This week, I had an unusual creative spark that completely changed my perspective on the project. I was working on my science fiction adventure story idea, and had been having troubles with the organization of all of my character ideas. It finally struck me that if I used my two leads to acts as main characters, and added a small "A team" of others around them, then I could put everyone else on a sort of "B team". By re structuring it this way, I have actually discovered tons of ways for everyone to interact in a way that keeps the spotlight where it should be, and makes sure each character is doing their job and their perspective is being utilized to its fullest.
My leads, of course, are two space pirates named Claire and Harris. One of my first ideas was to make Claire more relateable, and really focus on making her a bit of an audience surrogate. I decided to tone down her tough side, and that she would be a better point of view character if her toughened moments were things she has to slowly develop and work towards. Also, this helps separate her personality as being more distinct from Harris. Claire's main love interest, he is to serve as a foil to certain aspects of her personality. He has a simple world view, and doesn't get bogged down in details. His solutions to problems are very simple, albeit inefficient, whereas Claire is the opposite. She is a very detail oriented problem solver, and prefers to be as creative as possible. Her more down to earth, realistic world view helps keep his unusual idealistic ideas from going too far. I think they will have more chemistry this way.
The other main revelation I had was to actually come up with a rival for Harris, who leads all of my other side characters together. That way, they aren't directly connected, but I can still introduce everyone at once. Just from a plot perspective, this is the mechanic I've been looking for all this time. When I finally get the overall plot finished, I'll be able to dive straight into writing.
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