This is a Q&A the original writers, Rachel and Julie, did a few episodes in to answer reader-submitted questions.<\/p>\n
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Yeah, obviously, there\u2019s no way we could have every character on the cast list be a main character. Like in ER<\/em> or any other show or movie, there will be leading roles (like Greene, Carter, Benton, etc.), and there will be supporting roles (like Malik, Randi, Haleh, etc.). We wanted to put a lot of people in the story because of the great number of entries we got and because, since this takes place in a hospital, we\u2019re going to need lots of staff members, and we didn\u2019t want there to only be like one of each kind of doctor mentioned. This way we can have a variety, and everyone at least gets to see their name mentioned in a story. The people who made their submissions sound the most interesting are the ones that we\u2019ve chosen as main characters, and they will get the spotlight on them the most.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At this point, I\u2019d say the new \u201cepisodes\u201d will come out once a week at most. They\u2019re 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\u2019m not sure if that will be possible every week. It depends how busy we are and whether or not we have writer\u2019s block or something. We\u2019ll try, but we can\u2019t guarantee anything.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yes, we are. *evil grin* We made up one such character on our own, so that we\u2019d be sure to have at least one for the first season, but we\u2019ll 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 \u201cvillains\u201d in the story, no hard feelings \u2013 it\u2019s just for the good of the story, not because we don\u2019t like you as a person LOL. In fact, being a villain could be a good thing. You\u2019d definitely get more action and spotlight than some characters.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We don\u2019t know, at this point. We plan on having lots of seasons if the story is successful, and so there\u2019s really no way of knowing who will be in what season and how long they will be in the story total. We don\u2019t 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\u2019t reveal any of those anyway. So you\u2019ll just have to read and find out. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yeah, it is hard, to be honest LOL. We have a list of the whole cast, their ages, their positions, and who they\u2019re going out with that we refer to often LOL. We also have all of the submissions from the \u201cBe a Character\u201d 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\u2019re familiar with our main characters that we use most often, but we still get confused with the ones that aren\u2019t in the story a whole lot yet. People that have characters in the story will email us, and we\u2019ll know that they\u2019re characters because we recognize their names and email addresses, but sometimes, we don\u2019t 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\u2019re 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\u2019s just like on ER<\/em> \u2013 if you had never seen it before and just watched it for the first time, you\u2019d be totally lost because there are so many characters, and they all date each other, and it\u2019s 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\u2019re all involved with. So just be patient and refer to the cast list if you get confused LOL.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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\u2019re not saying who. We\u2019d rather leave that for you to figure out, if you care.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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\u2019s not possible to make a contest for ideas, but if we ever run out of them in the future, maybe.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n December 11, we came up with the idea. The next night, December 12, we posted the \u201cBe a Character\u201d 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thanks! Well, I dunno, our ideas come from lots of places. Some of them come from ER<\/em> and other medical shows. Also, we get a lot of ideas from the \u201cBe a Patient\u201d 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\u2019re talking about it, we\u2019d like to give a big thank-you to the people who have helped us most with ideas so far in this story \u2013 Mel, Kaz, Sammy, Louise, all the characters, and all the patients that have submitted. Thanks, guys!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yup, eventually. Not sure when yet, but that little mystery will be revealed at some point. Until then, you\u2019ll just have to keep reading to find out. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yup, definitely. We have one planned out already, but of course, we\u2019re not going to say who, when, or how. Again, you\u2019ll just have to keep reading.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Julie doesn\u2019t really have a favorite, even though she\u2019s been watching ER<\/em> since the beginning, but she\u2019d 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\u2019s favorites are Mark Greene and John Carter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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\u2019ll need to go into their lives outside their jobs, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re 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\u2019 personal lives.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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\u2019re not together in real life, just friends. Oh, and just a side note \u2013 all the characters in this story are based on real people. Most of them came from the \u201cBe a Character\u201d 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 \u201creal\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Don\u2019t worry, Bailey and Caleb will be back. We just didn\u2019t 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\u2019t forget about them though.