Visual Direction Archive
What is the core of your story?
It’s about secrecy, inherited denial, and the myth of “safe homes.”
It’s about the ways we remember what happened without ever being told.
Main & Secondary Themes
Main themes:
• Suburban grief
• Invisibility
• Adolescent dread
• Complicity through silence
Secondary themes:
• Architecture as prison
• The violence of politeness
Location & Mood
A claustrophobic town where all the hallways are too narrow.
Old home
The mood is domestically apocalyptic.
Recurring Motifs
• Hair in drainpipes
• Locked cupboards
• Water stains
• Peeling wallpaper
• A missing girl
Literary Influences
• Shirley Jackson
• Early Kelly Link
Who is your protagonist, truly?
She thinks silence is survival.
She’s been watching the walls since she was six.
She knows how to disappear without moving.
What shaped her?
She was born into a house that she knew nothing about.
No one told her, but the mould told stories.
She inherited her mother’s restraint and her father’s absence.
Also:
Something happened in the guest room when she was eight. It changed everything.
She believes being unnoticed is being safe. This is no longer true.
How does the story evolve?
It starts with delicate innocence and ends in unraveling.
Pivotal Chapters:
• Story 2: “The Wallpaper Isn’t Peeling, It’s Listening” (a quiet one)
• Story 6: “When the Attic Wept” (everything breaks here)
Core Read (1-second impact)
• Dominant image:
Oversized fishbowl = enclosure/display. Instantly readable at thumbnail scale.
• Emotional hook:
Limp girl + full bedroom miniaturised inside glass = captivity dressed as care.
• Narrative tension:
Boy outside, balanced on flowing hair-carpet = relational power dynamic without overt harm. Viewers lean in to decode.
Composition Blueprint
Layout Grid (front cover focus):
1. Upper third (title field): Clean negative white; light typographic weight so image carries emotional load.
2. Middle third: Fishbowl slightly off-centre left (rule of thirds). Bowl rim crisp, high contrast.
3. Lower third: Girl’s hair exiting bowl → perspective stretch → flattens into carpet plane across foreground. Boy tiptoes along hair near right margin, giving directional pull toward spine.
Face Obscuration:
• Girl turned away / hair floating veil-like.
• Boy head cropped at brow (or turned downward mid-step). Keeps symbolic, universal.
Scale & Depth Tricks
• Slight fisheye distortion inside bowl: posters curve, furniture tilts upward = psychological containment.
• Outside world stays rectilinear/clinical—reinforces “this is an observed specimen.”
• Micro bubbles or refracted light streaks across type if you want subtle interaction.
Colour Strategy
Inside Bowl (Memory / Captivity): Saturated candy nostalgia: teals, bubblegum pinks, sun-yellow sticker glow, but slightly cyan-shifted, giving refrigerated museum feel.
Outside (Clinical Present): Nearly white field with cool grey shadows. Desat neutral preppy clothing (navy/cream) on boy for contrast.
Hair/Carpet Transition: Start saturated auburn beneath water; gradually bleach to threadbare beige carpet = agency drained on exit.
Texture Language
• Glass: Hard specular highlights; maybe one fingerprint streak = handled, examined.
• Water line: Just below rim; slightly meniscus-tilted so the girl’s hair passes through—visual “breach.”
• Carpet: Loop pile rendered from strands of her hair. At macro scale (cover close), fibres = hair shafts. Readers discover on second look.
Typography
• Title sits on the hair path, like it’s being towed. Letters slightly varying vertical offset = tension.
Author Name Placement: Bottom right margin outside the composition, in a reduced weight. Keeps the emotional centre undisturbed.
Subtitle / Tagline (if used)
Keep declarative, diagnostic, echoing your line:
“A case study in girlhood, memory, and harm.”
or
“A diagnosis in glass.”
Symbol Layering (micro details readers love)
• Tiny aquarium label sticker on the bowl’s base with catalogue code starting with initials of the character. Suggests institutional classification.
• Poster in bowl: boy-shaped silhouette crossed out, or award ribbons slightly water-damaged.
• Carpet outside: faint grid like test mats from psych labs (Stanford callback).
Spine Treatment
• Narrow vertical sliver of hair strands running top to bottom.
• Tiny fishbowl icon at top; publisher mark bottom.
Back Cover Concepts
1. Reverse Point of View: Looking into the bowl through faint reader reflection ghosted in gloss varnish.
2. Bowl Registration Marks: Diagrams, measurements, like lab specimen notes. Place blurb text in labelled callout boxes.
3. Hair Data Strip: Barcode sits where the hair thins, commodification.
Finish & Production Notes
• Spot gloss on bowl glass & water line; matte everywhere else.
• Raised varnish or clear foil on hair exiting bowl, tactile “pull.”
• If budget allows: die-cut crescent at bowl edge revealing a coloured underlay (memory bleed).