I don’t know at what point I accepted that the first story I ever managed to write the end on (and is currently with an editor) was going to be the first in a series of four. It might have been when I made all but one of the women in that book single (by the end I left three single) and suddenly my creative brain was like ‘couple them up’.
It was easy for one, she was jaded by love and then this sunshine boy talked to her at a bar and I dunno, I need to figure out exactly how the hell I get them from their first encounter to the epilogue (I actually know, but…spoilers). Then there was the girl who was a quiet hopeless romantic but for whatever reason love didn’t come her way until suddenly it did (again, I know how but spoilers).
Then there was woman number 4. Lucy has always existed. She has always been someone’s twin sister. She has always been the final book in this series of four. She has always demanded more from me. I struggled to create a MMC for her, but I managed to give him a name and now I have the pair of them simmering away in my brain but nothing is happening with them.
I can’t unlock them. I can’t unlock her. And that is holding the whole thing up. Because apparently, the only way I can come to a new story is if I know who my FMC is. Yeah I know they need to end up with a man, but if I don’t know how she is then I can’t figure out who he is and then I can’t write the story at all. This is something that I have only recently learned about myself.
And I learned this when it hit me why I couldn’t unlock Lucy. She is firmly in the ‘sunshine’ category. She is unicorns and rainbows. She is undying optimism and hope. She’s sprinkles and whipped cream. She’s pastels and positivity. She sits outside of the ‘write what you know’ spectrum for me. I am none of those things. Not all the time anyway. I can’t figure out how to sustain those characteristics for a female character. I also sit in a space where I don’t think I can.
Not right now anyway.
However, what I will say is realising that Lucy is sunshine did unlock something for me. It means Noah will be grumpy (but soft with her). It means that it makes perfect sense why she would uproot her life and go somewhere where she knows no one on a whim. She truly believes everything will work out. She doesn’t need a pro/con list, she just needs absolute faith that she will land on her feet no matter what. She will be a missing puzzle piece in Noah’s life and he will be one in hers.
That is the most sure I’ve been about anything for this blob that I’ve been calling Book 4 in this series. And oddly, it didn’t come to me in a walk. I was just staring into space.