🐐🖋️ The Art of the Dope Reveal – Part 2

Hi there Goat Herd,

Last week I started Part 1 of a series I'm calling The Art of the Dope Reveal, where I talk about how I like to give readers information and how I handle different types of information. Part 1 tackled having information just sitting in the background to be noticed (or not noticed) and how the scene can be recontextualized if someone does notice that detail.

(If you missed Part 1, here’s a link!)

This week I wanted to talk about Things You Need to Know Right Now, and how not giving important information sooner rather than later can make readers ask the wrong questions and analyze the story, or a particular character, through the wrong lens... possibly for years.

A good example of this is the flashback of how Yunika met Siphram in the afterlife. Remember this page? It’s one of my favorites.

Tl;dr: She died, went to the afterlife, learned that it sucked and wanted to find out who’s in charge. Supposedly Siphram was in charge, but that certainly doesn’t look like someone who’s in charge.

So, then here comes Ankhiel to explain everything.

Mind you, Yunika has never met Siphram before this moment. And here’s Ankhiel just causally saying “Yep. This chained up guy who looks very unwell is totally your husband!”

Ankhiel keeps insisting that Yunika is Siphram’s wife who just up and vanished one day. But now she’s back! So mysterious, amirite? Where did she come from? Where did she go? Will she ever remember??

Yunika really doesn’t remember. She had a whole other life before she ended up in the afterlife. Two brothers, two sisters, no husband. Something isn’t adding up. But Ankhiel blames her and says that wasn’t real and Yunika is terrible for “deciding” to leave her husband, allowing him to fall into a state of madness.

Yunika can’t really argue with Ankhiel because… how do you really argue with God? If you’re saying you have one set of memories and God is saying those memories are fake, are you going to believe your own flawed, mortal brain? Or are you going to believe God, who’s supposed to know everything?

And honestly, I could have just left the mystery here.

We learn the truth right away: Yunika is not Siphram’s wife, she’s not a reincarnation of his wife, she’s just Yunika. All of her past experiences were her own and Siphram had nothing to do with them.

Meanwhile, Ankhiel had promised Siphram that if he ascended to be a deity, he would be reunited with his wife, Zireen. However, Zireen isn’t around anymore and for the past few centuries, Ankhiel has been asking the Divine Judicator to keep an eye out for any departed souls that happen to look like Zireen so she can convince Siphram that his wife is back.

As you can see, that hasn’t been going very well considering, she’s went through lots of substitutes and have “gotten rid of them when they were no longer useful.” So not only has Siphram been periodically tormented with people who resemble Zireen, but are most definitely not Zireen, Ankhiel has also been killing off those replacements in frustration and looking for new ones.

THAT’S what I wanted to leave readers with.

It would be such a disservice to Yunika, who has her own life and goals, if the reader spent the next 10 issues thinking she’s just a reincarnation of Siphram’s dead wife and why can’t she remember!?!?

By giving readers that answer immediately, the focus stays where I wanted it. Instead of wondering whether Yunika was secretly Zireen all along, readers can focus on what Ankhiel has been doing to Siphram for centuries.

Next week, I’ll wrap up this series with my favorite kind of reveal: the little throwaway lines that don’t seem important until they suddenly become very, very important.

If you enjoyed this, let me know. I’d love to share more of the creative decisions that shaped Sacrimony.

Talk soon.
-M 🖤