FAQ
Q. How do you plan to include all these
characters in the story? Surely some must be more principal than others, as in
the show "ER." It would be impossible to include 40 some odd
characters as main characters.
Yeah, obviously, there’s
no way we could have every character on the cast list be a main character. Like in “ER” or any other show or movie,
there will be leading roles (like Greene, Carter,
Q. Are new "episodes" going to only
come out once a week like a real tv show or will you
update a much as possible?
At this point, I’d say the
new “episodes” will come out once a week at most. They’re going to be much longer than a
chapter of any of our other stories are, more like a short story than a chapter
really, so it will take longer to finish than a chapter or two would. I would like to release an episode a week
like a TV show, but I’m not sure if that will be possible every week. It depends how busy we are and whether or not
we have writer’s block or something.
We’ll try, but we can’t guarantee anything.
Q. Are you going to have villainous characters?
Yes, we are. *evil
grin* We made up one such character on
our own, so that we’d be sure to have at least one for the first season, but
we’ll probably twist around at least one or two of the characters we got from
the contest and turn them into somewhat of villains too, just because we need
bad guys to make it interesting. If your
character happens to become one of these “villains” in the story, no hard
feelings – it’s just for the good of the story, not because we don’t like you
as a person LOL. In fact, being a villain could be a good thing. You’d definitely get more action and
spotlight than some characters.
Q. How long will [insert character’s name
here] be in the story?
We don’t know, at this point. We plan on having lots of seasons if the
story is successful, and so there’s really no way of knowing who will be in what
season and how long they will be in the story total. We don’t have much planned out yet as far as
that goes. We have decided the fates of
a few characters, but only a few, and we won’t reveal any of those anyway. So you’ll just have to read and find out. ;-)
Q. How are you going to remember all of these
people's positions and who they are going out with. Its got to be hard!
Yeah, it is hard, to be honest LOL. We have a list of the whole cast, their ages,
their positions, and who they’re going out with that we refer to often
LOL. We also have all of the submissions
from the “Be a Character” contest so we can go back and find out what our
characters look and act like. It gets
easier as it goes on, and we include the characters more. We’re familiar with our main characters that
we use most often, but we still get confused with the ones that aren’t in the
story a whole lot yet. People that have
characters in the story will email us, and we’ll know that they’re characters
because we recognize their names and email addresses, but sometimes, we don’t
remember which character they are, unless of course, the character has the same
name as them. So right now, it is
confusing with so many characters, and we’re sure you readers are even more
confused than we are. But as we go
along, it will get easier for all of us to remember all the characters. It’s just like on “ER” – if you had never
seen it before and just watched it for the first time, you’d be totally lost
because there are so many characters, and they all date each other, and it’s
like one big soap opera. But if you
watch it long enough, you get to know the characters and have no problem
figuring out who is who and who they’re all involved with. So just be patient
and refer to the cast list if you get confused LOL.
Q.
I’d hate to say it… but so many characters... I have to keep an open
cast list to see who’s who!
That’s why we have a cast
list. Use it. And for those of you who keep complaining
about all the characters, we want you to do something. Click
here and scroll down. This
the cast list of “ER” for one of the
earlier seasons. Look how many
characters it has - about the same amount as we do. Now, if you’ve been watching “ER” for years,
you know that the majority of these characters are not main ones. Some of them you might not even
remember. But all of them were part of
the show and obviously had some importance; otherwise they would not have been
cast. Same deal here. Not all the characters on our cast list are
main characters. Not all of them will be
in every episode. In the first two
episodes, some of them haven’t even been introduced yet. But they all serve a purpose, no matter how
big or small that may be. And yeah,
there’s a lot of them; you might get confused.
But if you get into the story and keep reading, eventually, you’ll get
familiar with all the important characters as we include them and develop them
more and more each episode.
Q. Was
everyone in the cast (besides Bsb and 'N Sync) picked from that contest you
guys had, or did you make up some characters on your own or base any on
yourselves?
