The Lore Behind - Flowers at the Woods Edge

Taking a Behind-the-Scenes look at how I created Flowers at the Woods Edge.

The original short story looked quite different than the final version of Flowers at the Woods Edge. When I began the brainstorming process for my second short horror story, there were some important elements I wanted to make sure I hit. In my first story, I played things very safe. It was more about proving to myself that I could write a short horror story than whether it was good or even solid. Not that I feel it was bad by any means - but it's glaringly obvious it's missing some things.

For starters, I didn’t bother with any character development, character traits, nor did I even give you a name for our protagonist. I also avoid describing the monster - opting for keeping the creature a mystery. This is actually an element many horror writers use to create fear and tension in the story, but I’ll be honest, it also saved me the effort of researching a corn monster or coming up with one myself. The story was a very simple retelling-of-events story, and I’m not mad at it.

Which is a long-winded way of bringing us back to what I needed in this story - a more fleshed-out character with depth, a detailed creature, and it was important to me that I drew on folklore. Everything else, like foreshadowing, for example, was secondary - though they did make their way into the tale. 

One of my favorite folklores is that of the Bluebell, which I learned more about while researching for my coloring book. And while you can find Bluebells in North America, I was specifically interested in those found in Western Europe, as the flower, like the mushroom, is closely linked to the Fae. It is advised when visiting the Bluebell Woods in Europe to never go alone in the dark and never to pick one of the flowers. Angering its fairy could mean a deathly curse or one where you may never find your way home again. This, in particular, is where I focused the core of my story. I liked the idea of the simple, innocent act of a character picking a flower and accidentally unleashing hell upon themselves.

**If you’re curious, here’s a little link to Garden’s Illustrated with a gorgeous assortment of pictures capturing the fields of Bluebells. It literally makes me want to take a trip just to bask in the enchantment. It’s like ripping a page right out of a fairy tale.

Because the folklore centered around the European Bluebell, it was important to build around accuracy. So I played with the idea of college students taking a trip to a Bluebell Forest for the first time, one of the students picking a flower to impress their partner, when all chaos breaks loose. Five people enter the forest, but only one walks out. If I had kept to this basic idea, it might have worked, but the more I played with the story, the more complicated things got. 

I needed a good reason for the group to be there, and then develop the core group's relationship with each other to make it feel believable and not just because I needed them to be there. After days of picking away at the story, this is what I had -

• The main character was going to have an Irish grandmother who gave her an iron pendant as a child for protection. 

• The group is old college friends who take a graduation celebration trip to the UK before life after college pulls them away.

• One of the girls would bring her jack-ass of a boyfriend on the trip, much to the chagrin of her friends. The plan was to make him the antagonist in this situation and the one who picks the flowers - ignoring the tour guide's rules for entering the woods. 

• This starts the chain reaction of the group getting lost, tensions flaring, weird sounds, and the eventual attack of the Fae. 

The main character would escape thanks to her iron pendant. Which is just quite convenient, isn’t it? Anyway, I started the story out with her on the plane ride back to the U.S with heavy survivor's guilt, and then it would lead into the story. Again, this seems straightforward on paper, but it continued to get messier as I wrote. 

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Here is an excerpt of what I had started writing -

There will be families waiting for me when I get home. Anticipating answers that I can not give them. I’m not sure I’m prepared to face the possible rage they might have towards me. It’s crossed my mind a few times that in their frustration, they might blame me. Hate me. 

A group of five, yet I was the only one to walk out of those woods. And with no clear answers as to what happened, who might still be alive, and if they can be saved. So… of course, in their mind - it’d have to be my fault. I know they all wish it were their child in place of me. I can’t bring myself to blame them if they do. But I also can’t tell them the truth. I might have made it out alive, but it feels as though I’ve been cursed.

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The sight was something I can’t quite describe. It felt as if I was plucked right out of reality and transported to a fairy tale. The air was filled with a sweet aroma as the wind created waves of blue across the forest floor. Butterflies were in abundance - dancing happily from flower to flower. Their striking wings added to the ethereal quality of the woods.

I snapped a few pictures with my phone, knowing that the pictures could never do the justice of the sight around me. 

“How long is this going to take?” Henry’s husk of a voice broke through the silence. 

I could almost hear the collective eye rolls of the other girls. 

“Isn’t this better than staying in the hotel?” Eva nughed him. 

“I guess, I don’t get it. It's just a field of flowers.”

It was Saidi’s idea. 

Like most groups in college, we formed in the halls of our dormitory. The late-night hours of final projects, studio hours, and college drama pulled us together like glue. Still, it was the sweetest relief for us all when we threw our hats at the end of the ceremony. 

To celebrate, she thought it a great idea to plan a trip together. Eva was planning on moving to Texas with her boyfriend and Jessica to Pennsylvania to start her Master's. The group was spitting up, and the trip in many ways was meant as a bittersweet goodbye.

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See? Not a great start.

At this point, I felt like I had meddled with too many things. Adding unnecessary elements, there were too many people, personalities, and back stories to keep track of and try to shove in a short story, and I found myself frustrated and back at the drawing board. 

I started by looking at other flowers and their lore within the Americas. I figured I needed to remove the traveling element and simplify the idea to ‘this could have happened in someone's backyard’. I actually started with the Snowdrop. I’m a January baby, and as a winter child, this is our represented flower - so it already has some personal meaning. Thankfully, it actually had just the backstory I needed, as I discovered that it had negative connotations in the Victorian era - seen as a flower of ill fortune when brought into the home because of its associations with graveyards. This was it. For the reason yet to be developed, my character brings the flowers into their home, not knowing they are playing in a life-or-death situation. 

From there, a lot of the story started falling into place. I’m not kidding. Where I had to struggle to make the first idea work, this one didn’t seem to have a problem coming together. I needed the main character to have a deeper reason for bringing in the Snowsdrop outside of “because she wanted to.” This led me to ask myself, “What if this isn’t the first time this has happened?” And that's when I realized I really liked the idea that the Fae had already claimed a victim. This would also give me the backstory and an emotional levity to the tale that I was hoping for. 

Ultimately, I’m quite happy with my second attempt. In the end, I still gave my character a bit of a convenient way out with the cast-iron skillet, but it was very important to me that she survived and got the closure she needed. 

**For those curious, iron was used as protection against the Fae, as well as weapons against them. 

If you like to check out Flowers at the Woods Edge, it's available to read here on my blog, or you can listen to it on my YouTube channel - and if you're interested in keeping up with my writing journey or even my exploration into horror and lore in books and games, sign up to get notifications! 

Thanks for the read, stay safe, and always question the whistle coming from the woods. 

Lys