Academia (Chapter 5)

Hello again! Ready for another fun filled day of education, I hope!

The choice to make aprons a focus in this chapter, alongside Mrs. Prescott‘s new outfit, came from this Electrolux ad I stumbled across! I figured that this story could use some new outfit descriptions, since they’ve been fairly static throughout. 

Now, I’d just love to hear all of your thoughts on this chapter after you read it. Down to just two girls left, I’m very interested in seeing who you all think the mole is, and why! 

And speaking of the mole, I actually really want to talk about hooks. Like with music, I think that the more hooks a story has, the more engaging it will be for an audience (as long as you don’t go overboard of course). 

Academia began with a simple premise, that being a school in which women are reeducated and turned into stepford housewives. So there’s the first hook. The second hook is the “criminal” aspect; that each of these women have committed some sort of crime, and this is the alternative to prison. The third hook, which kind of ended up implemented at the last minute, is the fact that one of the girls is a mole. 

Generally, I try to make sure that all of my multi-chapter stories (and my oneshots if I can help it) have at least two hooks. 

The Stepford Game has the board game itself, as well as the reality warping aspect, and the idea that changes happen one at a time, and can be overturned or replaced by something else. Stepford Virus had the infectious nature of stepfordization, as well as the question of whether it would be undone or not, and who would be the next to turn. 

Generally speaking, I hold onto an idea until I can put one or two more hooks into it, before I go ahead with it. I have tons of notes written down for stories, but some take much longer to develop their hooks than others. 

I hope you enjoyed that little look into my writing process lol. It’s just been on my mind lately, as I work on my next multi-chapter story!