I started typing up one of the short stories I recently recovered and found myself taking it in a direction I didn't think I would.
The preface is on the first numbered page, as it always was, but it's a lot shorter than it was in the first draft. It's also a bit more haunting.
I have always enjoyed writing about the darker annals of human behavior. In the preface, I lead my audience through some observations I've made regarding bullying and blood lust. I close the preface with "In short, it's about you."
I want to add more of an animalistic theme to the story. The first draft was about lack of empathy, but we have more of it than I had come to believe. The same empathy which keeps us from killing each other also causes us to launch coordinated group attacks against weaker individuals.
Typically, group leaders coordinate these attacks to preserve their social status, and the more submissive personalities in the group feel elevated to a degree of power that they are not typically afforded.
The psychosocial elements inherent in group attacks against a single individual are recycled from one group member to the next, which is why these types of attacks tend to be sustained. There are reports of group attacks lasting as long as three hours.
While group attacks are not the central theme in this story, group mentality is critically important to the subplot, which does examine the darker sides of sociology.
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