Story Spotlight is a recurring feature on Nick Writes where I dive into a story I love, hate, or just find something noteworthy in. It’s a nice break from talking about my own experiences writing, and an opportunity to look a little more closely at other people’s work.
If anyone ever asks you if there’s more to comic books than super heroes, give them a copy of the first volume of Locke & Key, written by Joe Hill with art by Gabriel Rodriguez. (And if you're the one asking the question, treat yourself to a copy.) Six volumes in all, Locke & Key is an excellent story, and one of my favorites in any medium. It’s a series I’ll likely come back to for more Story Spotlights in the future. Today, I’d like to look at a scene from the second volume of the series, “Head Games.”
One of the best parts of Locke & Key is the million small, brilliant moments that occur throughout. Some stories hook you with a great overarching plot, but lose you in the details. Locke & Key is not one of those stories. In fact, it’s just the opposite, composed of a million small details and intimate moments that build and intertwine to form a layered and gripping whole.
These moments are not just satisfying from a story perspective. They also show off the talent of their creators. It’s very easy to say a little with a lot—being verbose in and of itself is not a talent. It’s far more difficult to say a lot with a little, something I can certainly attest to. I’ve been speaking for the better part of 27 years, and I can assure you that being concise is not something I’m known for—in any circle. But that shortcoming is not shared by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriquez. They work skillfully with one another to achieve an efficiency in their storytelling that makes every page of Locke & Key satisfying.
The world of Locke & Key is populated by several magical keys with wildly varied abilities. Volume 2 is centered on the discovery of the Head Key, which allows the key’s bearer to unlock a person’s head and see all of their thoughts, memories, and knowledge. Even more impressive, you can take things out and put things in. Want to forget that incessantly irritating coworker of yours? Simply pluck them out of your head for the weekend. Would you like to know the Kama Sutra word for word and diagram for diagram (you dog you)? Just drop it in.
To test out his newfound magic key, one of our protagonists, Bode Locke, picks up a copy of “The Chef’s Bible” and drops it into his head.
In an attempt to verify that what they just saw actually happened, Bode’s brother and sister ask him a question he shouldn’t know the answer to—"How would you make fettuccine Alfredo?" Here’s what happens:
And just in case you missed it the first time, a few pages later Bode decides to help his mother out in the kitchen.
In those two moments, we learn something very important about the abilities of the Head Key: While Bode knows everything he stuck in his head, he doesn’t understand a lick of it.
This scene has always impressed me. More often than not, details like that are spelled out: “The head key could bestow knowledge, but as the children were about to find out, understanding was something else completely…”
While there is certainly clarity in being explicit, there is rarely any finesse. This scene in Locke & Key is slick. It makes its point, and more importantly, trusts the reader to get it. It also adds in the endlessly enticing narrative trick of making you feel brilliant because you know more than the characters in the story (“Guys, wait! He doesn’t understand it! Don’t you see? He doesn’t understand!).
Oftentimes when I’m writing, I get nervous that information will be lost in translation. I don’t trust myself to take something out and still make my point. And I’m gripped by the ever-present fear of “What if they don’t get it?” (Which often really means “What if they don’t get how brilliant I am for including this super cool idea?"). So I hedge my bets, find a way to explain things to death, and then repeat them for good measure. At the end, you’re not lost, but you’re likely not all that entertained either.
This scene doesn’t just display skill, it shows confidence as well on the part of Hill and Rodriguez, confidence both in their own ability to tell a story, and in the intelligence of their audience to make a few connections on their own. It’s a confidence that runs throughout Locke & Key. These are very clearly two people working in sync and trusting themselves, one another, and their readers.
They say confidence is crucial when dating. Turns out, it doesn’t hurt in storytelling either.