THE MAKING OF: “OUT ON THE STREETS”

I’ve always wanted to make one of these! This is the first ever process page to hit the blog although I’m assuming you’ve just read Out on the Streets. If not, it’s right here! I actually went on like a three minute detour trying to figure out if the “streets” in the title was supposed to have an “s” or not. (I never actually figured out what it was named originally.)

This started off as a short semi-interactive story I wrote for my English class in 2018, I think, when I was a sophomore in high school. We were doing a sub-unit on old illness, like diphtheria and tuberculosis, and the illness my group got was the black plague. Back then, it was apparently called Out in the Streets and not Out on the Streets; a slight name change always seems to happen when I rewrite something.

Anyway, I haven’t read the original in a while, but I still do have a copy of the presentation that I duplicated before my school account got wiped. Then it just sort of sat there. The slides still have the original file name, “black death storytime lol.”

The sections of the story were originally divided into days, which were clearly indicated by a byline. This was to show the rough timeline someone could expect once they were infected. This was instead replaced with the spacers; I wanted the protagonist’s sense of time to move from concrete to disoriented after the symptoms of the plague set in, although admittedly it looks a lot jankier than I was intending.

The detail about the protagonist being a body collector was something from the initial draft; I needed him to be in close proximity with the plague, plus I thought it was interesting. The mother and child were also there, though the rewrite places more emphasis on them since this moved from being about the symptoms to about a fate. This was also the first time I used a curse word in my writing, that being “damned,” which I also read aloud in class. I’m just now remembering this, haha. Perhaps having to read my own writing aloud in class made me suppress the memory.

The title was a callback to this line from the first version, which I think I pulled after failing to come up with something other than “black death storytime”:

You hoped that, by tomorrow, you would be out on the streets, lined up with the rest of the corpses awaiting their burning. Should you find yourself still in bed, you didn’t think that you could take it. 

(Hmmm, maybe I should’ve kept this one…)

It was about a few weeks ago that I opened the document harboring the story on iCloud, and I wanted to revamp it. Originally, I only rewrote a few lines since I’m trying to get out the habit of constantly revisiting and rewriting old stories, but I started getting the urge to change more and more, and thus decided that I should do the entire thing if I were going to publicly attach it to my name.

This is actually pretty much the first time I rewrote a project without referencing the original at all. Even though I like to preserve little details I wrote in the first one, I sometimes find myself limited to stale ideas if I look at the old before making the new, since the old stuff sticks in my mind long after I view it, and then muddies all of the new creative waters. So this one was done blind!

Initially, my reasoning for not rewriting it was because I had different plans for the story. I planned on turning it into a semi-interactive story. This was around the time I was doing a lot of coding for my Neocities website, so I thought I’d be fun to require a simple code that required you to click the final sentence to load the next part of the story. I might actually still do it; my plan was to host the non-interactive version here, and host the “coded” one on the Neocities container, assuming I even still decide to finish the site (and I probably will).

While I wrote this when my knowledge of the plague was fresh, I actually had to go back and revisit a few things about the plague and plague times in order to make sure I knew what I was writing about, haha.

The main research points consisted of the body collecting job that our protagonist has, and the actual symptoms/timeline of the plague once you contract it.

This sticky note outlines part of my thought process pretty well:

So the thing with the pus and blood is a redirection. Keep in mind, the guy was already bitten at the start of the story, and he described scratching his skin raw, which meant open wounds. This one study even describes there's no direct human-to-human trasmission of plague through any body fluids other than respiratory droplets, and some direct tranmission only occurred after close and prolongued exposure (which would make sense for a body collector). 

HAHAA it even says the ones who contracted bubonic plague had open skin lesions on their hands or arms, which was a viable route on transmission while they handled carcasses! bingooooo. It's not the most reliable route of transmission, but it does become more likely when you have cuts or abrasions that are still open. Which, like all infections, makes sense. There, however, is an unknown length of time of infectiousness of human corpses, specifically their body fluids. Aka, we don't know how long human corpses are contagious for. There's evidence for plague transmission from human corpses, like transmission from bodily manipulation. "Direct skin contact with infected body fluids (mainly blood; it is unclear whetherother body fluids might also be infectious) could cause bubonic plague, or when a person has cuts on their hands, eventually septicemic plague." 

Bubonic plague can develop into septicemic plague. 

I wish I’d have taken note of the date for this before cutting it, haha.

The fun part was getting to read all of the scientific journals outlining the transmission of the plague!

Usually the research aspect comes before the writing process even begins, but since this was a rewrite, I had to frequently jump back and forth to incognito mode to answer questions as they came: body collection during plague, how were bodies handled during the plague, plague symptoms, etc. Then reading, and more reading, all of which was very insightful.

(In other fascinating news, did you know they actually found the origin of the Black plague? It was here! I read this back in October. Apparently they found traces of it in the teeth of corpses in a mass grave in Kyrgyzstan! Cool, right?)

The rewriting process officially started on November 18, 2024, with the bulk of the writing taking place on November on the days of the 18th, 20th, 23rd, 24th, 27th, and 29th. December accounted for three days- the 7th, 27th, and 30th. Finally, I moved everything over here to WordPress on the first of January 2025, where I then rewrote everything again over the course of the next four days. Today, the fourth, actually accounts for the least amount of writing- it was mostly about fixing the last four miniature paragraphs!

Overall, this was a very fun experience! I used it to break up the time between writing my novel and creating What’s the Rush? It kept my writing muscle sharp in the midst of outlining, where I have to reel myself in to not start throwing out prose when I should be planning!

And there are memories to go along with this story. I went last when presenting this, so I was rushing to finish reading it before the dismissal bell rang, lol (I’m noticing that seems to be a trend here…). My English teacher at the time again told me I should consider taking English honors. I was really lazy at the time and wanted more time for animating, so sorry I never took it, Dr. Watkins!

And now, for the final results!

Stats:

Total writing time: 13 days total, mostly in November

Final word count: 3,339 words (my fave!)

Started: circa 2018 (first version), November 18, 2024 (rewrite)

Finished: January 4, 2025

Programs: iCloud, Google Docs

Are we satisfied with it?: Yes! Mostly.

Thank you so much for reading my fictional short story and my process post! If you’re interested in anything else I’ve made, I also have more. But that’s just a suggestion. Maybe a recommendation. I hope you enjoyed! Have a nice day!

— Happyface ★

Sources.

Jullien, S., Nipun Lakshitha de Silva, Paul Garner. “Plague Transmission from Corpses and Carcasses.” PubMed Central, 27 Aug. 2021, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8314843/.