We’re Fucked, Pt. 121: AI-generated audiochapter

Can’t enjoy your morning coffee in peace. This audiochapter covers chapter 121 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.

Cast

  • Leire: a blonde thief from good ol’ days of non-corporate Bethesda
  • Irish Jacqueline: a youthful, slightly unhinged gal from something called Genshin Impact
  • OG Jacqueline: redheaded mage, friend-with-benefits of a monster hunter

I produced audiochapters for the entire three previous sequences, and I intend to continue until the novel ends or I prefer to stay in bed all day instead, letting gravity do its work. A total of five hours, twenty minutes, and fifteen seconds. Check them out.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 121 (Fiction)


The amber-and-gold glow of dawn bathes a bearded man clad in animal furs. He’s standing barefoot on grass that glistens with dew, his rugged figure framed by the maw of a cave. The man’s face bears the marks of the sun and wind, and his thick beard is matted with traces of last night’s campfire. Around his neck hangs a necklace of teeth and bones.

As the man squints against the rising sun, he raises a steaming cup of coffee to his lips and takes a sip of the bitter brew. When he lowers his gaze, a jolt of surprise shakes him, causing his hands to jerk and the coffee to splash over the rim of his cup. His eyes widen, his mouth falls agape, the tendons in his neck stiffen. A shaggy, hulking ground sloth slams against the man, thrusting him backwards into the cave. The steaming cup sails in an arc through the air, trailing streaks and droplets of coffee that gleam orange in the sunrise.

The warm weight of a body is draped over me like a heated blanket. Two hard nubs are poking my upper back as a petite bosom presses against me, and more conspicuously, a pulsating shaft is pumping inside the slippery channel of my vagina.

I stir. Although my eyelids peel open, either I have gone blind or the rolling shutters have sealed the bedroom in blackness.

Soft lips nuzzle the crook of my neck in kisses that coax ticklish shudders through my spine. I feel the rise and fall of her chest, along with the beating of her heart.

“Good morning, ma chérie,” says a light and airy voice, high as the upper notes on a musical scale.

My breath hitches in my throat, my muscles tense up. I’m trapped in this person’s grip: she has wrapped an arm under my breasts, and with her other arm, she has caught me in a headlock. Who the fuck is fucking me?!

As my panic escalates, my mind paints a picture on the canvas of darkness: vibrant, wavy copper hair cascading down; a constellation of freckles dusted over porcelain skin; coral-pink, well-hydrated lips like velvety rose petals. I relax, then lean back into Jacqueline’s embrace just as one of her hands glides down to caress my abdomen.

“And what a beautiful morning it is,” she purrs.

“D-did you fall asleep with your dick on?” I utter in a voice raspy with sleep.

My ear fills with soft giggles, the tinkling of tiny bells.

“More like passed out, after I drained myself deep inside you. No wonder I slept so soundly. Today I have woken up snuggled up to ma moitié, my erection nestled between her ass cheeks, and I figured that I could help her start the day off right.”

She’s rocking her pelvis, prodding the length of her penis inside me with a friction that brings forth a wash of slippery juices.

“Ah, ça c’est bon…” she murmurs, her voice quivering with the rhythm of her thrusts.

“Wh-whenever you grow that dick of yours, you turn into a wild beast.”

“Don’t you love to wake up to the feeling of mommy’s cock plowing your insides?”

“Of course I do. I purely pointed out a fact.”

“You’re right, though. I become a wild animal driven by the need to hold you tight and fill you up with cum. And that, mon bébé, is what I intend to do.”

As her throbbing hardness grinds inside my velvet chamber in an undulating motion, rubbing against every fold and groove, pleasure rolls up from my loins in delicious waves. A hand fondles my right breast, kneading its plump flesh. Her fingertips trace the pebbled surface of my areola, and when she pinches the nipple, a bolt of ecstasy lances through me. Her hot tongue travels upwards along my neck, leaving a trail of fire. Her lips close over my earlobe, which she nibbles in electric prickles.

Sighs and whimpers keep escaping from my throat. I reach for the back of her head and intertwine my fingers with her silky locks.

