kristina hi hi hey howdy hiii howya doin??? sorry if this is totally out of left field, but i'm sitting over here thinking of true love waits in haunted houses (as one does) and i had to ask...are there any behind the scenes tidbits/scenes left on the cutting room floor/fun facts in general you've been itching to talk about at this point in the story? 👀
😭😭😭 queenieeeeeeeee, this is so kind!!! trust me, i am ALSO thinking very hard re: true love waits in haunted houses...at least whenever work isn't throwing me into a total clusterfuck scenario, lmao
I WOULD SAY...a lot of the behind-the-scenes thinking or tidbits i'm most proud of are difficult to talk about without getting into ~spoiler~ territory, LOL. but something unique that i did for this fic specifically was draw up a complete outline -- like, literally draw it, by hand:
my ass sat down in the park for three hours scribbling in a notebook, something i have done neither before nor since, LMFAO. i ended up transferring most of this content into the google doc where i do all my writing (spread out across...many, many subtabs), but this is where it all began :^) i think even from this page alone (the full outline runs to about...four and a half pages?) you can identify a couple of interesting points:
i did rework the title slightly, with apologies to radiohead
some imagery or ideas came immediately ("bedsheet walls like hospital bedspreads", the Bride's look and general vibe -- even if she didn't have that moniker from the beginning), some were a matter of sudden inspiration mid-hashing out the details (see "music! piano puzzle!" in the margins, lol), and some came to me literally halfway through writing a chapter (most notably the mannequins/"sculptures?" becoming anatomy models)
also, many of the things which are simple bullet points here (e.g. "Angela with the knife" or "finds the revolver") got fleshed out into whole scenes, which is part of why the chapter counts DEFINITELY do not match what i have in my outline, LMAO
and some things either didn't make the cut since they didn't flow well (the flower shop, Mary and Laura having a longer initial interaction in the apartments) or I just couldn't find an excuse to put it in (the Bible verse on the bathroom wall)...which isn't necessarily to say they won't show up in some fashion later 🤔
annnnnnnd, since this ask really brightened my day...here is a very small sneak preview of a section to come :)c