What does the future hold for Bara Cailín?

Bara Cailín began as a simple experiment in writing flash fiction.

I had had the idea of young child teaming up with an elderly academic to save the planet from a cosmic threat for a while and was looking at how best to develop it. Having worked at Trinity College Dublin I also wanted to make this institution an integral part of the story. So I started writing.

I always knew that the structure was going to be episodic, even before I thought of publishing it as a daily serial, and so as I began writing I could see straightaway how the story was going to unfold. The short form really helped as well; allowing me to focus on generating narrative momentum whilst also allowing me to create enough space for other people to fill in their own blanks.

As you know, I have been publishing the daily sections as chapters and this seemed fine to begin with but now that I am at the stage in the story where a natural break has occurred (but yet to be revealed) I have had to reconsider the structuring of the project. In fact it was only this afternoon that the current structure came to me and I have now changed the existing posts and those yet to be published in order to fit this new format.

Essentially, I am now using a Chapter and Verse structure, with each ‘existing’ chapter now becoming a verse. This means that as the adventures unfold Bara Cailín will become a series of chapters, each one containing a series of numbered verses.

The beauty of this structure is that it allows me to retain the story’s episodic nature whilst also delineating clear breaks in the unfolding of Inteachán’s adventures. Another reason for reorganizing the story of Bara Cailín in this way is with regard to the future of the project.

I am currently looking at how I can further develop the series – I just haven’t decided how. I am already working on a screenplay and I can see the story’s potential as a feature, animated or otherwise. But that is just one possibility. The adventures of Inteachán and her struggle to save the world from the NotBeSpeak would also work equally well as an animated series for television or YouTube or any other audiovisual platform. Another idea would be for the adventures to be illustrated and turn Bara Cailín into a novel, graphic or otherwise. As you can see, at this stage I am simply open to any and all possibilities.

The most important thing is that the story will continue as a daily serial published on my blog but who knows what the future will bring?

If you have any thoughts then please feel free to let me know.

What does the future hold for Bara Cailín?