Melinoe, Irina, (and Phoenix), And The Awkward Moment When I Start Turning Into Them.

When I wrote AMEND, I suffered from this horrible little thing known as Second Novel Syndrome. Basically, it means that you’ve written a book, you’re happy with it, and you think you can do it again.

AMEND was the second second novel I had written, so I should have remembered all the terrible writer's block that Second Novel Syndrome creates. But no, I was blissfully oblivious as I started to write.

But the problem with AMEND perhaps wasn’t the book itself, but the characters in it. In CONSEQUENCE I could always relate to at least one of the protagonists. But AMEND was completely different.

For as start, it didn’t have two main characters, it had Melinoe, who was what would be considered as the main character. Then there was Irina, who was still a main character, but was only really in the first half of the book. And then there were characters like Phoenix and Kai and Haden who were still main characters, but not as much as Melinoe and Irina.

Out of these characters, Phoenix was really the only one I could relate to. Except she was thirty-two years old, she had three children, she was married. So I couldn’t really relate to her as much as I could in CONSEQUENCE. Well, except in the scene where she turns Abynechka into a warthog. I could totally relate to her in that bit. It was really awesome writing it, because I was just sitting in bed with a notebook on my lap, laughing, and thinking “revenge is sweet”.

But back to the characters I couldn’t relate to. Melinoe and Irina. My protagonists. From the moment I started writing, I found Melinoe challenging. She was, basically, a bitch. She loved other people’s pain, and she used her own pain as a distraction from the fact that she was completely empty inside, that she was devoid of humanity.

Can you see why I never liked her much? Strangely enough, I do like her now that I don’t have to write about her, because the trilogy is finished, I can see where she came from, and where she ended up, and that gives me a much stronger understanding of her.

But when I was writing it, I just wanted to strangle her. She probably would have liked that, actually. Unless I actually killed her, which would make her rather annoyed. Melinoe doesn’t like it when people try to kill her.

I thought that she was the one character I had ever written who I couldn’t relate to in the slightest, but it turned out, we actually had a couple of things in common. They were small, stupid, inconsequential things, but they were still things. For example, there’s a scene where Melinoe’s on a train, and she’s thinking about all the same people breathing the same air for an extended period of time. If there is one thing I hate, it’s a lack of fresh air. I also hate it when people yawn. It’s one of my weird quirks.

And then there’s the fact that Melinoe and I are both fifteen years old, 5’10”, with curly hair. And we both hate abbreviations. So that means we have, altogether, five things in common. Not very much compared to the many, many similarities between me and Phoenix.

My other main character, Irina, didn’t have that much in common with me either, though I found her easier to relate to, because she was more human, and not just metaphorically, seeing as Melinoe is half robot.

Irina has OCD, and I can’t stand it when things aren’t in the order I like them in. Irina is the youngest sibling, as am I. Irina is extremely tall, ditto me. But the things that make her who she is were nothing like me.

For a start, her whole existence was based on this belief that she wasn’t good enough, that she didn’t deserve respect, that she didn’t deserve to be treated like an equal. I always found it hard to get into that mindset, because my world-view is so completely opposite.

Where she thinks she’s not good enough for anybody, I think not everybody is good enough for me. I don’t mean that as in “Oh, I’m better than everybody” I don’t mean that at all. It’s more like, if someone treated me like crap, I would put them in their place, shout some horrible, yet grammatically correct, things at them, name a character after them, and be done with it. Yet if someone treated Irina like crap, she’d just let them.

And while we’re talking about how different people would react to such situations, I think I’ll just mention that Melinoe would totally try out execution by elephant on anyone who didn’t treat her with the utmost respect.

It’s strange though, Melinoe doesn’t take crap from anybody else, yet she isn’t very nice to herself. Not just in terms of self-harm, but also in the way she relates to other people. She deliberately keeps people at arms length, and ends up making herself miserable in the process. Because deep down, Melinoe shares Irina’s thing of “I am not good enough”.

Both of them are like that because of events that occurred in early childhood. Irina was basically shown that her father would have her die to save himself. And Melinoe…she had two people who fought so hard for her, yet ended up leaving her feeling like they had given up on her. In Melinoe’s eyes, Persephone chose Drew over her, and Haden only wanted her because he needed an heir to the throne.