Jacqueline’s hand slithers down from my breast, along the concave plain of my abdomen. Folding my right leg, I plant my heel on her thigh to offer better access. Her hand reaches the patch of curls above my slit and begins to rub circles on my turgid clit. Meanwhile, her pulsing shaft withdraws with squelches, sluicing my arousal out and spattering it onto my inner thighs, only to plunge deep again. The furnace-like heat inside me is coiling tightly. Her swollen glans nudges my cervix, making my toes curl. The muscles of my pussy clamp around her in rhythmic spasms as if trying to suck her deeper.

I attempt to muffle my whimpering moans with the pillow, but Jacqueline’s other hand, still securing a headlock, coaxes my face towards hers. Our lips lock, and her tongue slides against mine in a velvety dance. I can’t help but moan into her mouth. Once she pulls away with a wet smack, she speaks breathlessly.

“Oh, I wish I could stare into your puppy eyes now, mon trésor, at that face distorted by lust-glazed adoration. I can’t wait to see your belly swell and your breasts engorge with milk to feed our child.”

Our child? We can’t have a child of our own. It’s not driven by the fear of miscarriage or labor fatality alone, serious as those risks may be: the spare bedroom where Jacqueline filmed some of her camming sessions has become Nairu’s room. Would we compel our Paleolithic artist to endure a screaming baby and piles of soiled diapers just so Jacqueline and I could experience the luxury of a biological offspring? What about our second child’s individuality, forced to share a bedroom growing up? Well, we could move into a bigger home, like a castle; my wealthy shapeshifter could afford it, and if necessary, I’d pester my interdimensional stalkers into paying for the renovation fees. But a baby produced from our combined genes would be ruined by a legacy of sexual deviancy. Even worse, he or she may inherit my anxiety, my intrusive thoughts, my obsessive tendencies, my self-loathing, my depression, my compulsive masturbation. That kid would be doomed to a lifetime of misery. And what if I become the sort of mother who locks herself in the bathroom with a bottle of scotch? It should be illegal to give birth in a world that is falling apart, a world from which I’ve looked forward to removing myself.

One lucky spermatozoon belonging to my French-speaking, child-adoring, shapeshifting secretary, as well as on-and-off cam girl, would pierce my egg, implanting the embryonic progenitor of an uncharted genus within my womb, a cradle that might call forth an entity hitherto unknown: perhaps an ice-breathing chimera from a prehistoric environment so distant that its memory was erased from the earth. This fetus would drain life-giving nutrients and oxygen from my body, transforming my blood into sludge and my heart into a stone like my mother did to my father, like she did to me since I emerged from her vagina squirming and screaming in indignation. Such a parasite wouldn’t wait for post-partum psychosis to prolong my agony; given the chance, it would slit open my midsection and crawl out of my guts like a creature of legend: winged, multi-legged, clawed, and with a maw of serrated teeth sharp enough to tear through the fabric of reality.

Oh, who am I kidding. Last Friday at the office, I had trouble concentrating on my code because I kept picturing the sweat glistening on mommy’s ivory-white skin, the smooth ridges of her toned thighs, the jiggle of her breasts, the roundness of her ass in my hands, and my nose bleeding again from the exertion of sucking her cock. My fingers itched with the desire to type dirty messages into her DMs and send photos of my wet cunt. I long to be ravaged into submission in the missionary position, in cowgirl, on all fours. I’m a slut-lady who serves mommy’s mammoth member, and I can’t wait for her to commandeer me as a container to concoct cum-sticky creamsicles.

Jacqueline is panting, her breathing, ragged and moist, tickling the shell of my ear. Her arms are wrapped tightly around me, pressing me closer. Her heart pounds against my back. Her cockhead batters the back of my vagina as her fingertips strum my engorged clit with growing urgency, milking waves of tingly sparks out of my nerves. I’m drooling into the pillow, pinned against the mattress, caught in a vice of bliss. I clasp my arms around hers and hold on tight. Mommy will splatter her gluey seed into me soon, maybe while twitching on top of me and whispering enticing filth.

“You’ve been loving the daily doses of mommy milk,” Jacqueline whispers, “haven’t you, mon ange?”

I turn my head enough to unmuffle myself.

