Reflection on writing The Mourner Lantern.
What could have been if I wrote this into a novelette?
Warning? This post is reflection so it’s supposed to be raw, brain-fart like.
I think we all know about story structure so the roadmap I will use is the 7 points, 7 chapters. If you have read the story, it is clear that I had a start, a very fast-paced middle, and an ambiguous ending (joke, it’s a bad ending, for the character).
I wouldn’t use elaborative words in this reflection, just me writing out my thoughts so you will have to bear with me lol. Right now, the story is at 2k2 words, to bloat it up to 10-15k words, I need to know exactly where to bloat, how to make the extras interesting to keep you entertained while reading.
Looking at the start (up to where she accepts the monk’s gift). I start quite strong with actions, heated dialogues that drop you right inside the scene. There’s not much to add, but it’s only 1k words. I need at least close to 3k here.
There’s 2 scenes, that’s enough. Add 200 words here, 300 words there, perhaps showing their status quo life more before Yen ran. That would destroy the “grab on the get go” I’ve right in the beginning… decision, decision. Reading back. There’s no place to put meat in, truly, without breaking the tension I have.
There is one trick I could use. The painting of the scenery. When Yen ran out of the house. I could add a 150 word paragraph to paint the village, how the river winds around houses and how people cross using a one-log bridge (There’s that one in my country). She could just stay there, breathing the cold air of the afternoon and felt the difference before her mother caught on. They might have had some struggles before she ran again. That would easily add 300 words.
If I really want to stretch more words, I’ll have the neighbor hear their shouting/arguing and appear on the scene. Uh-uh, more characters, more words, more showing of the culture where the growed up band together to scold Yen. That’s why she ran again. So basically, the 1st chapter now will have 3 scenes instead of 2. That’s 1k5… to the point Yen takes the lantern.
THE MIDDLE, THE DREADED MIDDLE.
Here’s the hardest part. Here’s where I speed run. Let’s chop what I’ve…
The first sizzle & the delta lore. Chapter 2
I didn’t do this part. The first contact with new magic is always the best moment. Decision matters, psychology matters. Would you just do whatever a stranger told you to do out of desperation? No. It has to make sense because the act of litting up the lantern is the point of no return. So naturally, Yen will have a psychological war with whether she should light it up or not, right at this very night. It is a good place to weave in her backstory with her father here to show the conflict within self. The writing steer toward the conclusion that she will light it, but I need to make a swift subconscious change of mind and she will not light it up tonight.
Yen decides to learn more about it. About the monk, about the object, and she will learn it from her friends, of course, maybe from a monk who’s in charge of the village ritualistic lirugist or something (words come weird here). School? Maybe? Farmers back then didn’t even know how to write… but she’s a daughter of a soldier, she might have some privilege, let’s do it. School, talk with friends about the lantern, possibly talk with a traditional monk in a temple.
This is chapter 2. Estimated 1k-1k5 words. When there’s dialogues, word count spike up real fast. Logic, check, tension, check. A bit slower, but allowing me to build more threads for later.
Let’s reach the point of no return right at the start of chapter 3.
This is where she lights her wick of hair. I’ve written it so I must stretch the work out a bit, adding the shadows on the wall. The fingers dancing, making forms like animals, telling a story like her father telling her story when she was little to help her go to sleep. Yes. It will stir her desire to talk back, to think that her father is behind her. Then the earth-worn monk’s words echoed in her mind. She falls to sleep more scared than hoped.
Next morning, slightly show Yen has a little detachment from reality while doing her routine. Small scene.
Big scene, her mother’s wedding day. Fast forward it, description of the house from outside, setting mood, contrast with Yen’s mood, foreshadowing trouble. These ideas could get to 1k words or more.
Chapter 4.
Let’s make a mess of a wedding? Or keep building tension by suppression? Anyway, show the culture & tradition of the wedding first. Yen now feel like being abandoned in the celebration. The stilt house is now loud, full of cheap wine, laughing men, and the smell of roasting pork. In the middle of the noise, Yến sees something wrong—maybe the shadows of the wedding guests on the woven walls are elongated, or she catches the scent of stagnant swamp water cutting through the feast.
The Escalation: Desperate to accelerate her father’s return and stop this reality, she breaks the code. She cuts two thick locks of hair. She overfeeds the lantern. The haunting instantly turns aggressive, physical, and terrifying.
Chapter 5
So now she’s crossing the line, the stakes are rising. Let’s make her detachment harder and add weird/rare things that are not happening in the ordinary… Think.She is tending the poultry, a giant preying mantis stalks a cricket on a bamboo shoot. Suddenly, the cricket strikes with unnatural, vicious strength, snapping the mantis’s forelegs. Then a green pit viper strikes from the leaves, swallowing both whole in a single, wet gulp. Then a hawk whoopses in, takes all 3. Cold narration.
The survival instinct kicks in too late. Yến looks in a mirror or the reflection of the river. Her hair is ragged and patchy from where she’s been cutting it. Her skin has a yellowed, sickly hue—the exact color of the translucent horn panes of the lantern. Her eyes are sunken and bloodshot. These would make around 1k words since there’s no dialogues…
Chapter 6:
Terrified, she confesses to her closest friend. They make a secret trek to a local Buddish temple near the mountains. The moment the head monk looks at Yến, the temple bells stop ringing. He smells the catfish tallow and the burnt hair on her spirit. He realizes what she has let into the delta.
A creative, localized supernatural confrontation.
This shouldn’t be a Western-style exorcism with shouting. It should be a quiet, suffocating battle of wills. The monk tries to bind the spirit using sacred threads, chanting, or holy water, but the Mourner’s Lantern doesn’t care about dharma—it feeds on raw human grief.
The false win: The shadow seems to have lost.
Chapter 7:
Same ending? But have to rewrite it a bit to make it like she’s half possessed. Clue should be from her step father and mother. There could be a great twist here, but it’s too much, or was it? (Warning: things like this are real on the news, evil step-father are reported of touching their step-daughter). That could also force Yen to keep lighting the last wick. If I go that direction, then her ghost father must help her yeet the step-father.
There, my thought process of developing a 2k word story into a novelette. I don’t edit it, nor grammar check it, just raw thought based on a frantic sprint to a slow, suffocating, breakdown.
In case you haven’t read,
Big fan of these writers process write ups. A pleasure to see how you operate and your brain works.
It is interesting to see someone's process open and bare like this. Forming a story, considering beats and pacing. The feeling and intent behind a scene and chapter. Thank you for sharing, and I am looking forward to seeing what you do with this!!