The Nub of the Issue

Things are moving fast

I am already exhilarated and scared by the pace of this new method, but let's take a moment to pause and make sure we've assimilated all the new material into the existing story framework.  Then we can see any new hooks and work on them.


A recap of where we are in the 20-years-ago chronology

• Twenty years ago, Friedrich Recker is rescued from the sea and brought to Glasgow
• As he gains strength, he gains popularity and influence
• Frank Fraser and his wife Peggy fall under his influence
• Recker embarks on a reign of terror in the community
• Nancy has an affair with Recker and falls pregnant
• VAGUE - she does something to warrant community retribution and dies
• VAGUE - Frank gets killed somehow
• VAGUE - a ten year old Jake attacks someone and kills them
• VAGUE - someone traps Recker in the church

And the rest is history.  This seems like a good inroad into the mystery, but we still have a lot of unknowns to work through.

I've just had a thought

What if Nancy didn't die?  What if it is believed she died, but she went into hiding and has been the one feeding Fiend all these years?  What happened to the child?  Remember this is Jake's half-sibling, sired by the Fiend himself.  What kind of person would that be?  Could it be one of the characters we've already met?  This would be a nineteen year old, remember.

I'm very tempted to make the child either Katie or Elaine.  If we make it Katie, then both Jake and William have been in relationships with their half-sister. If we make it Elaine, then only Jake has been, and it might explain why they don't get on.  Is this too weird a revelation?  Would a very-much-alive Nancy have allowed the Fraser boys to have had a relationship with their half-sister?

I'm torn.  I had it in my mind that Jake and Katie end up together, but obviously the revelation of their blood ties puts an end to that.  If we imagine that Katie is Jake's ex, then at age nineteen, this seems a lot of history to squeeze into such young person.  If I make it Elaine, then it justifies the fact that they are drifting apart, on some subconscious level they know it's wrong,  and it lends a justifying moral overtone to him leaving her and going towards Katie.

But, I want the daughter of Fiend to be an important part of the story.  Until now, Elaine has been more of an annoyance factor, the naysayer who nags and drags Jake down.  There is no way the daughter of Fiend can be such an insect to be swatted off.

So do we abandon the idea, or do we make Elaine have more of an impact and character in the story?

Imagine: Jake finds out his mother is alive.  He finds out Elaine is her daughter.  He finds out she betrayed his father and was still bringing food to Fiend in captivity.  Imagine it. Imagine this not coming out until after William has been killed.  Wow.

These are too good to waste.  I have to go with it, no matter how difficult it will be rewriting Elaine's character.

The impact of that tremor

So what impact does this have on the story?  Well, luckily, not much in the medium term.  Having Nancy still around both explains a few things and introduces a complexity in the final third of the story that we didn't have before.  Someone was feeding Fiend during the twenty years of captivity, and now we know who.

Elaine now has to get some attention.  She's immediately a lot younger than I originally thought, and quite a bit younger than Jake.  Obviously her mother gave her up, because she knows nothing about her or who her father is.  She spent a lot of her childhood in children's homes.  This has made her self-reliant and a little bit tough, and she seems older than her years (explaining the age gap somewhat). She has inherited her father's meddlesome nature, and in the last third of the story she finds out who he is.

Jake is with her because she fights his battles for him.  He is unable to stick up for himself, so she does it for him, in a sisterly way - little knowing that she actually is his half-sister.  I think we need to introduce the idea that she and Jake are almost celibate, something he complains about to Katie, but which Elaine seems perfectly happy with.  On a deep level, they don't feel attracted to one another sexually, and this is borne out in the course of the story,

Back to where we were

So all of this is interesting, but the impact of it lies mostly in the modern day story, and whilst vital in the grand scheme, we can come back to that later.  So Nancy doesn't actually die in the community retribution - I'm almost completely convinced they locked her in somewhere and set fire to it - the image popped up at once and hasn't gone away.  Obviously she did survive, but she went into hiding and everybody thinks she's dead.

So what was it she did that people thought they must kill her in this way?  Well, it's clear she is really under Fiend's spell, completely entranced.  Did he ask her to murder her two sons, and it was found out?  Was she prevented from doing it, and then tried again, causing the community to think there was nothing else for it for to end her?

This is interesting.  She wanted to please Fiend, and was willing to kill her own family to do it.  She still has a flame for him, and carries it through 20 years of exile and hiding. And then when Fiend finally escapes?  He flicks her off like an insect.

So where does Frank fit in?

So while this was all going on, what was Frank doing?  A bit like the Jake story, Frank went along with Fiend at first, getting caught up in the excitement.  But at some point, he stopped, probably when he realised Nancy was slipping away from him.  So I think turning away from Fiend was what precipitated his death.  Did Jake kill him?

I have the same problem with Jake killing his father that I had before.  What reason would provoke a ten-year-old to violently kill his father, even if he was physically capable of doing it?  Frank seems more like a victim here than a perpetrator, he's lost his wife to the Fiend, and he's now the target of his evil glare by going against him.  What wold make him be attacked by his young son?  Nothing I can see.

Are we any further forward?

It seems every question we answer, we come up with another one.  But progress is beig made, so let's keep going.