Writers are often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” Usually, the answer is a mix of “I had a weird dream” or “I stared at a wall until my forehead hurt” or “I honestly have no clue.” But every once in a while, a story comes from somewhere completely unexpected. The Atlantis Twins is one of those stories. And the truth is, it never should have been about mermaids at all.
The Original Concept: A Thriller About Bros on a Boat
Picture this. A rusty, barely functional research vessel, far out in the Pacific. A motley, cynical crew of twenty-something guys named things like Chad, Brad, and Trent. A mysterious, fast-acting contagion pulled up from deep in the trenches, threatening global disaster. Tensions running high, secrets lurking beneath the surface, definitely some questionable life choices. It was supposed to be a thriller. Dark, suspenseful, maybe a little murder-mystery adjacent. Think less “magical underwater kingdoms” and more “things go horribly wrong at sea.”
I had it all mapped out…the beats, the tension, the red herrings, the locked cargo hold nobody was supposed to open. I even had the interpersonal drama: who got the last coffee filter, who was stealing the satellite bandwidth, who was flirting with the lone female technician (who was, frankly, more of a plot device than a character).
And the book was fine. It was functional. But it lacked a soul. I was pushing a plot uphill, ticking off necessary thriller beats (engine trouble, radio silence) and every scene felt like homework. I couldn’t muster genuine excitement for a crew whose main motivation was getting paid and getting back to shore. I was desperately searching for the spark.
But here’s the thing about stories. Sometimes they have other plans.
A Fateful Workshop
I was stuck, so I took a break from the isolation of my desk and went to a creative writing workshop at the Brooklyn Public Library. (Shout-out to BPL. Libraries are where magic happens. Literally, as it turns out.) If you’ve never been to one of these, they’re a mix of prompts, free-writing exercises, and sharing work with other writers, the kind of environment where you’re encouraged to drop the perfectionism and just see what comes out when you stop overthinking every word.
The instructor, sensing the collective groan of the room, gave us a simple prompt to loosen up our creative gears:
“Free write an unexpected character. Someone who should not be in your current scene, but bursts in anyway.”
I put pen to paper fully intending to flesh out one of my brooding sailors, maybe give Trent some trauma to justify his grim mood. Instead, something weird happened. A voice showed up that I wasn’t expecting.
She was soaked to the bone, angry, sarcastic, and a little terrified. She was sassy and bold and had opinions about everything and zero patience for nonsense. She was not one of the twenty-something dudes I’d been plotting about. She had no business being on my fictional research ship—and yet she planted her feet on the deck and refused to leave.
Her name was Alysa. And she had a twin sister. A mermaid fantasy began to take shape.
When Characters Hijack Your Story
I’ve had characters surprise me before, that’s part of the joy of writing. But this was different. This wasn’t a character revealing an unexpected quirk. This was a full-on mutiny.
Alysa wasn’t interested in being part of my carefully plotted thriller. She had her own story to tell, and it had nothing to do with bros on boats. Well, it still involved a boat. And the ocean. But suddenly there were mermaids. And ancient curses. And a missing twin sister, Alyx, who was supposedly dead but maybe, just maybe, was still alive somewhere beneath the waves.
And the deeper I followed her, the more the old plot reorganized itself around her. That contagion from the trenches? Suddenly it wasn’t a random virus, it was tangled up with her own suppressed genetics. The stormy sea wasn’t just a threat, it was her natural, terrifying home. Even the “dudes on a boat” didn’t entirely vanish; a couple of them evolved into characters who actually mattered, like the complicated Ivan and the well-meaning Nate, now serving her story instead of their own.
I tried to resist at first. I had a plan, after all. A perfectly good plan for a perfectly good thriller. But the more I wrote, the more Alysa’s voice took over. She was funny and fierce and vulnerable in ways that completely surprised me, and her refusal to believe Alyx was really gone felt real in a way my original concept never quite had.
By the end of that workshop session, I knew. The thriller was dead. Long live the mermaids.
Meeting Alyx and Alysa
Once I stopped fighting it and let the story go where it wanted, everything clicked into place. Alysa became the protagonist, a seventeen-year-old girl living in Hawaii with no memory of the boating accident that nearly killed her. Her twin sister Alyx vanished that day, and everyone told Alysa to accept that she was gone. But Alysa couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She could feel in her bones that her sister was still out there.
And then there was Alyx herself: the sister who did remember. The one who’d been transformed, cursed, pulled into a world Alysa didn’t even know existed. That twin bond…the one that refused to break even when an ocean separated them…became the emotional core of the entire series.
What started as a random free-writing exercise in a Brooklyn library became three books in my mermaid fantasy series: The Atlantis Twins, The Atlantis Song, and The Atlantis Queens. A whole trilogy about these sisters, their heritage, and the ancient enemy that had been hunting their family for generations.
The Power of Free Writing
Looking back, I’m so grateful I didn’t cling too tightly to my original idea. If I’d stayed rigid about the thriller, I never would have found Alysa and Alyx. I never would have built Atlantis, the Ocean Alliance, or Alabaster Island. I never would have written about mermaid genetics or ancestral curses or what it means to fight for someone everyone else has given up on.
That single fifteen-minute exercise taught me something invaluable. Sometimes the best ideas arrive when you’re not trying to force anything. When you just show up, put fingers to keyboard, and let whatever wants to emerge happen. Even if it derails your entire plan. Especially if it derails your entire plan. Free writing can feel silly while you’re in the middle of it, half-convinced it’s all nonsense. But that’s the point. When you turn off the internal editor and stop worrying about whether something fits your outline, that’s when the real magic shows up.
What The Atlantis Twins Became
The final version kept some of that original thriller DNA. There’s still a ship. There’s still danger and mystery and people who aren’t what they seem. The Ocean Alliance, that mysterious group Alysa gets pulled into, is absolutely harboring dark secrets. Nate, the handsome surfer who seems too good to be true? He definitely is.
But wrapped around that thriller skeleton is something richer and stranger: a story about two sisters separated by trauma and transformation, a mythology that borrows from Atlantis legend and twists it into something new, and a coming-of-age tale where the protagonist has to accept not just who she is but what she is, even when that truth is devastating. Alysa’s journey to Alabaster Island, where her mother was born and where ancient secrets wait, became the heart of the book. Her relationship with Nate got complicated in ways I never planned. And the twist at the end came straight out of letting the characters breathe instead of forcing them into the box I’d built.
Reviewers said things like “Not many books surprise me like this one did” and “There were more than a few times that I gasped out loud.” That’s exactly what I wanted, for readers to feel the same shock and discovery I felt when Alysa first showed up and took over the story.
The Final Word
The Atlantis Twins wasn’t the book I planned to write. It was better.
It taught me that sometimes the best creative decisions feel like losses of control, that surrendering your agenda can lead somewhere truer and stranger than you imagined. So to the Nautical Bros who never made it past the first draft: sorry, guys. Alyx and Alysa had a much better series to start.
And if you’re a reader who picked up The Atlantis Twins expecting one thing and got mermaids, ancient curses, and sisters who refuse to let death separate them—well, you can thank a random Wednesday-night workshop at the Brooklyn Public Library, and the voice that showed up uninvited and changed everything.
Best creative accident I ever made.
Have you ever had a character or story take over your plans? Or as a reader, have you been surprised by a book that turned out to be something completely different than expected? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear about your own creative mutinies.
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