Rewriting

The process of developing characters sometimes forces you to rethink plans.

A book that I've talked a lot about in the past is my Dream Gate Cycles novel.  One of the main elements of it is that it features a lot of characters that reappear in later stories.  It's main villain is the Legionnaire, who has at least three other planned stories including him as a character.  It features Persephone, who is a character in Endymion's story and a very important one.  Certain entities that appear in Dream Gate Cycles are a part of my Gaea setting.  And the Elder Gods are, of course, a part of every setting for every story I write, even if they don't appear by name (or at all).
And there's a character named Reverend Dr. Eliot White who also appears.  Dr. White would later go on to be a central character in the second part of Endymion's trilogy, but the way that Dr. White developed as a character has changed so much as I developed that story that he no longer feels appropriate in his role in Dream Gate Cycles.  In DGC, Dr. White is a minor character, not directly an antagonist, but someone who proves a problem for the main character in that his association with the main character creates political problems for him.  There were hints of a tragedy to his past, but he was, overall, just another disgusting political figure in a story full of disgusting political figures.
Meanwhile, Dr. White in Endymion's story was meant to be a secondary antagonist.  But as I've been developing that story, Dr. White has evolved into a position that is way more complex.  The hints of tragedy get fully fleshed out and his position has evolved from a straight up bad guy to a sort of . . . I guess you could say a midway point between the hero and the villain.  Dr. White represents the well-intentioned path that Endymion could potentially take that would end with him being every bit as bad as the villain, which is a set-up for the completion of the trilogy's thematic arc in book three.  He's not a good-guy per say, but he no longer fits the villain category either.  He is, in fact, a blurring of the lines; the character who demonstrates how unclear the line between hero and villain is.
And that really is no longer appropriate for the role he serves in Dream Gate Cycles.

DGC already needs rewriting.  Although the actual narrative of that novel is disjointed by design, it's thematic cohesion cannot be disjointed in the same way for it to work, and so the story needs to be reworked in some areas.  Knowing that Dr. White has already evolved in a different story to be very different from his initial appearance, do I keep him in the story, or create a new character?  It's a question I need to think about and, ultimately, answer.

And I need to start working on these stories again . . .