And because of a lifetime of living with such beliefs, both Melinoe and Irina enter the book with not very good self esteem. The difference is: Melinoe thinks she has a right to be adored, and won’t be happy until she is, whereas Irina doesn’t think she deserves even the slightest bit of attention.

Personally, I’m closer to Melinoe’s way of thinking on this one. The difference is: if I wanted to be worshipped, I would work pretty damn hard to make myself someone that people could look up to. Whereas Melinoe thinks it’s her god-given right to be better than everybody else. Well, she is a Tsarevna, so I guess it goes with the territory.

But the main reason I struggled with AMEND was that I had to get into Melinoe’s head, I had to dig down to the very core of her being and find out what was there. And let me tell you this: Melinoe’s mind isn’t a very good place to be; it’s pretty dark inside. Whereas Irina’s just this faded kind of greyish colour, as though she’s been in the washing machine too many times, as though the same thing’s happened over and over again, and it’s worn her down into a blurry nothingness.

I’m not sure which is worse, Melinoe’s darkness, or Irina’s…blankness. Even in the worst parts of CONSEQUENCE, Phoenix and Persephone still had a light burning within them. I could always relate to that so much more, because all I’ve ever wanted to do was shine.

But lately, my inner Melinoe and my inner Irina have taken a trip to the surface. Because the fact is: when you don’t shine, your light begins to fade. Melinoe isn’t very fun to live with; I see why the Tsar kept her underground, away from the world.

But in a way, Irina’s worse. Melinoe would never give up, but Irina always gives up. Whilst my inner Melinoe was making me treat everyone like crap, avoid the world, and develop a passionate hatred for humanity*, my inner Irina was causing even more trouble, because of the lack of self-worth.

The one thing I can say to my credit is that I have always believed in myself, I have always thought I could do anything I wanted. And then all of a sudden, I no longer believed that. I thought I was worthless, that I wasn’t good enough for anybody. The lovely little rejection letter I got from Scholastic yesterday didn’t exactly do anything to counteract that belief.

When you’ve lost faith in humanity, and lost faith in yourself, what’s left? What is there to stop you thinking that everything is pointless? Yesterday I felt pretty low, to put it mildly.

I was the worst combination of Melinoe and Irina that could ever come about. Okay, given Melinoe’s nature, it wasn’t the worst combination. I wasn’t torturing anyone or anything. But it was the most hopeless one.

But the strange thing was that it was my need to shine that finally got me to stop crying over how crap I felt. Because no matter how black and grey I appear to feel, or truly do feel, there’s always going to be a little bit of light working its way to the surface.

That’s one of the ways I’m most like Phoenix: no matter what’s happening, I’ll always have a need to be noticed, to be seen, to shine. And as messed up a character as she is, she’s the one I am happiest to be like, because her brightness is what will stop her from ever giving up.

She may be annoying, and self-centred, and too smart, and she may have a habit of alienating herself from other people because she thinks they’re not good enough for her, but she has self worth. Why? Because she’s not happy to be invisible. And in order to want to be seen by somebody else, somebody has to believe in themself. It’s the self-belief that makes Phoenix one of my strongest characters. She always puts herself first, because she truly values herself.

* By the way, I no longer have a passionate hatred for humanity. It only lasted a couple of hours.

Compromises.

In books, characters have to make choices, sacrifices, decisions that will change everything. And in real life, people make decisions too. They make decisions that are so unimportant that they make them without thinking. Whether it’s “what coloured socks will I wear today” or “should I sign out of Facebook, or stay on here staring at the screen for another two hours?” the decisions generally aren’t life-changing.

Making a decision is one thing; but what about compromises? What about the decisions that aren’t so easy to make. What about the decisions which are more than what socks you wear?

In CONSEQUENCE, I had this ridiculous habit of making my male characters perfect. Okay, realistically speaking, Kai couldn’t have been anything less than perfect, or Phoenix wouldn’t have gotten together with him. But Drew could have had more flaws, because Persephone is less picky than Phoenix. But no, they were both unrealistically…good.

In AMEND, this issue was to a lesser extent. My main male characters were Blake, Haden, and Kai. Okay, so Kai got even more perfect with age, but the other two weren’t perfect.

