It's funny... it was 2 years ago this weekend I finished posting all the chapters of this story on this blog. And I'm still finding things to tweak about it. I keep running into this situation where I'm ruminating about a certain aspect of the story, wondering if it'll make sense to the reader or if there's issues with continunity. I wind up going back into it and spending weeks on fixing/editing things.
The latest of this ventures involves the ill-fated night where Alejandro was supposed to go out on a date with Talia. But instead an ex-girlfriend shows up at his place and Talia storms off, thinking the worst of the situation.
It's a pretty straight forward situation to explain. The typical rom-com has that misunderstanding plot twist except this one not only stopped a relationship between these characters starting in in the first place, but it led to a grudge that lasted a looong time.
For whatever reason, I just felt the need to dive deeper into it. This girlfriend randomly disappears after this whole exchange and I guess I just didn't want anyone to expect her to reappear later in the story to mess with things. Between all the childhood and relationship trauma and the different storylines with the relationship characters, there's more than enough going on.
I also wanted to make sure the continuity with Alejandro's character is nailed down.
He's the nephew of these two big bosses of the local drug enterprise. He's a bartender of their favorite hangout to do business. Off the record, he's not the most reliable person. He's in his early 20's and doesn't take on too much responsibility. Then he gets promoted to assistant manager and business starts to get bad and he's forced to take things more seriously. This is when he insists his and his girlfriend take a break for a little bit until things settle down.
Then he meets Talia and he more or less forgets Chica even existed.
As for Chica, I started to wonder what kind of girl she is. She probably has a lot of casual flings like Alejando used to do. She's definitely someone who prefers having fun to being serious. I imagine that he gave her the line about cooling things down until Calypso gets re-established, her seeing that the club is open and takes that opportunity to stop by his place to pick up where they left off.
As for what happens to her after... I originally had a line about a restraining order. It seemed a little weak and not something that made sense in this fictional island. That's more of a thing that would happen in America. The brothers have enough influence to make people "disappear" like they did with Vanessa's boyfriend Richie, but that's a bit harsh for just a clingy ex-girlfriend. I thought about this book I read that I wasn't a fan of- "Bennington Girls are Easy." These girls all went to this private high school but after graduating, the main characters didn't get serious about taking jobs. They spend their adult lives coasting and mooching off their rich boyfriends... or sugar daddies because the one girl is with a man old enough to be her father. At least that's how I interpreted it. I could easily see Chica being one of these types of girls and I came up with a good line to suggest that future for her.
For chapter 3, there's a lot of exposition but a few major plot things happen:
* we establish Talia and Alejandro's uneasy relationship
* the girls make plans for karaoke and while Vanessa walks Emilia home to talk more, Talia gets a late night call for a "business" meeting
* I give backstory on Calypso, the sirens and the kind of business they do when they're not on stage
* Talia has performance issues with Carlos and her friends see her fall to pieces
Then in the next chapter, Emilia gets more information from Alejandro about that night. And he pretty much explains that the whole thing is a misunderstanding.
I also started to run into issues where I was asking myself the best way for Emilia to respond to all this. She's very naive about of a lot of things when it comes to relationships. In her conversation with Vanessa, I had a moment where I had her thinking "I got Talia to let Alejandro do a routine with us. I have a good chance of making peace between them." In a way, this does come to fruition, just not in the way she expected. But while she's very optimistic about things, I don't think she's that self-assured about her opinions quite yet.
Ultimately I reached a point reworking things in Chapter 3 where I decided it might work bettter if I just removed the conversation between Vanessa and Emilia. But alluding to bits of it in her talk with Alejandro in chapter 4. Before the Vanessa-Emilia conversation, the last we see of Talia is talking a business call. It hit me that it'd be a much smoother transition to go from her taking to call to explaining what that might entail.
I feel like I keep adding more and more things for the sake of clarity in this story. Clarity that only a handful of people might care about. But I also need to start keeping in mind how many of these details are essential and considering which serve the story and which do not.
