For the last week or so, I’ve been taking a break from Codename: Fairyland to write a short story. I’m not giving up on CN:FL. On the contrary, I’ve been stoked to work on the story ever since I made the decision to write it out of order. I talk more about that decision in “Wait, What Chapter Am I On?” Not abandoning that story, but I got a new idea for a short story that seemed simple and straight-forward…
So I’m finding a way to make it more complicated.
Not that every story needs to have some kind of twist to it. Honestly, when the idea occurred to me, it seemed simple and straight-forward to the point of being almost boring. But I thought it’d be a good bit of gruesome fun. But then, a bolt of inspiration hit while I was staring out the window, watching the birds.
Among my interests are video games. My favorite genre are Metroidvanias. In the last ten years, my favorite entries from this genre have been Hollow Knight and Silksong, both produced by Team Cherry. One of my favorite aspects about these games are the world that Team Cherry has created and the stories that they tell in these games. More than that, I love how they delve into the complexity of the world and the stories, mostly in the background.
I’ll give you an example of what I mean. At the beginning of Silksong, Hornet, the player character of the game, is being carried in an ornate cage across wastelands by mysterious figures, enemies that you fight later in the game. Prior to facing a major boss in the game, the player can find a room that is filled with similar cages, with attached notes, indicating that what happened to Hornet has happened to others, again and again and again. And will continue to happen, unless Hornet can do something about it.
This tidbit of story is offered, not as a dramatic cutscene, but as a side room that players can easily miss. The information isn’t at all necessary to play the game, but it unobtrusively deepens the lore of the world and the story as it is unfolding.
Cue the bolt of inspiration for my story.
Having just finished We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer, I felt inspired to write a story with an unreliable narrator. So the story actually has two stories: what’s happening and what the MC thinks is happening. As I started to write the story, I was focusing on the foreground story with the MC front and center. I had a twist ending planned, but then I thought about little breadcrumbs of story I can leave along the way.
This isn’t a new gimmick. But it’s the kind of thing that, if done successfully, can be very satisfying for me as the writer as well as the reader. I’m hoping that I can pull it off and that the ending to this one will make someone want to go back to the beginning, reread it, and say, “Oh man, it was there the whole time.”
Once I finish it, I hope to get it placed soon, so I can tell you all about it!
