Another blog post about four chapters at the same time. What can I say? They flowed so nicely. I was starting chapter seventeen and suddenly I was finishing chapter twenty. I wrote 20K in four days. I was on fire, the story was on fire, the characters were dying to reach the end of their story.

They still aren’t done, because there’s many short one shots to write about them. They will take place before they met, as well as after. The ones taking place before this story will probably be posted before it is released, but the ones taking place after … well, can’t have any spoilers, now, can we?

I love the last four chapters. They came so easily and everything was wrapped up with a nice little bow. Not literally, but you know, it went smoothly. It’s a bit sad to leave these two, but they’ve had their story now. Besides, it’s not like I won’t visit them later, in one shots. Because you can bet there’ll be lots of one shots about these two! They have so much more to tell.

These chapters were extremely easy to write. They flowed so nicely, which is why I’ve written 4 chapters before doing another blog post about them. The first two chapters were from Jørgen’s POV, and they headed off in a direction that was not planned at all, but that actually worked great with the story and him as a character. It shows how deep down in that black hole he is, and what the consequences is for doing something that he hadn’t really meant to do.

Jørgen’s closest family is introduced, and Jørgen grows close with someone else. They have a lot of things in common, and Jørgen finally manages to open up a bit more than he has so far in the story.

The last two chapters are from Geir’s POV. He got some bad news again, and it once again drives a wedge between him and his dad. His chapters went basically as planned, and they came just as easily as Jørgen’s chapters did.

I think I wrote these four chapters in the time-span of about a week or so. With chapter sixteen finished, there’s only four more chapters left to write, before the novel will wrap up.

These two chapters came easily. Some surprises happened, with scenes not planned, such a very nice father-son moment in the beginning. It might just be one of my favourite scenes in the story so far, silly because it happened to unexpectedly, but fit so perfectly. One plan fell through, but it works out for the better, lest too many characters be introduced at once, which is not a good thing.

There is very little of Jørgen in these two chapters, so they’re not as riddled with his deep-rooted and heavy issues. These two chapters are Geir’s through and through and more hopeful in tone as to his life. He’s still only seventeen though, and though he doesn’t hate his new life as much as he could’ve, he’s still young and he can fly off the handle in a second, which was demonstrated once with his Dad here. Another father-son scene I’m quite fond off.

One of my favourite characters is introduced here. He’s also one of my most feminine and out there characters ever. He speaks his mind, is not afraid to show who he is, which I guess is what I like about him.

These chapters were easy. I think I only wrote the 10K in 4-5 days. Now it’s on to Jørgen’s next part, which will be filed with a lot more angst than these two, considering Jørgen is now starting to finally deal with his issues.

This is where it starts go downhill. Geir got some news he did not consider good in the last chapter, and in this he gets quite a knockdown. I can’t say anything else without spoiling, but these two chapters have been very sad to write. They’ve also been hard to write, because not only were there one really sad thing happening, but there were two.

These two chapters were supposed to wrap up the first arch of the novel, but the more I wrote, the more the word count rose, the more worried I got. This is going to be too long, I kept thinking, I’m not going to be able to wrap it up. And yes, the last chapter is quite long, but there is a scene in there I’m not happy with and it might be scratched. The chapter will still be longer than any of the others, but at least it’s all wrapped up and ready to be taken into the second arc.

It was essential to end the arc in chapter ten, because the locations change drastically in the next chapter. There weren’t enough story to do two additional chapter, and I also needed for the last chapter in this arc to be from Jørgen’s POV. Geir’s the one who’s location changes from next chapter on, so he needed to start off the next arc.

The first arch of the story is about realising your feelings, about falling slowly in love with someone, yet also knowing that your issues are keeping you back. The second arc will dig deeper into Jørgen’s psyche and how his family fit into it all, while Geir will have to come to terms with his new life. He has to grow up, become more confident in himself and make new friends.

