Getting Ahead Of Myself

For years, I played around with a story about Fairies and Goblins. One day, I opened my laptop, launched my writing program, and created an outline. Eventually, I had created an entire fantasy world. I was very excited to share it with the world. 

In 2014, I found a group of friends who helped read and edit what they could. We weren’t experts by any means, but I had a story I wanted to tell and a book I wanted to write. Shortly after, I published Soulmated.

One of my biggest mistakes was just writing it and not reading it afterward. I was excited. Something I had wanted to write had finally come to life. 

After picking it up a few years later, I realized the book was filled not only with grammatical errors but also continuity errors. I also found that I overexplained the feelings the characters had, as well as having too many characters to keep up with. 

I then decided to completely remove it from Kindle and thought that maybe one day I would sit down and possibly rewrite it. I thought the story not only needed to be told, but I felt like it was a bit unique in some ways. 

You had normal aspects you would see in everyday romance stories, but also love triangles that in some way pushed boundaries. 

Writing “Soulmated” was a challenge in some ways. I thought I knew where I wanted the story to go and what message I wanted to get across. However, I fell in love with one of the characters. The character was just supposed to serve as a minor conflict at the beginning of the story and then remain a background character after. 

The more I added and wrote about the character Cedric, the more I fell for him. He was not only handsome, but also so caring of Violet, my main character. I remembered all the books I had read. I was more than exhausted of the character who seems to be the perfect match, fail, and receive a sad ending. Cedric deserved better. In fact, sometimes I wonder if I should have created a separate Soulmate for him. But Violet was the main character, and I wanted the main character to end up with the most likable person in the story. Each character had a character profile, and the more I worked and spent time with Cedric, the more it started to feel like Cedric was no longer just a supporting character, but now he was also causing me to make major decisions that changed the direction of the novel. Cedric had a life and a soul through my words. 

When I thought of someone picking up “Soulmated” to read, I wanted them to believe in love again. I thought the more symbolism and characters, the more pages and story I had. This meant I could have a countless number of twists and turns without running out of story lines. Soulmated was supposed to be more than just a book. It was going to be a series. 

I made the biggest mistake by trying to force story lines and plots that had holes. There was so much going on in my story that I lost track of what the story was really about. I wanted to write as much down as possible and eventually spiraled. 

After creating different races, people, and places in Soulmated, I wanted every character and conversation to have a purpose. Every thought, step, and action had a reason behind it. All the twists and turns had me so confused; some of the characters I gave up on. I remember, I even just had some of the characters disappear with not much more information, other than they disappeared. I figured, if I wrote another book, maybe I could continue that plot line. 

After several people had found out I published a book, and it wasn’t a book I was proud of anymore, I decided to take it off of Kindle. I had even made a grammatical error on the back of the cover for Soulmated. That was something that should have never happened. 

About a year ago, I had my book sitting on my desk at work. Unbeknownst to me, a coworker picked it up. She brought it to her office, and she and another co-worker sat, read it, and eventually analyzed it. They had all the characters in a spiderweb-type chart. It impressed me. That was when I first really thought about rewriting Soulmated. 

It was embarrassing enough that my co-workers knew I wrote a book with explicit sex scenes, but they also saw all my grammatical errors and definitely noticed the continuity issues. They still thought it was pretty cool that I wrote a book, though. 

I am no scholar. The truth is that I love to read, I love to write, but school wasn’t always easy for me. English was one of the hardest subjects for me. It wasn’t until I was a junior in high school that we found out I had a learning disability. Because of that, I never thought writing a novel was something I would be able to do. 

Going back and fixing Soulmated seemed impossible. Which is why I went ahead and decided to put the thought of something I was once so proud of, in the back of my head. 

One day, very recently, actually, I was using ChatGPT to help me word something. I somehow ended up with a free trial and decided to take advantage of it. I eventually realized I could use it to help me catch errors in my writing. 

First, I started to use it on stories I was writing. I noticed it kept trying to completely rewrite what I was saying. I then made sure to be a bit more precise with my prompts. I didn’t want to use AI to completely change my story. I wanted all my “Crystal-isms” to come out. I made sure to ask that it only catch continuity errors, grammar errors, and most of all, make sure I am not repeating myself. Quickly, I found out that I would say the same thing several times in the same paragraph. 

It had never completely occurred to me to use OpenAI to rebuild Soulmated. Then one day, I sent “Max” (That’s my AI’s name)  the full Soulmated story and asked what book cover he would use for it. The image brought tears to my eyes. My book now looked like something that anyone would pick up. I had loved the original artwork and always will, but this cover showed three of my main characters. They looked almost lifelike.

This is how I knew I was ready to reinvent a story I had worked so hard on. I already knew I had too many characters. This is where I am in my story. I have been working almost daily to go in and perform a bit of surgery on Soulmated. I have been able to generate character profiles, get images of my characters, and have something to help me edit, without losing my voice. 

The thing that surprised me the most wasn’t that AI caught my grammar mistakes. It was also asking me questions I hadn’t thought of. Why does this scene exist? Does this conversation actually matter? Can you describe this better? Can you describe this less? It also helped having what was almost like a second pair of eyes, which could catch these things within seconds. This helped me look at the book and think like an editor instead of simply the author, knowing the scene ahead of time. 

The new Soulmated will take place in a more simplified world. I will be removing characters and tightening plotlines. I plan to give Cedric more love in the story and have him play a larger role than he already does. I will also be rewriting the “Soulmate” system to allow for better continuity. 

When I first wrote Soulmated, I believed every page needed to be a lesson and every chapter had to be a journey. I was more worried about a word count than I was about using plots that would stick. It still isn’t finished, but I finally feel like I am moving toward that point, and I will finally be able to tell a story I feel deserves to be told.