 Context. The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed. We don't generally give much thought to context in writing, that's sort of the point. The context of a story is often well understood. And if it's ever examined, it's often in the sense of the work's meta-narrative. In this way we may look at something like The Grapes of Wrath, and understand the story told about a depression-era family that was written and published at the tail end of the Great Depression affects how that work should be considered. Things that might seem silly, or melodramatic, or even unrealistic in another time are considered by a reader to be realistic once the context of the work is understood. Of course in this case, there's also the narrative context of the piece. Set in the Great Depression itself, one who is familiar with that period of history, and perhaps not the history of the work, would still have a fair understanding of how realistic some of the book may be. Thinking of context as solely a place in time is only looking at half of the picture. When writing, it needs to be understood that a setting also includes the circumstances of the setting, that is to say the events that occur around the setting itself. Now of course Casablanca is a story that is told with the backdrop setting of World War II, but you could fiddle with some details and change the time and place and end up with a sad love story, but the sense of urgency that the World War II and Nazi regime has, and which drives the plot, would be completely gone. So understanding the context of your work is incredibly important to understanding your own story, and this goes double in flash fiction. In a normal story, you have a large amount of time to play with your setting. Things happen, then more things happen. The context shifts as you go along. This can still be true in flash fiction, mind you, but the shortness of the story actually allows you to play with more interesting contexts. A traditional story is told in third person in past tense. Joe ran to catch the bus, and you can play with this if you want by shifting tenses. Joe is running to catch the bus, or you can play with the context further. The bus kicked dust and gravel into Joe's face. In one version, you've painted a picture, but you can, if you want, paint a whole scene. SCPs double down on this, and it's one of the fundamental benefits of the form. You can control the full context of the work. Will the story you want to tell be more interesting if the documents presented are fully declassified, or will it be better if the guy reading it only has level 2 access? Did the key events of the story happen in the past? Are they going to happen in the future, or are they happening right now? The differences may seem minor, but they are fundamental to the work itself. If a breach happened in the past, the threat is over, and the danger is past. You can then tell the story in a way that builds a certain kind of tension around the characters involved. If it's going to happen in the future, you can build towards that expectation with rising tension. And if it's happening right now, you have storytelling options available to you, but almost no one else gets to play with. Of course, talking about context without mentioning twist endings would be negligent. Understanding a work's context is a fundamental step towards building good foreshadowing and applying a narrative twist. A twist is, after all, a retroactive recontextualization of a work. But I think that's the sort of thing that deserves its own video. What do you guys think? Are there other ways SCPs allow for more flexible options in writing? And if so, what are they? If you liked the video, be sure to subscribe. If you want to keep up with what I'm up to, follow me on Twitter at D. Samarian. And if you feel like supporting the channel, become a patron at patreon.com slash D. Samarian. Thanks for watching.