Have you ever had to kill a character?  And I’m not talking about killing the character within the bounds of your manuscript – you know, causing him or her to be killed in an automobile accident, or by a shooting, or heart attack.  I’m talking about creating a character and then taking away his entire existence.

Removing him from the manuscript, removing him from being a character at all.  Killing a character at least gives him a place – removing him takes him from being something to being nothing.

A friend of mine recently read through one of my works and suggested merging two of the characters into one character.  At first I was shocked – she wanted to me to get rid of one of my characters?  In a way, it was like getting rid of two of my characters.  And I’m not talking minor characters here.  Well… okay, they’re kind of minor, but at least one of them appears in every chapter.  And she wanted me to just merge them into one?

Once the initial shock of the idea wore off, though, I realized that I kind of liked it.  I kind of liked the idea.  I even jotted it down in my notes for something to consider.

A few days later, I had the most generous, sweet literary agent ever provide me with some notes on my manuscript (and the politest rejection of representation I’m likely to ever receive – which, you know, stung, but I’ll take the gift of all of her super helpful notes), and I realized she was essentially suggesting the same thing – that I could merge these two characters.  (I don’t know that she actually suggested merging, but she suggested that I didn’t need them in the way they existed in that draft.)

And so, for about a week now, I have been dutifully working on a major revision of my novel.  A major revision.

Guys, I’ve never done a major revision before.  I’ve never merged two characters into one.  So far it’s been a bit easier than I was originally imagining, but every time I do a find + replace to merge the character into one (I took one character’s first name and combined it with the other character’s last name) I do feel a little sad.  I want to cling to the novel as it was, the novel I was so proud of.

I’ve also been compiling new songs into the playlist for this novel, adding the new in with the old.  The entire mood of the playlist is changing, just like the tone of the novel is changing.  It’s not the novel I wrote as a break from studying for the Bar Exam anymore.

But, I do believe it’s going to be a better novel.  It is a different novel, but it’s a better novel.  And, on the bright side – it’s the first time I’ve been truly excited about this novel since I finished it back in 2014.  So – guess I’ll keep on killing of that character.  Or, well, parts of both characters…