The main idea for my short story began with a very simplistic and basic colour idea which led to the slow development of two main characters named Red and Blue. The idea flourished from the very basic idea to a slightly more complex one when the idea that Red would be colourless and unidentified in his world. Red was clear and transparent and weakly searching for a colour and was not able to feel complete until he met Blue. With Blue he grew to have slight tinges of colour, and it made him feel strong and powerful. Eventually, Red found a way to maintain the actual colour red, but began to become greedy.
Red’s greed begun the beginning of the end, not only for him, but Blue and all other colours in the world they lived in. The original concept behind the short story was going to be that Red and Blue were two sides of one person, with Blue signifying strength and love and Red signifying the doubtful, insecure and fearful half of the human mind. The original concept developed to be that Red would demonstrate drastic changes like in Shakespeare’s character Macbeth and as well as Fred C. Dobbs from John Huston’s ‘Treasure of Sierra Madre’.
At first, Red’s character was mostly related to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, as Red was a figure that’s change was clearly focused on his want for power and how his greed led to his eventual downfall. However, as time passed, the characters Red and Blue began to develop more, and I decided that I didn’t want a love story between Red and Blue before leading to Red’s greed then downfall. I also didn’t want Blue being the naive girl she originally was. I wanted something sick and twisted about the whole story. I wanted to add something that would twist the whole story in a way that would provide the reader with a trong message and a strong emotion.
Red then became a figure similar to Holden Caulfield from J. D. Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’. Red became a broken teenage figure who struggles with greatly with identity confusion all the while searching for something more of the world leading to a massive mental breakdown after his drastic changes. While Red’s character was further developing, Blue’s character began to slowly develop and she started to become a girl that is slightly crazy, and most of the time she is not present in any sor reality.
Blue is not a character that is sane, however it appears that she is. There’s something special about her but I am not entirely sure what it is yet. From the idea of Blue’s slight delirium, I began to investigate many different types of dissociative disorders. “Dissociative identity disorder is a severe form of dissociation, a mental process which produces a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity” is a direct quote from WebMD’s mental health page explaining DID.
This feeling of dissociation is something that I felt both my characters could relate to and is something I want to expand on. When writing, I also began investigating different forms and structure of short stories and came across Edgar Allan Poe’s rules of writing a short story as well as his works. I was particularly inspired by his short story ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’‘. After reading that specific work, I felt quite shocked as I could feel his character’s personality, tone and feelings.
It felt like I was just in the mind of a schizophrenic killer, and the way Poe had written the story had me immersed completely. I want the readers of my text to become completely immersed into my writing and go through an ‘out of body’ experience like one would if they were having a dissociative episode. I want the readers to step out of the world they are in now and go somewhere else, and when the story finishes I want the audience to feel the way my characters experience feelings of depersonalisation and derealisation before they return to reality and start questioning human ways of thinking and acting.
Although I have an idea of where my story is headed, there are many elements of the short story that need further development. Although I know all the main themes, concepts and ideas I would like to include within my short story, the plotline still remains uncertain, and needs improvement if I want it to fit with Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘rules’ of what should be in a short story.
For improvement, I will have to find a simple plot line that includes a complication in which I can include all of my ideas. I also need to have a further understanding of the characters within my story, and decide who they truly are and how they will act in the situations I am putting them in. I also have to remember to humanise my characters, and not get too caught up in my fantasy theme and make them unrealistic.