Chapter Two (Spoilers hidden.)

So, this chapter gets the grand prize for most edited and revised chapter in the book. There are other chapters that have more new material–but only because they were added in completely after the original draft. This chapter, good old chapter two, was the one that underwent the most tweaks, face-lifts, additions, and edits during the ten drafts I did of ELANTRIS.

And, I think poor little Sarene is the cause of it.

As I worked on the novel, Sarene as a character took on a much more dominant role in the plot than I had intended. Perhaps it’s because she’s the intermediary between the other two characters, or maybe it’s because I liked her best of the three characters. Either way, in my mind, this book is about Sarene. She’s the catalyst, the force of change.

However, I’ve found that Sarene is many people’s least-favorite of the three characters. I had a lot of trouble in the original drafts of this book, since many alpha readers didn’t like her in this chapter. They thought she came off as too brusque and manipulative. It was always my intention to show a more sensitive side to her later in the novel, but I didn’t intend to lead with it quite as quickly as I ended up doing.

The first edit to the chapter came with the addition of the Sarene-and-Ashe-travel-to-the-palace scene. This is the section were Sarene sits in the carriage, thinking about her anger at Raoden and her insecurity. This counteracts a bit of the strength we see from her in the first scene at the docks, rounding her out as a character.

The second big addition came in the form of the funeral tent scene. This was added as a tangent to one of Moshe’s suggestions–he wanted us to have an opportunity to see Sarene investigating Raoden’s death. In the original drafts of the book, we felt the narrative made it too obvious to outsiders that Raoden must have been thrown into Elantris. Moshe and I felt that it seemed silly that people wouldn’t consider the possibility that Raoden wasn’t dead. This wasn’t what I wanted–I wanted most people to accept the event. Only someone as overly-curious as Sarene would have been suspicious.

So, I revised the story to downplay the suspicion around Raoden’s death. Instead of having Iadon rush through the funeral (an element of the original draft) I added the funeral tent and had Sarene (off-stage) attend the funeral itself. These changes made it more reasonable that very few people would have suspicions regarding the prince’s death, and therefore made it more plausible that people wouldn’t think that he had been thrown into Elantris.

Other small tweaks to this chapter included the removal of a line that almost everyone seemed to hate but me. After Sarene meets Iadon for the first time, she is pulled away by Eshen to leave the throne room. At this time, I had Sarene mutter “Oh dear. THIS will never do.” Everyone thought that was too forceful, and made her sound to callous, so I changed it to “Merciful Domi! What have I gotten myself into?” A piece of me, however, still misses Sarene’s little quip there.