I wanted to tell the story through the eyes of Rawiya, someone who has a unique perspective on events as they unfold. To that end I wanted her to be able to see things that other people cannot. In order to explain this I came up with the idea that she had a tumor growing in or near her visual cortex that altered her ability to see. I wanted her to be able to see things that noone else could, to see the fae that normally remain hidden from people unless they want to be seen. The idea was that this tumors presence made is so that whatever magic the fae use to hide wouldn't work on her. She could see the fae, but she could also see through their illusions.
The fae though have not existed amongst us for a very long time. It's not like they just went into hiding and never revealed themselves, 'cause there are ways to find them. They were made simply not physically present. And so people couldn't just not see them, they couldn't even find the fae when they looked. Over the generations, the idea of the fae faded to myth and legend, and today the common person knows only a fairy tale version of the fae, something so different that when the fae do show up they still aren't recognized for what they truly are.
Because of this, when Rawiya first starts seeing the fae, she wouldn't know what she was seeing. Nor would she have ever seen them before because they weren't there before. This would be a new thing for her, and because noone else around her would be able to see it she couldn't be sure she wasn't just hallucinating. So I also wanted to suggest that the tumor might cause her to hallucinate, if not just make it difficult for her to make sense of what she were seeing, or to simply cause her to go blind. I wanted her to be unsure of what she was seeing, unable to trust that it was real.
If Rawiya is going to be the central perspective, I needed to give her a family and a life. I was using a journal format, so I felt she didn't need to write down her full name all the time if ever. So I've never actually given her a surname, or even a middle name. Even her parents have just been Mom and Dad. I don't know if that's a bad thing but if I want to change the format of the story, to tell it in a different way, I may have to come up with those things.
And Rawiya has two siblings, a brother whose nickname is Efe, and sister Batel. I didn't want them to feel unimportant, but didn't want them to be a distraction to the main story, so they were both older and had gone off, Efe was army or navy I think while Batel was in college.
Rawiya needed to have an established life, which included friends. Again, not many, so Max was her one good friend. But I fear I am not presenting Max as important enough as she should be for being Rawiya's best friend. I lean on the idea that Rawiya's life is moving on from the simplicity of High School, and so her ability to interact with her friend is more limited. I don't know if that's a mistake or not, and so I've been wondering how else I can bring Max into the story.
Since my format was to present this as a journal, I didn't want to spend too much time describing Rawiya. I mean, if you are writing a journal, are you going to spend your time describing yourself or are you just going to take your appearance for granted since it's not a novel for others to read? As such, I left Rawiya's description to be addressed in comparison to others. So an so is taller than me, has lighter skin than me, or darker skin than me. I got new clothes today, a blouse, jeans, or a cute vest. I've never met someone with darker hair than mine, but Candace's takes the cake. But I worry I spent so much time on that that I was giving the impression that girls spend all their time caring about their appearance. An impression that I didn't necessarily want.
I wanted the story to start with an important event, so I chose the eclipse that was set to happen that year in August. A date, amusingly enough, that has significance to my own life completely unrelated to the story. I always worried that readers who knew me might think I'd picked that date because of it's relation to my life, but the honest answer was no, it was simply when the full lunar eclipse was set to happen.
The idea that I wanted to reveal was that the lunar eclipse was a targeted event, used to invoke magic that would break down the barrier that had separated the fae from our world. But of course I wanted that revealed to the reader as it was revealed to Rawiya, so no immediate explanation was given. Though I think I handled it poorly and heavy handedly with Halvis. I think I used him to reveal too much too soon.
Since Rawiya's tumor effected her in a magical way, the idea I was running with was that the magic involved in tearing down this barrier (O Véu) was so spectacular that it cause Rawiya to pass out, and continued to effect her for a week afterward. As such my story, her journal, opened with her waking in the hospital and spent a week or so there while they ran tests on her because she was continuing to have issues. Not only with her dizzy spells, but bad enough that she couldn't gain her sense of balance to even stand up and walk.
This also gave me time to introduce a couple of other characters who I wanted to be important to all this. Candace, who I wanted to become a close friend of Rawiya's, and Halvis who shortly after would become her boyfriend.
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