No, not all the characters
are taken from the contest. Most are,
but we based a few on our friends, our enemies, and other people we know. And did we base characters on ourselves? Yes, we did actually. But we’re not saying who. We’d rather leave that for you to figure out,
if you care.
Q.
Is it possible that a contest for ideas can be complied? That way you
will have many ideas and the contestants will have fun also.
It might be possible some
day. Right now, we have plenty of ideas,
and our Be a Patient thing is giving us even more. So no, at this point, it’s not possible to
make a contest for ideas, but if we ever run out of them in the future, maybe.
Q. I
was just curious about how long it took to put together this project and what
steps were taken to accomplish it.
December 11, we came up
with the idea. The next night, December 12,
we posted the “Be a Character” contest form.
We ended the contest the 17th, made a site that day, and started writing
either that night or the next day. We
posted the first episode that Saturday, the 22nd. So it took eleven days.
Q. I
am curious about where all your ideas come from because they are all great!
Thanks! Well, I dunno, our ideas come from lots of
places. Some of them come from “ER” and
other medical shows. Also, we get a lot
of ideas from the “Be a Patient” forms we get; those help us a lot. And then some ideas we just get from other
people, our friends or just readers of the story. And some we just think up by ourselves. So our ideas come from all over, and while
we’re talking about it, we’d like to give a big thank-you to the people who
have helped us most with ideas so far in this story – Mel, Kaz, Sammy, Louise,
all the characters, and all the patients that have submitted. Thanks, guys!
Q.
Will we find out what happened to Kylie with the other paramedic? I need
to know! :o)
Yup, eventually. Not sure when yet, but that little mystery
will be revealed at some point. Until
then, you’ll just have to keep reading to find out. ;)
Q. Will we see any character deaths?
Yup, definitely. We have one planned out already, but of
course, we’re not going to say who, when, or how. Again, you’ll just have to keep reading.
Q.
Who’s your favorite person on ER?
Julie doesn’t really have
a favorite, even though she’s been watching ER since the beginning, but she’d
probably have to go with Doug Ross if she had to pick. She also liked Dave Malucci
a lot and was pissed when he got fired.
Rachel’s favorites are Mark Greene and John Carter.
Q.
Is the bulk of this story going to be based at the hospital and when the
EMT's go on call, or will there be some personal life
scenes?
Well, the one time we
tried to go into a personal life scene so far (at the end of Episode 2), we got
majorly criticized for it (see the guestbook for more details). But we think that in order to develop our
main character better, we’ll need to go into their lives outside their jobs,
and that’s what we’re going to do. The
majority of the story will take place in the hospital, but we will have other
scenes that center more around the characters’ personal lives.
Q.
Are Jack and Addie and Kylie and Josh together in real life? How do they
know each other? I think their characters are adorable. ::Obviously the BSB
characters and their girls aren't real LOL::
First of all, thanks! To answer your question, all four of these
characters are based on people we know in real life. They know each other from work and school,
but they’re not together in real life, just friends. Oh, and just a side note – all the characters
in this story are based on real people.
Most of them came from the “Be a Character” contest (see the cast page
for more info), and some we created on our own, based on people we know. But all of them (the staff at least, not the
patients or other guest stars) are somewhat “real”.
Q. What happened to
Bailey and Caleb? They just disappeared!
Don’t worry, Bailey and
Caleb will be back. We just didn’t
mention them in Episodes 3-4 because the focus was on the big trauma and the ER
and EMT squad and not really the other departments of the hospital. We didn’t forget about them though.
Q.
Are any of the scenes based on real life experiences? If so, which ones?
No, not so far, at least
as far as we know. Pretty much all of
our patients have come from the “Be a Patient” form, so as far as that goes,
they could be based on real experiences.
We don’t know. But the things we
made up ourselves are just things we’ve simply thought up or gotten from TV
shows and stuff like that.
