I had something strange happen recently. Strange as in I've never had anything like this happen to me before. I had this idea for a series, but I'd been stalled working on it because the hero and heroine from the first book were just, well, blah. They bored me and I spent no time with them.
Then--without warning and while I was supposed to be working on another story--I hear a woman tell me her name. After I worked it out that it was her first name and not her surname (It could go either way), I tried to figure out which series she belonged to and received a no to everything. But when I asked if she was from a new book, I got another no.
Eventually, I worked out that she wasn't an addition to a series, she was taking over as the heroine in book 1 of the stalled story, the one I wasn't supposed to be working on.
And boom, just like that, the story wasn't boring any longer. She had personality. She took that story over and made it interesting. It became even more glaringly apparent that her hero was now a problem. He was still a boring cipher. I was emailing a couple of my writing buddies when an epiphany struck, one that affected all three heroes in the series to some degree or another.
It also made the entire series more interesting to me and inspired me to put some time in on it. It still needs a lot more work--I have no clue what the internal conflicts are for any of the characters and only a vague sense of the external conflict for some of them as well--but for the first time since this idea came to me, it's got some spine to it, something more than characters milling around helplessly, no story in sight.
But this was the first time I've had a heroine come in and takeover for another heroine. Major weird.
