Genesis

The book had very simple beginnings. In it's original form the story was told in a series of letters that I wrote to Milta. She was the person who first got me to talk about what had happened, and so I started telling the story to her in those letters. Before long, she had me convinced that I should try writing it out for a wider audience, and from there I started breaking down the chapters. In the original draft, which has long since been destroyed (don't worry--it was terrible), Chapters 1 and 2 didn't exist. Chapter 1 didn't come along until two years later. Chapter 2 came later in the book at first, but then became the first chapter, and the first, dreadful, version of it was written in the third person and never worked at all. The decision to change it to Emma's first person narration was the first good idea I had for the book. Chapter 1 came along when I felt I needed something to buffer Emma's chapter, and besides I wanted to set up some foreshadowing and whatnot.

The earliest version of the book was essentially a three person story, and I was using the real names, too. Emma, Alyssa, and Kelly didn't come into play until 1997 during the California trip. In that earliest version there was no Laurel, no Ben, no Gwen, no hospital scenes, no Diner scenes, no Milo, and none of the dozens of subplots that are running in the current version. Those scenes started to develop during the rewrites in late 1996. All the various character names were generated at the same time as the other three. The addition of the supporting cast was probably the one thing that improved the book the most. I love the large cast of oddballs. Those first three characters are still carrying most of the weight, but Ben, Laurel, Gwen, and Alexis (and Quinn later on) add a lot of dimension to the story that wouldn't have been there otherwise. And just underneath the Big 8 is another layer of juicy characters including Willow, Leah, Cindy, Jed, Beth, and Natasha (among several others) that really fill out the margins and add a lot. At heart, it's still Emma and Kelly's story, but the whole thing is much better as an ensemble piece.

I'll probably never write anything that doesn't have a large cast running around the pages. It's probably because so many of my largest influences, instead of being star vehicles featuring one or two standout performers, have used an ensemble cast. The tv shows I love the most have featured large ensembles that work together to make the whole greater than the sum of it's parts: Seinfeld, Friends, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, the Simpsons, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, MASH, and perhaps the best of them all, the Dick Van Dyke Show. Movies? Same thing: Almost Famous, Boogie Nights (perhaps the best example of this overall), all of Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith's movies, Lone Star, the Fisher King, Star Wars, Young Frankenstein, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and even Elizabethtown to an extent. Elizabethtown may have mostly been about the two characters at the heart of it, but they were surrounded by several other colorful characters. Walk The Line is the same way. As far as books go, Stephen King much more often than not works with a huge cast. Both Catch-22 and The Illuminatus Trilogy feature gigantic casts. Even the comic books I've liked the most lean towards the ensemble thing: Preacher, Stray Bullets, Strangers in Paradise, Bone, Nextwave, and others. Even some of my earliest influences--the classic Warner Bros. cartoons, the Muppet Show, and Adam West's Batman--work along these same lines. And I can look at most of these things and see how they've influenced me in one way or another.

From a bunch of letters the book has evolved into a large novel that's broken down into six different Seasons (and an epilogue) featuring more than 30 notable characters, close to 100 speaking parts, and dozens of other characters that are mentioned but never seen. If I see the book as one long tv series with six seasons, and each Chapter being an episode of the show, the Big 8 are the characters that show up in the main credits (see Buffy or Friends for what I mean there), and then during the additional credits in the first scene characters like Leah and Willow would get an "also starring" credit. I guess it's impossible to overstate how much television has been an influence on me.

I've been watching a lot of Friends on dvd lately, having taken advantage of a great sale at Best Buy a few weeks back through which I picked up the last four seasons of the show, and watching so much of it has gotten me thinking about stuff like what I've been talking about. By the seventh season the characters were so developed that the writers could use them in almost any situation, in any combination, and it all clicked. That's what I've been working towards myself with my cast. I have strengths and weaknesses as a writer, but probably my biggest strength is character development and interaction. Kelly works well with just about everyone. Emma and Alyssa are great together. The Gwen and Willow chemistry was a surprise that I found during the writing. They clicked so well that it's no wonder I keep going back to that well. Likewise, Laurel and Cindy felt so natural together that I have to remind myself that the two people they're based on only met once for about two minutes. By the end of Season 3, all the major characters really should be in there somewhere, or at least set up to appear in 4. I haven't worked out all the specifics yet, but some big players do show up by Chapter 18, and there's only a couple left after that to deal with.

So it's shaping up nicely.