“More than you know.”

“Then beg me to breed you.”

“P-please, mommy, make me your broodmare. Fill me up with your fertile spunk until I explode.”

Her breath catches in her throat.

“My love,” she pants, “you make it difficult to control myself. Don’t worry, mommy is about to give you a bellyful of babies.”

The bed creaks and groans while Jacqueline’s hips hammer at my ass with violent fervor, in meaty, echoing slaps. The pressure within me builds and builds, swelling to a fever pitch. I’m writhing, mewling. When the dam bursts and a flood of pleasure rushes through me, a sprinkle of stars flashes against the blackness. I quake from head to toe, overcome by the euphoric tsunami, but I still feel the veins of Jacqueline’s cock throbbing against my clutching walls as its length twitches. With her face buried in the crook of my neck, she lets out a long, shaky sigh, and the spasms of her climax seize her in waves. Hot gushes of her cream must be splashing deep inside me in ropey spurts.

When our orgasms ebb away, our breaths have synchronized, and our skins are melding into one lascivious, dewy whole. A peace shimmers inside me like the sunlit surface of a still lake.

Jacqueline’s fingertips draw swirls on my lower abdomen with a delicate, feathery touch. Her shrunken shaft remains lodged within me.

“Do you think I’m greedy, mon coeur?” she asks, her voice honeyed with contentment. “You’ve given me such a sweet child to love and nurture, but I want another one made of us both.”

“That’s fine. Just don’t leave me to fend off for myself in the streets.”

“How could I ever abandon my darling? You’re stuck with me, whether you like it or not.” Jacqueline caresses with her warm palm the stretch of skin between my bellybutton and pubes, as if rubbing a pregnant belly. “What do you think it’s going to be? A boy or a girl?”

“That’s assuming that the kid can’t turn into one or the other at will.”

“Oh dear. If so, she better figure it out only after she turns eighteen. What a complicated childhood would await our little person otherwise.”

“We might also end up with a genderless blob, like sentient pudding.”

Jacqueline giggles, her breath hot against my neck.

“Seriously though,” I say, “I do hope it’s a girl. I wouldn’t know how to handle a boy.”

“Oh, I know it already, Leire. It’s a girl.”

“Well, if it isn’t, let’s not try to turn him into one. My parents screwed me up enough; I wouldn’t want to do the same to another being.”

Babies, with their squishy cheeks and button noses, with their flailing limbs and drooling mouths, fling sticky mash on people when they aren’t pissing and shitting themselves, but they don’t intend to be rude; they just want for someone to wipe their bottom and put a nipple to their lips. The worst thing in the world, besides having your teeth torn out by rabid dogs, is forcing your child to confront the alienating forces of society alone. Fret not: Jacqueline and I will stand alongside him or her, safeguarding our spawn against the raiders and cannibals of the wastes.

Piano notes of bell-like clarity, cascading like crystal droplets, light up the darkness with an ethereal touch. However, that glow comes from my cellphone’s screen, resting on the nightstand beside Jacqueline. One of these days I’ll change my alarm melody; it’s unfair to associate Chopin’s Nocturnes with the mundane dread of having to wake up for work.

Merde…” Jacqueline grumbles. “Time to get up, mon lapin.”

She twists her right arm out from under the covers, and turns enough to reach over. The melody cuts off; she must have swiped across the touchscreen. Paired with a faint electronic sound, blackness descends on us again.

I could try to convince myself that I imagined the alarm going off, that I can look forward to hours in the warmth of Jacqueline’s embrace.

“Let’s pretend for a while that everyone other than you, Nairu and I have died.”

Jacqueline presses a kiss on my temple.

“Believe me, I’d rather you stay in bed all day with a pillow tucked under your hips, letting gravity do its work.”

I sigh.

“I guess I have to play along with the farce of normal life, one pointless website gadget at a time.”

Jacqueline disentangles herself gently, withdrawing her left arm from under me. She unplugs my vagina with a moist slurp. In a rustle of bedclothes, the weight of her body lifts from the mattress. Her warmth won’t linger long.

I roll over toward Jacqueline, then grope around for the switch of the nightstand lamp. When it clicks on, its light brushes across the wood-grained surface of the furniture, revealing its dark-espresso finish.