Q. Is
the flashback Lance had for real or made up? It totally kicked major ass! Even
though I hate NSUCK, I like Lance, and this tugged at my heart strings.
The flashback idea was
Rachel’s, and Julie asked her the same question when she read that part, since she’s
not an ‘N Sync fan and doesn’t know a lot about them. It isn’t true. Lance does have a sister named Stacey, but
that’s the only real part of it. The
rest was just made up for the sake of the story. We’re glad you liked it. =)
Q.
What happened to Brian and Ivory?! You introduced them as boyfriend and
girlfriend, made them sound like such a cute couple and now you haven't written
anything about them since!! I really want to read more about them. And Ivory
sounds like such a neat person. Is she really some one who tried out for your
"Be a Character contest"?
Oh, don’t worry, Brian and
Ivory will be back. We have too many
characters to have every character be in every episode, but Brian and Ivory are
both main characters (we know Ivory hasn’t been in it much yet, but she will
be), so they’ll definitely have more parts coming up. Yup, Ivory was one of our submissions for the
“Be a Character” contest. Her submission
was very good and detailed, so it made it easy to describe her as a
character. If you’re interested, the
real Ivory is a fanfiction author and has a story hosted on Julie’s site (http://www.dreamers-sanctuary.com). It’s called “Forbidden Love, Unrelenting
Hate”, and it’s extremely good, so you might want to check it out sometime.
Q.
Have you two considered publishing options for this story?
Nope, not at all. We’re just writing this for fun and have no
intention of getting published. It would
be cool to have a story published sometime, but not a Bsb fanfiction. It would have to be a completely fictional
story with all fictional characters. But
thanks for thinking it’s good enough to be published! That is such a compliment; thank you! =)
Q.
Are one of you two involved in the medical field? This information
appears very precise.
First of all, thank
you! Actually, Rachel’s college major is
medical support, so she’s been learning some terminology and stuff, but she’s
not really involved in the medical field.
Neither is Julie. Both of us just
share a common interest in medicine and watch the show ER, and Julie reads Lurlene McDaniel books, which are all about teenagers with
terminal illnesses, which also helps with the medical knowledge. Between the two of us, we do have a lot of
medical knowledge, and what we don’t know, we research so that we can make the
story as accurate as possible (since neither of us really are involved in the
medical field though, we know not everything is going to be realistic, but
that’s okay because it’s only a fanfic).
Q.
Inquiring minds want to know, what happened to Kylie the paramedic
before the series even started?
That will be revealed
eventually in the story. Honestly, I
(Julie) don’t even know exactly what happened (this thing was Rachel’s idea),
and I don’t know when it will be revealed, but we promise you’ll find out
sooner or later LOL.
Q.
Have you guys considered writing a short part or a prequel type story
describing the lives of the main characters? I totally think that would be awesome
because we can look into their lives before they "grew up" and see
what events shaped them?
No, we hadn’t thought of
that. The last time we tried to write a
prequel like that (“In The Beginning”) for a story (“The Terror Chronicles”, a
story of Julie’s), it was a complete flop, and it was really boring. However, if enough people want us to write
something like that, we might just do that.
It’s a really good idea; we just wouldn’t want to bore people with
it. If we start to think seriously about
it, we’ll put up a poll or something and ask for opinions. Thanks for the
suggestion!
Q.
Is that cheerleader going to come back into the story? I mean she kinda
just left and there was no follow up. I'd like to know what happened to her. Is
she going to come back?!
Maybe… we’re not really
sure yet. Those of you who watch “ER”
enough know that they almost never seem to follow up on their patients – a lot
of them are only on for one episode. We would love to follow up on all of our
patients, but if we did that with everyone, there would just be too much of the
same old patients, and we wouldn’t have room for new ones. Also, it would be
hard to skip large periods of time, which we need to do in order to move this
story along. So for this particular
patient, we’re not sure if we’ll talk more about her or not.