Advantagement began as an experiment in writing. Short stories are not my usual medium, but that isn’t really the point.
The original idea was simple: write a story populated with invented words – terms that aren’t random nonsense, but which feel as though they could be English. Words that sound faintly familiar, perhaps even slightly anachronistic. Setting the piece in Victorian London helped with that illusion.
At first, I wavered between vampires and Sherlock Holmes. I chose the latter – though, strictly speaking, this is my own Holmesian invention. Like Holmes, my lead required a trusted companion. And because this would be a short story, everything needed to remain compact: a single focus, no wandering side quests, opening in medias res at a crime scene. Or rather, not a crime scene exactly – a disappearance. The mayor’s daughter is missing. Our team is called in.
The lead became Inspector Peter Holt, named with deliberate irony after the Peter Principle: the idea that people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. Many organisations quietly run on this logic, though few would admit it. Peter embodies the principle – except he is not merely promoted beyond competence; he may never have possessed it in the first place. We have all met some version of Peter.
He is also the fountain of the story’s faux-English bloviation. Keeping him afloat is his partner, Miss Eleanor Hale. A female inspector in the period is unlikely, but not impossible – and fiction allows a little generosity. She is instrumentally competent, quietly effective. Perhaps, in some small way, she is a gender-swapped fragment of autobiography.
In imagining Peter, I found myself thinking of Inspector Clouseau, or even Mr Bean—figures of confident inadequacy. His language, meanwhile, carries a faint echo of Mr Burns from The Simpsons: ornate, misplaced, and entirely self-satisfied.
Hale’s role clarified thanks to my sister, who pointed me toward Agent 99 from Get Smart: the capable partner orbiting Maxwell Smart’s chaos. That pairing felt exactly right.
I usually write in silence. This time, by accident, I discovered a NoFX cover of “Linoleum” and left it playing on repeat for hours while drafting. It is playing again as I write this. Something about its restless, unvarnished energy suited Peter’s linguistic theatrics and Hale’s quiet steadiness.
I owe the linguistic spark behind this experiment to a particular pair of word-enthusiasts whose work first nudged the idea into motion. I am, unapologetically, a language geek; this is only one small corner of that fascination, and I will spare you the full catalogue.
In the end, Advantagement became a pleasant detour from my other projects and ongoing side quests. A distraction, perhaps – but a satisfying one.
Thank you, Donald Barthelme, for the historical inspiration.
I hope you enjoy it.
Ridley Park 