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n No, not so far, at least as far as we know. Pretty much all of our patients have come from the \u201cBe a Patient\u201d form, so as far as that goes, they could be based on real experiences. We don\u2019t know. But the things we made up ourselves are just things we\u2019ve simply thought up or gotten from TV shows and stuff like that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The flashback idea was Rachel\u2019s, and Julie asked her the same question when she read that part, since she\u2019s not an \u2018N Sync fan and doesn\u2019t know a lot about them. It isn\u2019t true. Lance does have a sister named Stacey, but that\u2019s the only real part of it. The rest was just made up for the sake of the story. We\u2019re glad you liked it. =)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Oh, don\u2019t 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\u2019t been in it much yet, but she will be), so they\u2019ll definitely have more parts coming up. Yup, Ivory was one of our submissions for the \u201cBe a Character\u201d contest. Her submission was very good and detailed, so it made it easy to describe her as a character. If you\u2019re interested, the real Ivory is a fanfiction author and has a story hosted on Julie\u2019s site (http:\/\/www.dreamers-sanctuary.com). It\u2019s called \u201cForbidden Love, Unrelenting Hate\u201d, and it\u2019s extremely good, so you might want to check it out sometime.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nope, not at all. We\u2019re 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\u2019s good enough to be published! That is such a compliment; thank you! =)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n First of all, thank you! Actually, Rachel\u2019s college major is medical support, so she\u2019s been learning some terminology and stuff, but she\u2019s 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<\/em>, 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\u2019t 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\u2019s okay because it\u2019s only a fanfic).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That will be revealed eventually in the story. Honestly, I (Julie) don\u2019t even know exactly what happened (this thing was Rachel\u2019s idea), and I don\u2019t know when it will be revealed, but we promise you\u2019ll find out sooner or later LOL.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n No, we hadn\u2019t thought of that. The last time we tried to write a prequel like that (In The Beginning<\/em>) for a story (The Terror Chronicles<\/em>, a story of Julie\u2019s), 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\u2019s a really good idea; we just wouldn\u2019t want to bore people with it. If we start to think seriously about it, we\u2019ll put up a poll or something and ask for opinions. Thanks for the suggestion!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Maybe\u2026 we\u2019re not really sure yet. Those of you who watch ER<\/em> enough know that they almost never seem to follow up on their patients \u2013 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\u2019t 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\u2019re not sure if we\u2019ll talk more about her or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FAQ This is a Q&A the original writers, Rachel and Julie, did a few episodes in to answer reader-submitted questions. 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 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-73","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/codeblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/codeblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/codeblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/codeblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/codeblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/codeblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/codeblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/73\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/codeblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}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?<\/h4>\n
Q. Are you going to have villainous characters?<\/h4>\n
Q. How long will [insert character\u2019s name here] be in the story?<\/h4>\n
Q. How are you going to remember all of these people’s positions and who they are going out with. It’s got to be hard!<\/h4>\n
Q. Was everyone in the cast (besides BSB and *NSYNC) picked from that contest you guys had, or did you make up some characters on your own or base any on yourselves?<\/h4>\n
Q. Is it possible that a contest for ideas can be compiled? That way you will have many ideas and the contestants will have fun also.<\/h4>\n
Q. I was just curious about how long it took to put together this project and what steps were taken to accomplish it.<\/h4>\n
Q. I am curious about where all your ideas come from because they are all great!<\/h4>\n
Q. Will we find out what happened to Kylie with the other paramedic? I need to know! :o)<\/h4>\n
Q. Will we see any character deaths?<\/h4>\n
Q. Who\u2019s your favorite person on ER<\/em>?<\/h4>\n
Q. Is the bulk of this story going to be based at the hospital and when the EMTs go on call, or will there be some personal life scenes?<\/h4>\n
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)<\/h4>\n
Q. What happened to Bailey and Caleb? They just disappeared!<\/h4>\n
Q. Are any of the scenes based on real life experiences? If so, which ones?<\/h4>\n
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.<\/h4>\n
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?<\/h4>\n
Q. Have you two considered publishing options for this story?<\/h4>\n
Q. Are one of you two involved in the medical field? This information appears very precise.<\/h4>\n
Q. Inquiring minds want to know, what happened to Kylie the paramedic before the series even started?<\/h4>\n
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?<\/h4>\n
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?!<\/h4>\n