31 Plays in 31 Days, #4 - “Mrs. Barrymore”

My all-time favorite fan fiction writer Christine Morgan, who I discovered in high school as she was writing her sprawling series of Gargoyles fan work, used to do a thing where she would write small, seemingly flavor-and-texture details into her stories. In the current story, they wouldn’t be significant in any way, and often she wouldn’t even know what they were supposed to refer to at the time of writing. But as she continued on with her series of stories, which became truly massive in its number of installments, she would sometimes come back to those details and expand on them, finding an entire story she could tell within it. I always admired that, as it gave the sense of a really broad, cohesive world, without necessarily having to have everything known or planned ahead of time.

I’ve never been particularly good at it myself, but I feel kind of like that with today’s entry. It takes a character whose only feature in the Mrs. Hawking series was a brief mention in one play, and even then only to make a point about other people. It occurred to me that there could be a story in that character, or at least a plot that our heroes could deal with. I don’t know if this is something that would be usable in the next story, though it would make sense with the timeline. But it’s an idea worth exploring, in scene noodling if nothing else, just to see if it has any legs.

I wonder if those of you who have paid attention to the details of the Mrs. Hawking stories will recognize this new character and realize what might be going on as you read.



( Day #4 - Mrs. Barrymore )