Cheryl and the Church
Credit to @hellothisisbenjamin
So, this week’s blog post is going to focus on some story elements related to the books: Cheryl Downry and the Rizen church.
As far back as my original drafts (roughly around 2013, jeez), Cheryl was an integral character; she’s been the main character throughout most of my iterations. To add to that, while she’s changed somewhat over the course of the countless rewrites, her overall attitude and home setting have remained mostly the same.
Cheryl’s always been frustrated, angsty, and troubled. Every version of her character has followed that pathing to some degree, though I only crystalized that idea properly in this current draft.
Cheryl has been paralleled by one other constant: the Rizen church. This group, which varied in size depending on the draft and attempt (from a tiny cult to a world-dominating empire), has been the other half of the coin Cheryl sits on. No matter the version, no matter the attempt, the cult would pursue Cheryl for one reason or another. Some iterations had them hunting her for targeted, specific reasons while others had her getting caught in their crosshairs by sheer bad luck.
The first versions of this book, the ones I pulled most from during my current rewrite, involved Cheryl playing both the hunter and the hunted, stuck in a Rizen-faith town while on the run from a crime she hadn’t comitted (killing her sister/family, something the Rizen had actually done). Along the way, as she explored the town, she’d come into contact with various people (Johnathan, a woman named Anna who was scrapped in rewrites, a young girl named Anne who was meant to be Cheryl’s child self taking form, Cheryl’s shadow doppelganger who would persist throughout many, many rewrites, and a few others).
This draft would progress into a time-shattering horror story where Cheryl meets a young woman named Lynn (about as on the nose as I could get it to be), and the two would hunt the Rizen down, hopping in and out of the Nightmare as they did so and trying to stop the Rizen from bringing a horrible God to life.
Now, to bring this all to the forefront: I crystalized the core parts of Cheryl, the things I kept carrying over between rewrites, and finalized it into who she is in this book. Cheryl is angry, bitter, depressed, full of stress and anger issues and struggling to enjoy time with her family. She keeps having nightmares about this "Great War”, keeps exploring a desolate mirror world, and keeps feeling like she’s missing something.
Cheryl in the current draft is a person weighed down by self-hate and self-loathing, someone who lashes out at those closest to her and can’t control her temper.
The Rizen faith has changed across drafts too, though mainly in size and scope. In its current form it comes after a decimating world war, rising from the splintered aftermath of the Sprialist religion (itself a malformed and twisted form of the Karsk steppe-people’s beliefs). The Rizen are a powerful, iron-fisted force, using their connections to hunt for those their Goddess told them to find.
That’s about it for this one! Thanks for tuning in. Next post will probably be about Marie and how she’s changed over the course of the drafts.
