Meet Eddie: How One Fictional Character is changing the Way People Read
‘Day one at
the Convenience Store, here goes nothing’. These nine words are all the
exposition readers need to kick off The Convenience Store,
an ongoing original series that is fast becoming an internet favorite. The
series revolves around Eddie, a hapless writer left to his own devices at his
banal day-job in a convenience store.
“I think of
Eddie as a regular young person who has discovered a dream, but hasn’t yet
discovered how to reach it,” shares Hengtee Lim, creator of The
Convenience Store. “He’s stuck in a kind of purgatory and trying to
make the best of it.”
A
Look Inside The Convenience Store
Since its
launch, the story has become a reader-favorite on Twitter and Everyst, a social
fiction app. Everyst presents stories that are told through tweets written by
the characters themselves, allowing readers to enjoy fictional pieces that are
uniquely character-driven. The Convenience Store is
one of the leading stories on the app today.
The
Convenience Store is
a series inspired by Lim’s experiences working in retail. “I thought a
convenience store location would be funny and relatable. I was surprised by the
things I saw and experienced while on the other side of the customer service
experience.”
Yet even
then, the continuous development of the series is not without its limitations.
“My own retail experience only covered enough material for the first couple of
episodes, so the creative process now involves asking a lot of ‘what if’
questions and following them to see if they’re funny.”
Telling
Stories Through Social Fiction
Because stories on Everyst
are delivered straight to the audience, many readers have begun to communicate
with the cast from The Convenience Store through
Twitter. This is what makes social fiction truly unique: not only can audiences
easily digest a single series, but they are now empowered with a way to
interact with their favorite characters on a very personal level.
Lim seems
to enjoy leaving interactions at the hands of his characters, sharing, “I leave
that with Eddie, Trevor, and Shifty. They seem to have it covered without
issue. Our readers are a good group who help give Eddie’s jokes a new dimension
by riffing on them- this makes it so easy.” But anyone familiar with the tone
of the stories are pretty sure it’s him!
With this
unique approach to storytelling, Everyst has empowered young writers such as Hengtee Lim
with a platform to tell exciting and interactive stories. “Compared to
traditional fiction, it’s new and it’s different. We’re still learning how to
do it as we go; this makes it flexible, fun, and challenging, in equal parts.”
New
Artist on The Convenience Store
With so
much attention coming to Eddie’s world, the team began to introduce new artists
to its burgeoning roster of talent. Local artist, Bapogichi is one of the
newest additions to the Everyst creative team, working alongside Hengtee Lim,
who’ll begin taking The Convenience Store’s
art in a new, more polished direction.
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