Behind the Characters: Deleting Characters from the Perspective
Good morning readers! In a previous blog post on The Dark Nursery Diaries, I talked about the endeavor of removing an entire part and sections of Fallen Ribbon to narrow down my word count to make it more appealing as a first novel of my writing career. I briefly mentioned having to also remove two main character perspectives so that the story would be better focused. These two characters were Gerrold Victoire; the oldest living vampire, and Gabriel; one of the angels pursuing Geordie’s demise. At the time that I created these characters, I felt as though they were vital enough in the story to merit giving them perspectives but once I began the first revision stage of fixing my book, I came to realize that although they are important to the story, they did not need their own perspectives.
With Gerrold, it was relatively easy to get rid of his character perspectives as all of his interactions were generally in the company of Sam as his introduction into the story. The chapters that Gerrold had his own perspectives in, I either deleted them entirely, or I altered them enough to make it a seamless transition into the scenes taking place from Sam’s perspective instead. I actually really enjoyed how it turned out because as I read the current version of the story, I realized that I don’t ever think about the content of the story through Gerrold’s eyes anymore, it’s all through Sam’s eyes.
In Part 3 of Fallen Ribbon, Gerrold takes on a much bigger role in the story that really sets the precedent for the rest of the subsequent parts of the overarching story, but I removed that part from the book to make it its own novel. Therefore, Gerrold doesn’t have a huge role in Fallen Ribbon. I’m planning on making up for that by giving him a pivotal spotlight in the next book. Things to look forward to. I’m looking forward to working through the eyes of such a big character after working so long with Geordie, Matt, Sam and Frost.
When it came to getting rid of Gabriel, this situation was entirely dependent on the focus of Geordie and Frost’s dynamic. I won’t lie, I spent a lot of time on their relationship and dynamics as the protagonist and antagonist of the story and I didn’t initially put as much thought into how that affected Gabriel’s dynamic with Geordie. Gabriel’s first intent was to be more of a counterbalance to Frost and deviate her attention on Geordie. When I was getting the initial feedback from the author at Grubstreet about the focus of the story, she gave me some helpful advice that based on how developed Frost was comparatively, there wasn’t really a need to have another primary angel antagonist hunting down Geordie.
Thinking about this, it sort of made sense after a while to remove Gabriel from the primary narrative. In a lot of stories, you see a lot of male antagonists going after a female protagonist in a so-to-speak damsel in distress or even strong female lead themed idea. Having Frost as a strong female lead antagonist and Geordie as a more damsel in distress protagonist concept kind of shied away from the normal protagonist/antagonist dynamics. It just made sense at the time to remove Gabriel from that dynamic and let the girls have their spotlight without the need of male pursuit narrative.
I still include Gabriel intermittently throughout the story, but much like Gerrold, he will play a more vital role in the later installments of the story. My overall goal for him will be to play as an aid to another character in a much bigger cause over the course of the story’s progression. I think with the initial concept of purebreds not being as atypical as the hybrids for the story, Gabriel poses an interesting position in the narrative as one of the few side characters who’s not a hybrid of any kind. He's just an angel and nothing more. He cares about his belief system to the point of doing anything necessary to uphold that belief system, even at his own personal cost. That drastically differs from the rest of the characters throughout the story because nearly everyone mentioned is a hybrid of some kind and therefore has split ideals based on the cultures they were brought up in.
Similarly, we have Gerrold who was the first human to be turned into a vampire and with that perspective comes some very specific ideals about the world he’s been living in for thousands of years. He’s as pure vampire as the word pure gets and subsequently views the world as a never-ending fountain of possibilities. Mankind has evolved drastically over time and as hybridism becomes more prevalent in modern times, Gerrold is only capable of seeing the possibility of change in the world around him. This thought process has a great effect on Gerrold’s actions throughout not only the story but his life overall, and I’m interested to see how his and Gabriel’s personal backgrounds affect their positions in the narrative for those around them.
Although we were not able to see the world through their eyes in this installment, there will be more opportunities for them to shine in future installments after Fallen Ribbon debuts on August 15th. Look forward to tomorrow’s post on Geordie’s concept at 10AM EST and don’t forget to Like, Follow, and Share my Facebook and X sites for your friends as well!
