Straight Shot ➳ Oliver Queen

34. The Story Goes On

This is not another chapter, but rather the rest of the book....

As a writer, I am anything but conventional and rather than leaving this story on a total cliffhanger, I decided I am going to tell you some of the things I had planned to happen in this story. If you don't want to risk reading this in case I get the unlikely urge to keep writing this story, then stop reading and mosey on over to my other Arrow fanfic, A Shot in the Dark

Straight Shot has been quite the little project for me! I started writing this story when I was like 16 years old YEARS ago and Karter is a character that's always been very dear to me– until I realized that I hate the way I wrote her and I feel like I didn't represent her the way I had originally imagined her. 

I reconsidered just rewriting this whole story because I'll admit, it's pretty discouraging to see this story with lots of reads and votes, and then to post a new story and see the reads barely hit double digits. But I ultimately decided to leave this story as is. 

I still don't know if I'll ever keep writing on this one. Honestly, I don't like the way it's written and if I ever kept writing, I think the story would need an entire overhaul. 

Where we left off, Karter had just confessed to Oliver that she knows he is the Starling City Vigilante. She is in full support of him and becomes eager to continue writing about him in a positive light, but Oliver becomes more adamant that she should give up writing about him. 

As many of you would have guessed, Karter becomes part of the Vigilante team and later on, a vigilante herself. She even spends her fair share of time on Lian Yu where she learns many of Oliver's secrets from the island, including that he wasn't there the whole 5 years. 

(Don't worry. The bromance between Karter and Dig is absolutely going to be replicated in the new Arrow fic, because let's be real, that was one of the best parts of Straight Shot!)

Josh Nolan! I love this guy, I'm not gonna lie to you. There were a lot of guesses on whether he was secretly a bad guy or not... I'm going to leave this one a secret because honestly, I had plans for the story to go either way. I will expose that he does end up dying in a fire later on and acts as a motivator for Karter because even though she's in love with Oliver, she still had a lot of love for Josh. 

Early in the story, I mention Karter having a sister named Harleen. This raised some suspicions because of another iconic DC name, Harleen Quinzel... AKA Harley Quinn. Some of you were quick to remember Karter's last name is Mitchell so this simply COULDN'T be Harley... other than the thing no one had learned yet is that Harley is Karter's half-sister– their mother's daughter from a previous marriage when she was married to a man named Nick Quinzel. 

Many of you were also wondering where Karter's father was in all of this since she mentioned him and how he was a close friend of the family. He appears in the story later on, but with an unfortunate catch... he's on The List. This happens right after Karter finds out he's the Hood and gets inducted into the little club. There is a huge squabble between Karter and Oliver and this is the first time what Oliver is doing gives Karter pause. 

Oliver speaks to her father as the vigilante, but rather than threatening him into confessing his crimes to the police, he reasons with him about what his daughter would want him to do and who he wanted to be to her. Oliver later tells Karter that he wanted to give her father a chance to prove to her that he would do what was right. He does confess to his crimes and he is taken to Iron Heights.

When the Arrow Team finds out about the Undertaking, Karter visits her father in prison and asks if he had any involvement in the plan. While he was not directly involved, he did know about the plan and Karter becomes angry that he never did anything about it. Stopping the Undertaking becomes her personal mission after this because she feels like she must right her father's wrongs. This is also when she starts becoming a vigilante herself.

I originally had a darker twist set for Tommy's character. He was still going to die in the Undertaking and be a powerful motivator for the characters, but... he was going to have an unexpected return. 

I had plans to introduce a villain called the Arsonist later on in the story. There were two characters I was considering to become this villain: Josh... or Tommy.

I don't know if anyone caught onto this, but there were a lot of mentions of fire whenever Karter was around or mentioning Tommy, specifically their tumultuous relationship. In an earlier draft, there was actually a scene after Karter rejects Tommy's proposal that he gets drunk and sets a house on fire. Ultimately though, I decided I didn't want that to be how Tommy's character was remembered after he died.

Anyone that read very early drafts of this story might remember the unusual and random inclusion of characters from the show Chuck, which is about a dorky guy that ends up getting involved with the CIA. Karter was an employee at the Buy More, the electronics store in Chuck, and was friends with several of the characters. Originally, there was going to be more involvement later on in the story, but I did away with this storyline aside from some nods to the show.

As far as Karliver/Karver (whichever Karter and Oliver ship name you voted for)... I'm afraid you didn't miss much. Looking back at the plans I had for the development of their relationship, it's a little plain. They fell in love and stayed in love. Really, all you're missing is a lot of cliche kisses. 

A spoiler for both Straight Shot and A Shot in the Dark: I hate Laurel. Doesn't matter what season it is. I hate her. This shows in my writing.

This story was never planned out that well. I kind of just made it up as I went and a lot of the plot came from happy coincidences. This time around with A Shot in the Dark, I've actually sat down and written out plans for it. 

I started over with a new OC and a new storyline because I didn't want to mess with Karter's backstory and her relationship with Oliver (and Tommy), but I wanted a story that didn't start with them so obviously in love from the beginning. I wanted to write a love story that grows as the story goes on. 

These are the big headlines I can think of to share about Straight Shot. Thank you all for caring so much about Karter and her story. The support and comments and messages were always the best part of writing Straight Shot!

I hope you can all grow to love Zoey, the protagonist in a Shot in the Dark, as much as I already do just 7 ot 8 chapters into writing the story!

Love you all, 

-E