Blake almost had Melinoe executed just to prove a point, and although Haden seems all nice and regretful in AMEND, how much can he have truly changed from who he was in CONSEQUENCE? But despite the fact that they actually have flaws, Haden and Blake are still nice guys. My evil little mind is saying “wait till TRANSCEND”, because that book changes everything, but I’m not going to mention that right now.

Anyway, when I finished writing TRANSCEND, I wrote a book called RELEASE. This book was about one of Phoenix’s daughters, and it was set sixteen years after the end of TRANSCEND. Most of the storylines were incredibly disturbing, but it’s actually one of my favourite out of my books.

Anyway, it was in RELEASE that I had my first extremely flawed male main character. And in PLAYING WITH FIRE, the last book I wrote, my male character was also completely flawed. But the problem is: I don’t particularly like writing characters like that.

Okay, part of me is like “Yeah! Tortured fictional guys! Awesome!” but another part of me is like “No! They need to be good, they need to be kind, they need to be there for the main character, rather than constantly keeping her at arm’s length because they’re so caught up in themselves”.

You see, my female characters basically go through hell for practically the entirety of any book I write, and falling in love with the oh-so-perfect male character is meant to be a little bit of light relief from the “Oh crap! The world’s ending!” storylines.

So when the male characters aren’t ridiculously perfect guys who any girl would fall in love with, this poses a problem. Why? Because the female characters have to think “Is this guy really someone who I want in my life? Is he really good for me? Is liking him a waste of time?”

And what if his flaws are things that go against everything the female character believes in? Then what does she do? And can she stop liking him the moment she finds out that he’s not as totally perfect as he originally appeared to be? The answer to that is almost certainly no.

You’d think, as the writer, I could manipulate my characters into doing what I want, right? But I can’t. They just do whatever they want to, and I’m left trying to keep up. It’s not always the best position to be in, that lack of control. I mean, I don’t always like where the story’s going, yet I don’t get a say.

I mean, Miss Intelligent could end up with Mr Lacking In The Brain Department, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it. They could get married and have Baby Of Average Intelligence (a combination of her intelligence and his lack of it). And I, the author, the creator, the maker of these characters, would have my metaphorical hands tied behind my metaphorical back as my characters threw away their lives for people who aren’t good enough.

But am I so superior to them? Do I not make the same mistakes? Do I not like people who aren’t perfect? Do I not waste time on people who just aren’t worth it? I always thought that because I was like Phoenix, perhaps I would find someone like Kai. What if that’s not true? What if in the real world, there is only Mr Lacking In The Brain Department? There seem to be a lot of him in Cumbria, at any rate.

Funnily enough, I don’t think there has ever been a Mr Lacking In The Brain Department in any of my books. But there are other flaws, and some of my characters have them. The question is: what compromises will my female characters make? Will they choose someone who isn’t what they thought they wanted? Will they choose someone whose fatal flaw is something they hate?

It’s actually not really an issue that's come up in my books before, but it crossed my mind last night. I just couldn’t help thinking about what happens when the female character doesn’t have good judgement, and when the male character isn’t perfect. Do they end up together? How does that turn out? Is there such thing as a happily ever after in a situation like this? And what if these characters actually belong together?

Part of me thinks “No! They couldn’t possibly belong together! Not when he’s not good enough for her!” But what I seem to forget is that my female characters aren’t perfect either. They have flaws of their own. Yet people always choose them… Why should the male characters be different? Why do they deserve less love? Why don’t they deserve a happy ending?

Okay, in an ideal world, Miss Intelligent would end up with Mr Intelligent Compassionate Kind Perfect Guy, and Mr Lacking In The Brain Department would end up with Miss Not So Intelligent Either. Though if the latter got together, there wouldn’t be much hope for the human race (albeit a fictional one).

But what about in a fictional equivalent of the real world, rather than an ideal one? What happens to Miss Intelligent when Mr Intelligent Compassionate Kind Perfect Guy either doesn’t exist, or isn’t in her life? Does she settle for Mr Lacking In The Brain Department? Or Mr Extremely Flawed? Or does she become a hermit who lives at the top of Mount Everest?

Does Miss Intelligent actually accept the compromises that she may have to make, or does she think she’s above them? Does she truly believe that she can spend her life waiting around for Mr Perfect? It seems that Miss Intelligent isn’t quite as intelligent as her name implies, if she really thinks she can reside in the real world without living by its rules.