Q&A Thursdays Reprised #3: Sandy’s Question

Currently I’m reprising a Q&A series from 2019, which began on March 31 with Phoebe’s Question.

I have, however, inadvertently made a liar out of myself, because although I said I was following the original order, in fact I missed a whole bunch of Q&A’s when I went to Sam’s question last time. O-o!

Every question is standalone, though, so in the final analysis it won’t matter a jot if I mix things up a bit. So I may do that bit more in future — but for today, I’m reverting to the original order with Sandy’s question, which is on characters that take charge. 😀

USA

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Sandy: Did Your Picture Of Any Of The Characters Change As You Were Writing Them? And Did Any Leap Off The Page and Take Charge?

Helen: The leaping off the page and taking charge has happened in the series, most notably with Asantir in The Heir of Night, but the closest to it in Daughter is Tirael of Stars. His character was always in the story arc, in line with my answer to Phoebe’s question, but he arrived with such a swirl of his cloak and gleam in his eye that I knew he was going to cut a swathe through the story, as indeed he did. 🙂

In terms of characters changing within the story in an unforeseen way, I believe the most striking example of this was the relationship between Myr and Kalan. You see, in my original vision for the WALL story, they were always supposed to fall in love, in a star-crossed, Romeo & Juliet kind of way. But when it came to the point, no matter how much I wrote and rewrote the story, the romance just never happened. To prove my point that characters have a life of their own, they simply refused to fall in love! [Throws up authorial hands in remembered exasperation.] However, once I accepted that alteration, the story and their relationship within it both really flowed, which I took as evidence that one must always heed the Muse.