Over the break, I read the book The Shadow Friend written by Alex North, and found some inspirations for my own project. Its genre is thriller, mystery and horror fiction.
Inner Monologues
Since the story is told from two perspectives, one of them being from Paul’s (the protagonist) perspective, it is written in the first person, which includes several inner monologues which are quite poetic and metaphorical in nature. Below are several examples.
“Asking why was like diving into a black hole. The deeper you went, the less light you found.”
“Back then, it felt like my entire life was constrained and controlled by the adults around me, and yet none of them appeared to have noticed the black flower rotting in the middle of the yard. Or else they had decided it was easier to leave it alone—that the grass it was poisoning didn’t matter.”
“always desperate to please the whole world, but never sure what it wanted”
“There were good memories here too. Moments that, looking back on them objectively, had been filled with light. The problem was that what happened later cast such a shadow they were hard to see.”
I personally resonated with these and would like to try and incorporate my own poems or just quotes that are written in a similar fashion. Not to diminish the story itself, but I guess you could say that I was much more captivated by how this book was written.
The Idea of “The Shadow Friend”
For my project, I plan on incorporating this idea in one of the shots where it shows someone’s silhouette from behind a curtain, as well as a handprint on a misty glass (see images below).
image from Google Images
image from Google Images
This symbolizes that there’s “someone” who will be there for you and is willing to help, even if we don’t know who it is just yet. They’re just waiting for you to let them in. I remember someone saying something along the lines of “I can only help you as far as what you’re telling me.” I also love the idea of a shadow symbolizing how someone may not always be there for you (shadows only appear during certain times of the day), but you know that they’re there, patiently waiting for the right time for them to be visible.
