"Romeos," Will, and the power of rewriting
I Knew Him wasn't always about Hamlet...
Hello everyone! As I hinted before in a previous post, Will’s fate had always been a bit of a regret of mine. In I Knew Him, I needed Will’s character “gone” in order for Julian to grow, which resulted in a falling-out between the two. But in the very first draft of Julian’s story, I’d killed Will off completely!
Today, I wanted to tell you a little more about “Romeos.”
*Warning for mentions of gun violence and school shootings*
“Romeos” was the name of my very first draft of what would become I Knew Him. Before writing Julian’s story, I had mostly written fantasy or urban fantasy stories. When I decided to write what would become I Knew Him, I wanted to try something new. I wanted to write a story set in our “real world.” I thought the best way to do that, since I’d never done it before, was to take a familiar story and do a retelling of some kind. It just so happened that I was reading Romeo and Juliet in school, so I thought that was the perfect story to use as the base. But I needed some way to make it different, to switch things up, so it wasn’t just a play-by-play of the original. That was when I decided to make the main tension preventing the two protagonists from being together would be homophobia instead of family rivalry.
The story quickly took shape, with Julian and Sky both taking the parts of Romeo and Juliet, and Will taking the role of Mercutio. He was a fun, wisecracking sidekick much like Mercutio in the play, but didn’t have much depth. Towards the middle point of the book, after Julian and Sky get together, I realized I needed something to happen. Taking a page from Romeo and Juliet, it became clear the turning point had to be a version of the duel between Mercutio and Tybalt.
It was here in the draft I invented an older brother for Sky and Ruth. Their brother had been away at university for most of the story and came home for a visit. After catching Sky and Julian together in a moment of carelessness, the elder brother shows up to their school with a gun. Will is one of the casualties, taking a bullet for Julian. In Will’s final moments, he reveals his feelings for Julian.
The rest of the story was quite sombre, with Julian mourning Will—and Sky’s parents deciding to move away after the incident. In the final scene of the draft, Sky and Julian meet one last time and promise to keep in touch.
So… overall a very dramatic turn of events. And while the Romeo and Juliet story worked well for Shakespeare, I wasn’t totally satisfied with the outcome of mine. As I struggled to find a good title for my work, a friend of mine suggested I Knew Him—a line from Hamlet instead of Romeo and Juliet. I really liked the sound of the title, and also liked how Hamlet was focused on the hero’s internal struggle and tensions within his family. It felt like a good jumping-off point to rework the story. Instead of a direct retelling, I took inspiration from the themes, and found a story with a much kinder ending for everyone.
With Will no longer being dead, I still felt I needed something to happen that would cause Julian to grow. Unfortunately, Will’s friendship with Julian felt like the most natural casualty. I “broke them up” the only way I knew how—with a big argument that ended with Will calling Julian and coward.
Looking back on it now as a more experienced writer, I feel there might’ve been a more elegant approach, but the raw emotion they both express is maybe a bit more true to the messy lives of queer teenagers.
Now that I’ve made Will’s bed, I have to lie in it. But it doesn’t have to be the end for him. It never felt like the end for him. Now I have the chance to make him go on a journey of change, and find new life after the end of that friendship. It’s been interesting to write about Julian through another lens, and to write about Will’s complicated feelings about him. There’s a deep love between them, but a deep hurt on both sides as well. I really hope I can do that justice, and that Will can finally and truly “live” this time.