The Experience Buddy [Completed]

Q&A [Spoilers]

Q. Why did the story end up being so mild compared to the warning in the initial Author's Notes?

Initially, I actually planned for the male lead to be really, really rebellious, and somewhat of a gangster. Like he was kind of involved in shady stuff outside of school, he does drugs and all, but the more I wrote, the more he became my ideal type of guy instead. Ha. Ha. Ha. So initially the short description of the story said "hottest and baddest Sophomore" but now it's just "hottest Sophomore". Ha!

Q. Why do some characters only appear in such brief moments? I wanted to get to know them more!

Jack for example, Emily's co-worker in the cafe, was supposed to have more scenes but doesn't affect the overall plot so I guess we'll see more of him in Deleted Scenes then.
As for the basketballers, that group was also supposed to get more appearance time. I have defined more personality traits for Chuck and Bryan so like how the story turned out, they do get more appearance time than Gabriel and Dylan, as planned.

Q. Why can't Davin be part of the group with Natalie and the rest when they are all from the same school?

For a couple of reasons. One, I wanted Emily to have different groups of friends - high school, same batch in college, colleagues, others, etc. Second, Emily only got to know the rest because of Natalie and that was also because they happened to be roommates. If Emily was sharing a room with another girl, she might be hanging out with a different group and might have never crossed paths with any one of them, including the male lead. Besides, Davin is our sassy social butterfly! He mingles with just about everyone!

Q. Why does it seem that some events feel lacking, they come and go too quickly, like there needs to be more elaboration?

I have to admit that I actually took out a lot of details and interactions between some characters and even with the main characters. As this story is told from Emily's perspective, there are some interactions and conversations between other characters without her being present that she couldn't have known. Also, I wanted the story to focus more on the male and female lead characters' interactions, their relationship, their growth, basically more on them and with each other. So there are trigger events that lead to certain outcomes between them, and those circumstances surrounding their character development and relationship are where the focus of the story is.

Q. Why does the timeline of the story seem off?

For the events to go the way I wanted, the plot may not realistically fit the calendar. However, for better grasp of the timeline, a quick overview is as follows.

It's fairly straightforward until perhaps towards the back where there's a bit of complication because of skips, rewinds and overlaps.