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© 2014
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| Technical Aspects | |
| Story length: | 1,972 words/8 pages double spaced |
| Voice: | First person, past tense |
| Genre: | Contemporary fiction |
| Copyrighted: | © 2014 |
| Story information | |
| Main character: | Unnamed neighbor |
| Character description: | An empathetic person who becomes friends with Hope |
| Supporting characters: | Hope: A young woman with agoraphobia Hope's mother: An unsympathetic woman who keeps trying to bully Hope into leaving her home |
| Setting: | Contemporary times, urban setting, inside Hope's apartment |
| General Plot | |
| The protagonist comes to Hope's home and offers her a casserole. Hope invites her neighbor in and offers to host if they can eat together, and they end up discussing her agoraphobia and the protagonist's motivation in coming to Hope's apartment. Hope gains perspective on her own agency in her life, with many parallels to the Pandora's Box myth. | |
| Information, inspiration, and other notes | |
| This was my first published short story. There is more about my thoughts on the story in the about page. I was inspired to write this story based on a writing prompt from Timeless Tales, which was looking for Pandora's Box–themed retellings. I like to choose odd perspectives for the point-of-view characters, and wondered if the story of Hope from the myth had ever been attempted. I wondered if Hope felt trapped in that box, and remembered a discussion with a friend about how we remembered that myth differently (I remembered her coming out of the box; he remembered her staying in). The idea sort of came from that. Also, this story is notable because the protagonist's gender is not known, and I'd like that to be up to the reader. This is my first short story accepted for publication for compensation. Its original title was "Hope Came Out" and its first version was slightly shorter and more explicit about the Pandora's Box references. | |
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