🧭 for put me back in it, 🏴☠️ for the new york one that might not get done, and 🔮 for the black sails fix-it to shake things up
hi kiran im sorry this has been sitting in my inbox for weeks i really appreciate the questions !!
🧭 What was the key choice or decision you had to make for this story? If you had chosen differently, what would the story have turned into?
put me back in it was insanely easy to write because it changed so little from concept to execution. once I made some initial decisions it was like it was just fully formed in my brain. so the key initial thing I had to figure out was why Pete even wound up in the walk. and I’ve changed my mind a bit on his state of mind going in because when I first saw the movie I got fixated on it being so, like, Greek tragedy of this guy who's fixated on seeing the light losing his love and doing something he sees as so contrary to his core being. guy who is not suicidal or violent hits a turning point and commits a suicidal act of violence. so in put me back in it you see pete realizing there's a life after he completely loses anchoring parts of his identity and pulling himself back up from rock bottom. but now i think i see him as more suicidal to begin with even if he doesn't realize that about himself, so i think if i wrote it with that in mind the internal conflict would be more about realizing the ways his faux-zen "i'm calm because i genuinely don't care what happens to me" mindset was inadequately papering over self-disgust and suicidality.
🏴☠️ Were there any points in which your characters tried (or succeeded) to commit mutiny against your planned plot? Where did they most want to rebel?
oh dude. im abandoning this for a couple reasons (i think im going to recycle the ideas i liked from it but also that i need to completely start over or it'll just be a badly frankensteined story) but the biggest reason that isn't "too much sci fi plot that i can neither solve nor get re-interested in" is "conflict over sex dynamics that is no longer believable or interesting to me." one specific thing that got chucked from an earlier draft is i wanted ray to get into some kind of self-hatred-fueled situationship with a government agent, which i still think would be fun but i could NOT make it work
🔮Have you imagined what happens to [character(s)] in the future? Or does the story only exist to you as a moment in time?
definitely lean more "moment in time!" but while the goal of writing that was to somewhat realistically "solve" the tragedy, get the characters ideologically back on the same page, i was not at the time that interested in nonideological conflict between them. so i think if i were to write a postscript it would be about the messy consequences of inventing polyamory in the 18th century. i've become much more of a silvermadi understander in the time since writing and i have honestly never been that interested in thomas apart from his role in flint's story but i think i could have fun pingponging them all off each other.