The second arc was planned on not being as long as the first, considering the first one took up about half the planned word count. Some things changed in the last chapter though, something I had not counted on. There might not be a third arch, because the second arch might just cover it all anyway.

The new changes doesn’t change the story particularly, there’s just more happening than what was originally planned. The ending result will be the same though—and it’ll be a good one.

I started writing More Than Anything back in March. I wrote part of the first chapter before the Big Writer’s Block happened and I started working and being sociable. In shorter words; before I went AWOL all summer. I wrote half the first chapter at that time, and this was when the story was supposed to be told from only Jørgen’s POV. I wrote a bit more generally about the series here. Mentioned in that post was the fact that these characters were American for a couple of years. Are you curious about their English names? I shall tell you shortly.

After the four+ months I was AWOL, the characters started coming back to me. They revealed the fact that this couldn’t be told from only Jørgen’s POV, because Geir had a lot of story to tell as well. This is when I decided to switch POV every 10K. I divided the 10Ks into two chapter of 5K, to break it up. This is still the same, but now every 10K section is also a part. Jørgen’s first two chapters are part one, Geir’s next two chapters are part two, etc.

The story unfolded before me. I’ve known these character for so many years, and I know their stories. Still, some things have changed in this new version and I am happy about it. It makes the story better and more realistic, in my opinion. For instance, in the original almost all secondary characters were either gay or bisexual, as well. I think I only had one straight couple, and the girlfriend went lesbian after a while, while the boyfriend hooked up with another girl. Still, only one straight couple. Where’s the realism in that?

The characters changed and evolved in my head. They’re living in a small town, so now most secondary character are actually straight.  It wasn’t hard to change this, it happened naturally. They haven’t come into play much yet at this point in the story, because Jørgen is a recluse and Geir doesn’t have any friends, but they’ll play a bigger part once the second arc starts.

Jørgen suffered from panic attacks in the original version, but he normally had no issues being out and about or having sex. Now, however, not only does he have panic attacks, he’s also suffering from PTSD after some serious traumatic events that happened during his childhood (all the events are brought over from the original, to a realistic point). He has issues with touching, with crowds, with dark, enclosed rooms. He has issues with sexual intimacy and a difficult time dealing with his family. He has a hard life, and it’s not sugar-coated anymore like it used to be. Jørgen is damaged, and it’s not going to be magically repaired.

Geir, on the other hand, has epilepsy. He’s always had it. In the original he hid it from Jørgen, whilst in the new version an epileptic seizure is what causes them to meet in the first place. (Originally Jørgen saved Geir from bullies. Cliche and not very likely, at least not in a small town based on my hometown, so it had to go). Geir is a loner, he’s frozen out at school for being a “freak”, because his classmates doesn’t understand his condition. He’s bullied every day, but simply by name-calling and nothing that can be evidenced. This is hurting him, and he’s got issues because of it too, issues that won’t magically go away because he found love. As he has epilepsy, he’s also on medication, and medications have side-effects that Geir has to deal with.

Chapters 1-8 make up most of the first arc. This arc moves extremely slowly, as Jørgen and Geir get to know each other. The writing has mostly gone smoothly, because the scenes are laid out there and all I have to do it write them down. And all they have to do is contribute to the dialogue. They don’t jump right into bed, and they won’t, because their issues are so much greater than that and they need to work them out before their relationship can even think about progress.

The first arc is, for me, about them discovering that they can have happiness and they can have love and a relationship. They don’t quite know how to go about it, especially not with all the issues in the way. But they’re young and they’re trying their best. They’re taking it slow. As they should. 

And I do believe I promised to tell you their English names. Mind, their Norwegian names did come first, as they’re two characters from a very old, paranormal story I wrote in Norwegian. As an end-note to this rather lengthy post; Jørgen’s English name was Jayden and Geir was Gavin. I do like these names, but they live in Norway. In Norway we do not use English names, we have proper, good old Norwegian names. But that’s another blog post entirely.