Same Story Line, Different Main Character – Totally Fascinating!

In last Wednesday’s blog, I admitted – WARNING: SPOILER ALERT – that I meant to kill Kayla at the end of “The Politician’s Pawn.”

That didn’t happen though. And since I didn’t figure that wasn’t going to happen until the last two chapters, I was left with three possible options:

1.       End the story on an inconclusive note

2.       Write a really, really long book in order to resolve everything

3.       Start figuring out a sequel

As usual with my stories, I didn’t get any say in the matter. My muse took over and chose (i.e., demanded, mandated, put a gun to my head and said, “Do this or else”) that a sequel it would be. Moreover, it was going to be a sequel from blue-eyed, conflicted-bad-boy Evan’s perspective.

I genuinely don’t remember ever consciously making that decision. It just happened. One chapter, I was writing from a familiar female point of view; the next, I was doing my best to think like a guy.

A guy who used to be in the military. And turned to crime. And then grew a conscience again.

Now, I’ve never been a guy, or in the military, or turned to crime. Though I have shed and regrown a conscience a time or two. So I figured this was going to be three-quarters of a major challenge.

Except that it wasn’t. My gun-toting muse (I really should name her if I keep bringing her up. How about Katrina?) was about as benevolent a story-line kidnapper as possible.

The first thing she did was prompt me to start out “Moves and Countermoves” – WARNING: SPOILER ALERT – back in Kayla’s living room after Evans has handed a manila folder full of evidence over. So it rehashes a dozen or two lines of dialogue from the very end of Dirty Politics 1. Only it’s Evans’ eyes we see it all through, and his thoughts we get to listen in on.

Here’s the first thing I discovered writing that same scene from a new perspective: Male and military-trained or not, he’s not nearly as impassive as Kayla thinks he is. And he definitely wasn’t the night before, when – WARNING: SPOILER ALERT – he saved her from becoming another sad, D.C. crime statistic.

Fictional though both Kayla and Evans are, it provided me a rather fascinating example of a real-life truth… that we never really know where another person is coming from. They might be acting badly. They might even be acting in a downright evil manner, in which case they have no excuse.

But they might just have a reason nonetheless. And sometimes that reason is pretty darn heavy.

Just ask Evans. Which you can do as of June 24, when I publish “Moves and Countermoves.”