed story but I have decided I don’t like my main character. She just doesn’t look right. I hate her name – it no longer fits what she has changed into. I have to rebuild her. But I can’t let go of her original form. I have a sense that she needs to die so I can move on. It is similar to having your D&D character kick the bucket. At that point you are forced to make a new character. Very few people I know ever created a character similar to their old one, me included. But that is what I have to do. They still both have the same occupation, the same family. Very few details have changed, but they seem so significant that a new creation, a new voice has to surface for this story to mesh correctly. My new, improved girl is no longer a fake part time psychic. She is no longer the same race and she no longer has a burning desire to help the situation. She will be coerced and prodded and somehow end up there in the thick of things. Old girl – Jesi – she felt at home with what she was doing. She accepted her talents – not that the new girl doesn’t, she’s just not quite at home with them yet. Jesi was all business. She wanted to learn more and more. Jesi is just too too serious. (Do you like how my tenses keep changing? Guess what I need to work on.) My leading man is serious. There is no balance if both leads are straight faced and down to business. Where is the tension in that? Where is the fun in that? I also have a series of eavesdropping incidences to play out and Jesi would never, I mean NEVER, do such a thing. Now if only my new girl has a name. She has a face, great hair that she’s going to hate fixing and a strong background – strong family. Scratch that…her occupation has to change.
Sigh.
Now new girl needs a name and a job. Maybe she can just be independently wealthy…or a hobo. That works. It would make a great newspaper headline, “Hobo Helps Solve Kidnapping.” Maybe a medical examiner. Maybe…maybe…
Moving forward I have this idea that if I write a short “The Death of Jesi” piece then I can move on with the original story and with my new main girl. If it happens I’ll consider posting it for the world to see. Out with the old and in with the new. I have my doubts that this is really the best way to go. Maybe I’ll use Jesi later. Either way she has to exit my current story line. Hum…new thought, psychics do only see what the universe wants them to see. Or she can suffer a psychic accident – death by tarot. Hum…new ideas forming and I am really liking the death by tarot idea now. DON’T LICK THE CARDS. Just wait and see what I have in store for you Ms. Jesi. Maybe you won’t be so useless after all.
