In the Making: A Good Citizen

And so it began:

Molly liked to start her day by cleaning her apartment, like any good citizen would. She was alone in the house, now. Then again, Molly always remembered being alone.

My first introduction to the world of Vocal was through the Heart-Shaped Locket Challenge a couple years ago. While I saw many love and romance pieces being entered, I got a slightly different idea for a story: longing.

The story follows a woman named Molly who lives in a very dystopian world. The story is mostly centered in her view of the world and how she observes it. She is a Good Citizen, the highest praise anyone of the ordinary cadre can have. However, everything in her life changes when she finds a loose floorboard in her house with a dire secret hidden underneath, something that sends her on a quest to find the one thing she never knew she still possessed.

The dystopian setting itself, the New Regime, is in many ways a love-letter to more traditional dystopian thought experiments like Orwell's 1984 and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Somewhat similar to our own society (in an admittedly hyperbolic way), one's conceptions of truth, self, and reality can be highly mutable, and the New Regime controls all three of those things with a tight, almost eerily ever-present grip. In many ways, the looming phantasmal omnipresence of the New Regime is similar to Orwell's INGSOC in that it is both a backdrop for the story and the antagonist hidden behind party slogans, propaganda, and the minds of the masses.

Thus, my social commentary is present in the piece, but not overpoweringly so. My intention was to entertain, but also make the audience think. Throughout the piece I sprinkled little hints and tidbits about the setting's history and Molly's forgotten past. Moreover, I leave little clues about the real reason Molly goes on her quest. Due to the risk of spoilers, I shall say no more.

A Good Citizen had the highest number of reads for a story of mine before A Novice Gambit came about, but it had only a few actual likes. This might have been before the like function was added to Vocal, so it also should be said that the comments on it were overwhelmingly positive. As to those to have read my writing outside of Vocal, they know I have two distinct styles of writing: my academic style and my artistic style. A Good Citizen is definitely indicative of my artistic style, which is heavily descriptive and is just as easily spoken as it is read. I have a fascination with stories and human perception of their environment, and that really comes through in my writing. I often use characters as vessels for observation, and the perception of reality often shifts with each character. Also, my descriptions, at any given moment, call upon multiple of the five senses in an effort to immerse the reader in the chosen perspective.

I would say that my artistic writing did get better after A Good Citizen - and for those wondering, I did go back and re-edit significant portions of the text over a year after publication. I learned to use imagery as a scalpel rather than a club, to be precise yet effective (which has also helped my academic writing). I also learned from reading other works that it is more engaging in this genre when people have the chance to digest the work and come to their own conclusions, which I think the updated version of A Good Citizen does. Even though the tone of my pieces can vary wildly, I think A Good Citizen serves as a *ahem* good representation of my expectations as an author. With continuing improvements, my style is down-to-earth but immersive. I want you to exercise your mind's eye and have an engrossing tale to share and discuss with your friends. I want you to play with perspective and perhaps see things from a different view, and perhaps a different reality altogether.

Every now and then, I find myself thinking back to this piece, perhaps adding to it, perhaps expanding it into a novella or book. Life has been a little hectic lately, delaying these plans, but at the very least I have this wonderful thriller to share with you all.