When we first started imagining The Shadow of Phaedrus, we spent a lot of time discussing the fleeting glimpses that we caught of its world. As there are two of us, it was even more important that we understood it in the same way – so that our stories remained consistent.
We spent weeks talking, excitedly drawing, and noting what we imagined. Much was hastily scribbled on A1 flip charts and Post-it notes. Even more was discarded – fleeting moments of fun that we couldn’t hold on to.
This story is the tale of many different characters and so we noted much about who these people would be – what their motivations were, where they grew up – all the sorts of things you need to know to be able to understand who people are.
One of our early characters was Alexis – a powerful and influential magician – who was central to many of our story lines. We briefly mentioned that he had a daughter and expected her to make the odd cameo; we could always bring her back in later if we needed a plot device.
As we wrote the first drafts, however, we found that she quickly became more prominent. The more the story developed the more we found that she started to star in critical scenes.
When we expected her to fade into the background, she wandered into the foreground.
When the story travelled to some new location, she just happened to be waiting for us.
When a piece of dialogue made us double up in laughter, she was saying it.
Before long she took the name Helena for herself and we found that we needed to re-draft our story around her.
I wouldn’t say that she demanded to be in this story as that’s not really her nature. I’d say she more likely just pottered into it, probably chatting aimlessly into thin air as usual, and just ended up staying.
We’re very glad that she did.
*Image from Unsplash