Order 1000061: Short Story

Lost innocence: you could explore a child soldier who has been recruited by Boko Haram and is being forced to kill for the first time. You could then subtly allude to Gothicism and Romanticism through descriptions of location/setting (I.e. The fog is rolling into the village at dusk in a remote Nigerian village, violent screams can be heard in the background, nature is protesting through the groans of the forest). Responsibility and abandonment: you could explore a mother who is struggling with the decision to abandon her baby. This could be set in eerie 1800s London (I.e. Like Oliver Twist) or it could be in modern China (in a society where only 1 child was allowed, infanticide was quite common. Female babies would be killed as only male children were desired) Fascination with the sublime: The character is a grave robber in Ancient Egypt who is fixated on collecting the sublime gold artefacts hidden away in the Pharaoh’s tombs…but there are risks with doing this sort of stuff… Pursuit of dangerous knowledge: You could create a dystopian narrative where the character’s town is destroyed by an atomic bomb. Maybe an air-raid siren has just gone off (to warn of an impending bomb) and the character knows they won’t make it out alive in time. They only have just enough time to reflect on the cruelty of atomic warfare and cuddle their children goodbye. Society’s preconcieved notions of beauty: you could explore an outcast ‘ugly' character (like the Hunchback of Notre Dam) and how this spawns hatred within them.