It's funny how a story can evolve. Looking back on chapter 17 of 'The Endless Circle', 'Falen', I am reminded of what could have been.
In the first draft of the book Falen did not die. In fact, the plan was for him to join our trio on their journey to Padascel, where he would have played a big part in the rescue of Father and the eventual confrontation of the galac-men. However, things can change a lot on the long road from "Once upon a time" to "The End" and sometimes there are casualties.
The character of Falen sprang from the young soldier you last saw cradling the dying form of an older comrade in the camp in the forest. I wrote that scene to suggest that the concepts of 'good' and 'bad' cannot be pre-judged, and that we cannot condemn someone based on first impressions alone but rather by what we observe of them over time. At the time of writing I just thought it was a nice scene and gave little thought to who these two people were or where they were coming from (which, looking back on it, seems a little hypocritical).
Then I began to write more about Haemel. I fleshed out his story and gave him some motivation, and when they got to Craec Annwn and I saw the line in my notes that said, "Haemel goes and interrogates a soldier," I realised that I had to show Haemel for who he was - a hardened warrior himself - and to do this he had to get nasty.
This was when the character of the young soldier popped back into my mind. I reasoned that seeing as I had a character the readers already knew, I could exploit a sense of attachment and have Haemel interrogate him violently, in order to create some ambiguity around Haemel.
This would reinforce the point that Banac makes when he says that he and Balor cannot trust Haemel, and would help create dramatic tension, with the reader knowing something about Haemel that the boys did not. I should note that at this time I had not written in Haemel's interrogation of the white-robed man.
I made the switch to Falen's point of view, and had a whole long flashback starting with him burying the old soldier (whose name does not spring to mind at the moment) then remembering how he was enlisted in the Baron's guard and how the gruff old soldier was his only friend. I wanted to create a connection between Falen and the reader, then sever that connection suddenly and violently by means of Haemel.
I wrote the death scene (more gruesome than it is in the book) then had Hamel bury the body and walk away back to the sleeping Banac and Balor. In the notebook I was using at the time I then immediately drew a line and wrote, "No. Don't kill Falen. He's too nice to lose." I had fallen into my own trap! Plus I felt that it was a bit harsh to kill a fourteen-year-old (for no good reason) in a book written for teenagers.
So I saved Falen's life. Haemel interrogated him, took pity on him, and brought him along for the ride.
However.
This created two problems, unforeseen by me at the time:
1. I had inadvertently changed Haemel's character. No longer was he an enigmatic beremer, imbuing the boys' quest with an air of uncertainty and menace. Instead he became a kindly uncle-figure, mentoring Falen and Banac as they sparked off each other. It did create a neat situation where Banac saw his place being usurped by Falen, arousing feelings of jealousy which were nice to write - but ultimately Haemel was suffering. I had taken away his teeth, and thus the very thing that made him interesting in the first place.
2. I now had an extra character on my hands, on what was already becoming a very crowded stage. As I said, there was some nice tension between Banac and Falen, with Falen replacing Banac as a more dependable and likeable brother-figure for Balor; but I had to create extra motivations for this new guy, give him a place in dialogue, and, ultimately, give him something to do.
This last point was the clincher. When they arrived at Padascel Falen pretty much faded into the background. I gave him things to do, even his own subplot involving a wicked uncle and a plan to infiltrate the ranks of the galac-men. But in the end I realised that he had no use other than to bother Banac, which, while fun in its own way, was a function already fulfilled by Haemel and so a distraction from the story.
This is a lesson learned the hard way by most writers: Story is King. If a character, scene, subplot, turn of phrase or anything else gets in the way if the story, it has to go. I liked Falen. I had become fond of him. I had saved his life, for crying out loud! But, alas, it seemed that his time had come.
I went back through the chapters and gently excised Falen from them, until he was nothing more than a ghost on the pages of my memory. I had Haemel kill him off, though I altered it so that he was not the young soldier and never would be. Who knows - I may just go back and write The Adventures of the Young Soldier and the Old Dude Before He Got Himself Killed.
But for now Falen is dead.
Long live Falen.
P.S: On my latest re-write I came across a remnant of Falen hidden in the text. These happen all the time (who noticed the wood-pigeons that magically became rabbits?) where I change something in one place and not in another. In Falen's case he turned up in the phrase "the three of them" where it should have been changed to "the two of them" in a scene where Falen had been present before his untimely demise at my hands. It made me laugh to think that Falen was still hanging around in the ether, a shadowy form seen out of the corner of Haemel's eye, haunting him for the evils he had performed upon him.
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