The Art of Knowing Which Ship to Sail

 I shall precede this blog post with a warning - it contains SPOILERS for certain aspects of the plot of The Taskmaster and therefore if you haven't read it yet (and if not, why not?) and don't want certain elements to be revealed in advance, I wouldn't go any further if I were you:

The Art of Knowing Which Ship to Sail

I’m not one of life’s great writers of romance. I’m able to admit that. I’m willing to give it a go where plot and character demands, but, aside from a few fanfiction dabblings, I rarely write a story that could be said to based entirely around a romantic relationship. Relationships are a part of my work, but I never considered them to be central, woven in rather than the dominant force. I place them where I feel they are appropriate. Judging where they are appropriate however, can sometimes be an interesting challenge.

For example – take my intentions towards the character’s personal relationships in the Plot Bandits books. When I first plotted out this story in my notebooks, I was absolutely definitely going to pair up Fodder and Flirt – indeed, you can probably still detect a few early sprigs of this intent scattered about in the early parts of The Disposable. It had crossed my mind I might also pair up Dullard with Pleasance but I had a few reservations on that score as to whether those characters would really work together as a couple and so I noted it as a question marked possibility to consider when the time came, but otherwise didn’t think much more about it.

And then I started writing.

And slowly, but surely, a few doubts crept in about Flirt and Fodder being put together. Not because I didn’t think they would work together, as I happen to believe they would, but because I began to feel uneasy about pairing Flirt up at all. The more I wrote her, the more strongly I began to feel that her character arc didn’t fit with ending up in a relationship. Her story was one of striving to be seen as more than just – to phrase it politely – “romantic interest”. Somehow, dropping her into a couple, even one I liked the idea of, didn’t seem right any more. And as I wrote, I realised I just didn’t have time to develop that kind of relationship between her and Fodder anyway – there was just too much else going on and at the crucial juncture of the story when that kind of thing might have evolved, my plans changed dramatically and suddenly I had split them apart into different plot lines.

So I hit on the compromise found in The Taskmaster – having Fodder propose at the end and having her turn him down, but not definitively. That way, those readers who prefer to think of Flirt remaining a strong, single woman could do so, while those shipping her and Fodder could choose to assume they got married at some point after the conclusion of their Quest rerun and lived happily ever after. Every reader wins. ;)

And then, of course, came Dullard and Pleasance.

I still had those aforementioned doubts, of course. I’ve never been a big fan of that tired old hatred-to-passion romantic cliché as I’m a firm believer that that sort of relationship is a quick ticket to a very unhappily-ever-after. And those doubts lingered right up until the moment I put the pair of them in a scene together.

And to my absolute astonishment, they just worked. It had nothing to do with me, I assure you. Even when Pleasance was screaming her head off at Dullard, there was just chemistry. They ignited the whole thing entirely between themselves by picking up every scene I placed them in together and running away with it, leaving me to flounder along behind trying desperately to keep up with them. My thoughts of the subject no longer mattered a jot. They had decided that they were going to be a couple.

Writing their scenes quickly became one of the joys of creating the story. I’m sure anyone out there who writes will understand the pleasure of writing characters that just flow. I barely had to make an effort, everything they did together clicked (at least for me, I can only hope my dear readers feel the same!). Up until Dullard was introduced, I had struggled a bit with writing Pleasance, especially since she was mostly being seen from the point of view of characters who really weren’t her biggest fans, so trying to find ways for the audience to sympathise with her without dulling her edge was a bit tricky. But as soon as Dullard came along, she blossomed. Interacting with Dullard humanised her in a way interacting with Fodder, Flirt and Shoulders simply couldn’t. I found her vulnerable side and with it, I found her. And once she was found, she was very clear on who she was going to end up with.

It is one of greatest ironies of writing a story about characters rebelling against their author that two of mine entirely ran off with a big chunk of plot just by working together. But I didn’t object. In fact, I’m extremely grateful they did.

And I suppose that’s what I’m trying to say here really. When it comes to sailing the right ships, the most important thing is to listen to what the characters think. If they don’t feel like that relationship will be right for them, how will it ever be right for the audience? But when two characters chose to sail their ship together, whether planned or not, aim it straight for the sunset and roll with the current. Because the characters, at the end of the day, know best.