How to Write The Maze Runner Fanfiction ✓

38 | cleaning up my own mistakes

like i've said before, i started writing Different in about june or july of 2014. that means i had 4 or 5 chapters written before the movie came out (though i actually published them in early october i think) and before the fandom got as large as it is now.

that being said, many of the so-called "cliches" in that book's early chapters were not considered cliches when i wrote them. and one of my biggest fears is that new readers won't understand that and will think my book is horrible because of it. (ah yes. anxiety at its finest.)

i have grown immensely since i began that story. not just as a writer, but as a person, too, meaning my opinions have changed drastically. i wish i had not villainized gally as much as i did. that's why today - the day i'm typing this, at least - at 12:30 a.m, i completely rewrote the scene where he and dylan met. i literally selected it all and backspaced without looking back.

and yeah, that means the hermione quote that had 390 comments on it is now gone and lost forever. rip.

but it also made the encounter a lot less cringeworthy. and this is what i meant in the introduction. i am a real person. i have written things in the past that i do not agree with now. sometimes my old chapters contradict what i say in this book. but i am not my characters; some perceptions they have of characters are not my own. that's why dylan does not get along very well with gally or winston. i love them both, but i know that they, as characters, only clash.

i kind of lost track there for a second. what i'm really getting at here is it's okay to acknowledge that you have done things you regret in your writing and that it's okay to fix it. do not worry about how many comments are on a particular paragraph; if you want to change it or delete it altogether, do it. change things so you are happy.

i took something i hated and could hardly read and morphed it into a better composition that included foreshadowing and intense emotions other than blinded rage. and even if i hated making gally a bad guy, i know he hates dylan because of the Changing, so i had to do it.

i really am off the rail but it's now 1 a.m and i'm tired as all heck. forgive me if this made zero sense.

peace