Writing Update: Zach is Axed

2010 was the first year I took part in NaNoWriMo, and I had no idea what I was doing. I barely had a plot for the story I started, My Hero (it was never finished even though I reached 50k words). So a lot of random, weird things got thrown into the pot.

One of my characters was a seventeen year old boy named Zachery Green. He was supposed to be this tall, handsome Korean boy whom my protagonist was meant to fall madly in love with.

Well, that was pretty stupid. The way I wrote it, no one would have cared whether or not Zach and Peach ended up together. I DIDN'T CARE! I was going to have Zach move to another state at the end of the book, anyway. I broke his leg at one point. I said I loved him, but I think I hated him.

Part of it was that I was trying too hard not to make Zach like the guy I had a crush on. So he had no personality. He was just like this male blob who I figured I could mold into a believable character at some point.

I still don't have a handle on Zach as a character. I have no idea what makes this guy tick. And I made a promise to my boyfriend, and to myself, to finish my NaNo novels before moving on to something new. My Hero is the logical place to start, since the skeleton is 3 years old now.

So, in my efforts to rework My Hero and actually be able to write 'the end' with a smile instead of a grimace, I have officially cut the character Zach Green from the story completely.

Zach is axed.

Worse, Zach is REPLACED.

I am putting in a different male character who has yet to be given a name, but is actually based off of a guy I know. He is nothing like Zach was. His role in the story will be completely different.

And I admit I feel kind of bad about that. But Zach was never really a character...he was more of an anti-character. Because all I was doing with him was making him DIFFERENT from my crush. That made him boring and somehow very ADHD at the same time.

So, I press onward, WITHOUT Zach. Maybe I'll put him in a different story someday.

Maybe he'll actually have a personality then.