If you’ve read my newest novel, Into the Dark, you’ve likely come across the chapters that deal with a hatch in the ground and Frank running all over the place.

You may have even found yourself wondering:

What exactly does that hatch look like?

Well, today, I’m pulling back the curtain—or, in this case, lifting the hatch—and giving you the blueprints.

It Started With a Hatch

There’s something inherently unsettling about finding a door where a door shouldn't be. A hatch in the ground raises all kinds of questions.

• Who put it there?
• What is it covering?
• Why does it exist?
• And, perhaps most importantly: What happens if you open it?

Frank, unfortunately, doesn't get the luxury of simply walking away.

As the story unfolds, the hatch becomes more than just a physical object. It becomes a doorway into something much bigger—and much darker—than Frank initially realizes.

A Little Behind the Scenes

One of my favorite parts of writing is figuring out the physical details of a story.

• Where are the characters standing?
• How far do they have to travel?
• What's around them?
• What would they actually see?
• How would something feel if you touched it?

Those details may never make it onto the page, but they help me understand the world I'm writing. 

The hatch was one of those details. I needed to know exactly where it was, what it looked like, how it worked, and what was waiting beyond it.

So now, you get to see the blueprint, too.

So What Does It Actually Look Like?

Rather than leaving it entirely to your imagination, I thought it would be fun to give you a visual blueprint of the hatch.

And yes, I spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about a fictional hatch. That's one of the strange joys of writing fiction. You can spend days thinking about something that the reader might encounter for a few minutes, but those minutes matter.

Before You Go Looking for It...

If you haven't read Into the Dark yet, I wouldn't recommend studying the blueprint too closely. There are things beneath that hatch that are better discovered in the story.

But if you've already read it?

Now you can take another look and see if the picture in your head matches what I had in mine.