That's was actually the original opening line to Eastgate on my first attempt. No kidding.
If you're not a Tolkien fan, it's totally aping the opening line of the Hobbit "In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit." Anyway, I originally opened the story that way not only to ape Tolkien, but because I thought it was a great way to introduce the one character I originally thought I had a handle on- Seren Galaru.
As one of the first characters created for this story, Seren too had her roots in that Evanescence concert I went to last November 1. Just as Amy Lee was the model on which Eira Wynn was built, Taylor Momson (lead singer for The Pretty Reckless, who opened for Evanescence) is the model on which Seren was built. Their styles and looks conflicted (medium build brunette vs super skinny blonde) as did their dress (goth-ish with fairy skirt vs classic leather jacket and heavy boots), and me those differences worked well together.
The fact that Momson just kind of looks like she's vaguely related to Galadriel made making the second character an elf a give in.
Seren was also instantly conceived as the badass, because it's something that you never see done. Take that in for a second. An elf (not a Drow) is actually the angry one who goes off with fists swinging into any situation. Sure an elf may break out an amazing fight, but they normally are just thought of as sitting around trying to look serene and feminine, even when they're played by a guy. (Hugo Weaving is the exception to this rule, because even in drag, Hugo Weaving could still kick your ass)
Anyway, because it was NaNoWriMo and because I had absolutely zero time to do any sort of character brainstorming before I started writing (I had the idea at like 11pm on November 1st, I was starting late as it was) I just instantly went for the stereotype. If Seren was a badass, and Seren wore a leather jacket, well then Seren must be a hard drinker. Every bar is like Cheers to her, cause everyone knows her name there.
The problem was that the more I thought about that after stepping back from the story, the more that stereotype bothered me. Sure, I was fine with Seren being a drinker, but just to have her act like some badass teenager didn't seem right for someone who was probably like 600 years old.
So, after stepping back from the story and letting it sit, I got back to thinking about Seren. I knew that I liked her being the cranky one. I liked the fact that she spoke more with her fists than with eloquently chosen words. I refused to ditch that leather jacket.
I also knew where I needed her to be at the end of the series, and I knew that someone who still acted like a rebellious teenager was not only very shallow, but would have a hard time coming to the place I saw her at by the end of the entire story.
So I started thinking through the little bits of background I had for her, and for the world in general.
Unlike anyone else in the first story (at least unlike anyone who will admit to it in the first story) Seren is the only character who I've decided has a direct link to that original "fellowship". If this world were middle earth, her father would be Legolas. I originally did this because I wanted some form of a legacy character in the story, but the more I thought about it, having Seren be a legacy character actually gave her reasons to be the character I've always kind of seen her as, but with good reason.
As Tolkien sort of set up, in this world, the elves have fled. They fled, though, not out of the feeling that their time in the world had come to an end. They fled because they knew what was coming. The race whom all others looked to with awe realized that it could not stand up to the darkness that was slowly consuming the world, and they decided to tuck tail and run.
Not all of them could make it though. Some even decided to stay by choice, believing that if the founding species stood together, then they could drive back and/or destroy the darkness at it's heart.
One of these elves was Seren's father, another was her mother. Two hundred or so years after the fellowship (this is a shorthand word I'm using for now... I haven't decided what it'll really be called) failed, Seren was born. Not long after, the Dark Lord's forces captured she and her mother, which led her father to fight for the first 50 or so years of Seren's life to get them back. Eventually he was successful, but growing up in that sort of environment left it's marks on Seren.
Bad childhood doesn't seem to cover it.
After freeing them, her father decided to give up the ghost in terms of fighting the dark powers. He took Seren's mother and her brothers and fled. Seren refused to go, feeling very little connection to her own kind after having been raised among human prisoners and orc soldiers.
Seren is the absolute product of what the fight against the darkness has yielded. She's broken, but has managed to keep herself together by sheer stubbornness. She associates with the remaining elves more out of a sense of shared misery than out of a sense of friendship or sense of culture.
They're like old war buddies who sit and drink. They BS the good times, and use each drink to try to forget the horrors they've seen.
She has no love of the wilderness and the trees, because she's never been among them. Her world is concrete and steel. She doesn't have the serenity to accept her years. She doesn't have the sense of connection with all things. She doesn't have that elf sense of, I guess, magic.
Instead she's just grown angry and tired of all the crap that surrounds her. Her hot-headedness and rebellious nature is no longer a stereotypical cry for attention, it's someone who's tired and bored. It's someone who has seem time pass, and seen things happen the same way every time. It's someone who had the choice between being disconnected from that's going on, or being the person who fights against it, and, because of what's happened to her, has realized she can't disconnect.
Seren hasn't really changed since I first thought of her. I mean, yes, she has changed. But she hasn't become a drastically different version of herself. Instead, I think, she's deepened. She's got reasons for things now, and while she's still what she was, it's a version that's not just flat "I'm being a rebellious badass stereotype."
The trick is making sure she doesn't ever come across as a stereotype, because I can't afford to have people write her off (or anything in this story off) early on. I have to show people that Seren is actually a character with depth and contradiction.
I really hope I can do that.
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