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Hello!  I actually had a similar experience in the last few months – I made a side character who stole the spotlight, and I ended up refocusing the entire story and making him and his love interest the new MCs.  It was honestly a great decision, and it really helped to simplify the story and make it more personal (I’ve had similar experiences as the female MC, and that personal perspective helps me to really connect with her and her story.)

I think you should at least consider shifting the story over to him completely – usually there’s a reason why we gravitate towards certain characters and connect with them more than others.  I think it’s so important that stories have interesting MCs, and chances are that your audience will like Payton more than Ethan too.  It’s hard to write an interesting MC when you don’t really connect with them, so it might be worthwhile to consider shifting the focus of your story and sharing it from Payton’s perspective.  You don’t even have to drop him completely!  There might even be another story that would be better suited for Ethan and his development (basically what I did to my old MC – I shifted her to another part of the story/world that suited her and her character development better, and I think that’s going to help her develop more.)

There’s been times where I’ve had ideas that seemed too far out, too different or even too touchy, and I just let them sit and marinate.  Sometimes it might help to think about what your story would be like if you were to include it – would it add anything worthwhile?  Would it be more engaging and meaningful?  Or would it be a distraction?

Also, it helps so much to pray about it!  It’s something I really need to do more tbh, but there’s been times where I’ve really struggled with an idea or something that I wasn’t quite sure if I should incorporate, and so I prayed about it and gave it up to God.  It’s still a work in progress, but I believe that God has given me peace over some areas of my story that I was unsure about, and I truly do believe that He’s had a hand in the general shaping of the plot, themes, and characters – this creative progress started progressing and changing so quickly after I made the decision last year to just give it all up to him!