It’s wild how early drafts can take you by surprise, isn’t it?

There you are, thinking you’ve got it all figured out. You’ve got your core characters, a spot of conflict, and a fictional playground ready to venture through. Then, as if from nowhere, you start lobbing new plot elements into the mix. A side-character here, a subplot there. Just when you thought you were steering the story, you begin to realise the story might actually be driving you about instead!

This is where I am at the moment. I thought I knew Part One of my novel. I went into it with a single, simple mission statement; establish the Michelle/Quinn relationship and slowly uncover Michelle’s “crime” lurking in the shadows of this story. That was it. A focused tale about a girl and a droid making a connection during turbulent times. 

Only now, my story appears to be chucking in all sorts of new matters into the mix.

It all started with a character called Rosie. Honestly, I only wrote her during Chapter 5 to shut down the story’s antagonist. Jax is the book’s baddy, and he was tormenting Michelle on her first day back to college. Seeing as Michelle is in a passive, beaten down stage at this point in the story, I needed an external force to step in to stop her tormentor from winning the moment. Rosie became that external force, yet as soon as I wrote her in, I became immediately fixated.

Why would this fearless character step in to help my protagonist? After all, Michelle is being ostracised by her entire college at the start of the story. Anyone who’d dare to help someone so publicly shunned would have to be pretty anti-establishment, all things considered.

This, of course, resulted in me vanishing down a rabbit hole. I wrote out a backstory for her, just to figure out where she came from and why she’s sticking her neck out like this. And, whoopsie daisy, it turns out Rosie is quite an important individual, one whose connections lead right into the book’s second and third acts. 

Her growing relevance meant I found myself writing her into more and more scenes, to the point  where she’s now taking up a significant chunk of part one. 

My main concern now is that this developing Rosie/Michelle relationship is starting to overshadow the Michelle/Quinn dynamic. After all, that’s meant to be the central point of the book. Part one is literally titled “The Girl and the Droid” for goodness sake! Rosie feels like a late attendee to the party; one who’s suddenly yanking the attention away from the main stars. 

This unexpected turn is making me lose focus of my original mission statement. I’ve just written an entire chapter where Quinn makes no appearance whatsoever, one in which Rosie is in pretty much every scene alongside Michelle. This feels unfair and unfocused, almost like I’ve written a chapter that belongs much later on in the novel. Except I do need to write it now. I need it to lay the groundwork for this developing resistance side-plot. 

But what about dear old Quinn and her journey? Isn’t this just taking valuable oxygen away from a primary plot line?

Then there’s the looming question of how I’m going to bring Quinn and Rosie together later on down the line. How are they going to occupy the same space? At the moment, they occupy two very dissimilar parts of Michelle’s world. Quinn is the mechanical “sister,” conditioned by the Empire; Rosie is the rebellious classmate who’s anti-establishment. If I were to put them both in the same room at this stage, they’d almost certainly try to bring the other down. Quinn would report Rosie for being a risk to Michelle, whereas Rosie would accuse Quinn of being a mindless product of the Empire. Figuring out how to make those two work together later on is causing me more stress than I care for. 

All of which leads me to wonder; what exactly is Part One of my novel meant to be about now?

Sure, the Quinn/Michelle dynamic must remain intact. It’s central to the entire book. Plus it allows me to explore all those themes concerning identity, self-loathing and connection that spurred me on to write this in the first place. At the same time, Rosie is fast becoming the catalyst that will drag this duo into the next stage of the story.

In many respects, this is exciting. My story is growing into something beyond the initial vision. Having plots and characters spring up to surprise you is part of the joy of writing. It’s the inner workings of the imagination coming to life, flooding these worlds with new depths.

All the same, I’m finding myself falling into panic mode, trying to work out how to apply shape to this story now that there are so many new building blocks. I’m also scared that this will continue to happen, gradually making my story more convoluted and busy until it’s just a cluttered mess. There are only so many subplots I can add before everything gets way too cluttered. 

Be as that may, my instinct tells me that Rosie’s introduction is a welcome addition. It helps to add more dimensions to Michelle’s college life; which, as I decided back in chapter 19 of my journal, would be the central pressure cooker for this book. If I’m really going to have everything play out within this setting, then more characters from the college environment are required. I can’t just have Michelle and her bully, Jax, be the only people we focus on. It’s important to ensure this world feels full and lived-in.

It just means I’ve got to figure out how on earth to make all these new characters work alongside one another.