This page explores a possible storyline of having the main characters be visitors to a forest, as opposed to natives.
The main characters will probably not be natives, the main question is how much should they be treated as outsiders.
<aside> š” Summary: The visitor plot-line is a one-off, so I want to downplay it due to Extended storytelling, but it would still be good to have some
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Maybe this is an extension of my being a city boy, (though most of my influences seem to have this as well), but I prefer the main characters of the dark forest story to be visitors. There is an added mystery when the setting is foreign for the protagonist.
That is a very different story from a forest native having surprising events happening around them.
In that respect, the visitor direction is a little less folklore, because folklore is usually about natives providing supernatural explanations for happenings around their village.
In classic European fairy tales, main characters are rarely travelers who discover adventure in distant lands. Instead, they are usually ordinary people who find themselves in magical predicaments within the neighborhood they grew up in.
However, in more recent storytelling, particularly in film and games, it is a common trope for a foreigner to arrive in some Germanic wood populated by superstitious commoners. The customs and beliefs of the locals are largely new to the main characters.
<aside> š” Usually there is also a castle at the far end of the forest but I am less interested in that.
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So Iām leaning toward a non-visitor heavy storyline. However, that conflicts a little with my vision of Guest consultant.
But I think that can still work as long as I have two layers.
The lower layer would be foundational and more stable, relying on longevity features.
The upper layer would be a temporal one-off. I would also try to make that layer thinner.
The main test would be whether the bulk of the setting and features could be easily revisited in a later storyline.