Some Disassembly Required, part 4

At this point adding a fourth character was probably gilding the lily a bit, but I had a really good handle on the voices and personality quirks of the first three, so it didn't seem like too much of a risk in giving it a shot. Plus, it was another case of a natural progression of the storyline requiring another person to enter into the mix. Bethany and Taylor(Emily) were together, so it only seemed fair that Brandy(Jill) would find someone, too. For the record here, I can't decide whether to go with Brandy and Taylor or Jill and Emily in these posts, and it probably doesn't matter anyway. The lead character is staying Bethany, though.

Willow came along in a sneaky way. Throughout this I've gone the extra mile to make sure all of these characters seem like they're seperate people, and with a little thought it really isn't that hard to pull it off. The first thing is making sure they don't all sound alike, because if they're interchangeable then you're pretty much screwed. But by this point nobody would confuse Brandy with Beth or Emily. The speech patterns are different enough. The second thing I've learned is to make sure that one character doesn't know *too* much about what the others are doing. Like if I had a couple roommates, I wouldn't always know what they're doing at all hours. My girlfriend is another good example of this. I usually don't know what she's up to at any given time.

Using that second principle, I brought Willow in slowly. The story was that this attractive young college student approached Jill at school and they struck up an instant chemical reaction. Now, Emily being the best friend would be the first person Jill would tell about it, but I decided that Jill would keep the information from Beth, at least at first, until she got used to the idea of having her own girlfriend type person. So what I did was have Emily accidentally-on purpose spill the beans about it in the forum, and then I had her and Jill bicker about it a little bit there, in front of my audience, and then eventually this Willow girl would come by the house and meet big sis. As these angles go it was pretty well played out. And since Jill was such a sexpot character there were members of my audience who were keenly interested in seeing what sort of girl would rope her in.

The trick was finding her voice. I figured that anyone who would approach Jillian out of the blue and proposition her had to be full of moxie, and out of that I developed her as someone who is totally direct in what she says, not always the most tactful, but definitely a straight-shooter. Also, as the new girl to the group -- since the other three had known each other forever -- she became the most reactionary and knee-jerk protective of the rest of us. If someone screwed over Jill or Emily, for instance, that person would be dead to Willow forever. That's how I played it. There's always been a circle the wagons aspect to the girls, and Beth is easily the most ferocious if anyone even looks at the others sideways, but Willow became the enforcer, and the first one who would stop taking any shit from anyone. Somehow, also, when I use her voice she doesn't use a lot of contractions when she's chatting. That may sound like a tiny detail to y'all, but the next time you're in a long chat with someone .... you try it. Then let me know how it went.

Willow was introduced in the fall of 2001, completing the core group. She moved into the apartment by the summer of 2002, making for an even more cohesive unit. Soon after that Willow and Bethany developed their special best-friend connection, and the infamous Friday night GNO (Girl's Night Out) gimmick was created. Probably on a weekly basis the GNO's were the thing I was most regularly asked about for details, which required me to get creative since in reality I wasn't really doing anything special most Friday nights.

Having the four girls be so tight let me fill in all the lines of the relationship diagram, as follows:

Beth-Emily: girlfriend
Beth-Jill: sister
Jill-Emily: best friend
Jill-Willow: girlfriend
Beth-Willow: best friend
Emily-Willow: sister

That last one took me a while to figure out. Of course, they aren't sisters by blood, but I decided that they'd adopted each other as sisters at some point along the way. It bothered me not having some kind of definable relationship between those two when all the rest were filled in. Plus, it gives the whole thing a certain symmetry, and symmetry is always a good thing.

So the core group was established. I was able to alternate between the four of them without a lot of problems. The trick was trying to remember all of the details I established, because I always break things down to the atomic level, and these four girls were no exception. Since a lot of the details came out in chats with different people, I had to keep most of those details and specifications in my head. Most of it was easy, but for some of it I had to keep a cheat sheet in Wordpad so I didn't fuck up and contradict myself. But there is a reason they all have birthdays that match people I know (mine, Chrissy's, Samantha's, and Colleen's ... in order of character creation). They were easier to remember that way.

But I still wasn't finished. I filled this pocket universe with tons of supporting characters, many of whom were as fully fleshed out as those four. And I added a 5th NHG later in the next year, too.

We'll cover all that next time.