As I blink my bleary eyes against the brightness, I get a glimpse of a fiery copper mane mussed by sleep and sex, of sienna-colored freckles scattered over the milky porcelain of a lithe figure, that of a swimmer who may have emerged from a river, or the sea. Instantly she shifts into the taller, hourglass shape of Jacqueline-but-French. I want to bite into that plump derrière.

Her arms sweep upwards in a fluid motion to reach overhead, and the muscles in her arms and arched back tense as she stretches. A groan of comfort escapes her mouth.

Jacqueline gazes down at me over her shoulder, her cobalt-blues alight, her lips parted in an amorous smile.

“Go take a shower, ma lumière. I’ll wake up our little one, then prepare us three a hearty breakfast.”



Author’s note: today’s songs are “VCR” by The xx, “Bodys” by Car Seat Headrest (also this fantastic live version), and “Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2” by Chopin.

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. A total of two hundred and one videos. Check them out.

Would you prefer to listen to this delightful chapter in audio form? Check it out.

This chapter kicks off the second-to-last sequence, titled “The Great Pretender.”

Life update (12/01/2023)

This morning I woke up spontaneously at three in the morning because my balls hurt. At this point I’m quite sure I’ve got an inguinal hernia, and trying last night to push the protruding fold of intestine back into my body wasn’t that good of an idea. I’m supposed to visit my general practitioner about this on the 13th. I was already awake, so instead of going back to bed, I sat at my desk and worked on my novel until six in the morning.

After a tiresome day at work, I returned home to find out that my elderly cat, about seventeen years old, had jumped out of the balcony. Although she’s on her last leg and at times I’ve feared that a simple scare would end her, she managed to survive wandering around the neighborhood for hours. One neighbor recognized the cat, so I have her back. However, since a couple of days ago, it’s like a switch has flipped in this cat’s brain, and suddenly all she does, apart from sleep, is either roam around the place as if she’s looking for someone, or stare slowly at her immediately surroundings as if in a daze. When you put her down on a surface, she lies there in the same position, as awkward or uncomfortable as it may be. She doesn’t purr anymore either; I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t recognize me. Maybe she had a stroke or something. Three weeks ago she went through her first scary illness, some sort of pneumonia. She wheezed constantly for about five days, but she had seemed to recover fully from it. Her current behavior came out of nowhere.

My other cat, the previous cat’s only surviving daughter, has looked even worse for weeks. She started peeing out of her box, in other rooms, for no apparent reason. She also meows at me as if to point out the fact that she peed somewhere else. She has gotten thinner and thinner, practically skeletal, and her meows have become weak mewling. The vet didn’t seem to find anything wrong with her other than being old. She’s on special food, but she isn’t improving.

Years ago, my first cat was killed by a pitbull. I suffered the first breakdown of my adult life, after a total mental breakdown at about 18 when I realized that life wasn’t going to get any better. After that cat died, I cried and cried for what seemed to be hours, and ever since, I only need to remember her in order to get teary-eyed again. I don’t even remember good moments that aren’t tainted by the fact that she died. Although these surviving cats won’t die the same way, I anticipate that my brain will store their memories in a similar fashion: the associated pain will get added to the mound accumulated in these last thirty-eight years of living, and to keep sane, I’ll have to forget them as best as I can.

I’m not coming up with any original idea when I say the following: I’d rather have a loved one die suddenly that waste away to the point that death would be a mercy. I haven’t experienced anything worse than creatures I loved becoming so sick or broken that I couldn’t do anything but put them down or wait for them to die. I have decided that I won’t get any new pets after these ones; I have a very limited capacity to tolerate daily anguish without losing it, and I have always been on a tightrope in that regard.

My brain is likely broken when it comes to memory-making: I barely remember any good moments, as if genuinely I hadn’t had more than I can count with one hand, while the bad memories are like a hill I’m regularly forced to clamber up, thanks to intrusive thoughts and insomnia. I’m not sure if a lifetime of chronic depression is responsible for that. In any case, you become a cautious human being: why would you risk meeting new people or having fancy experiences, when in the end you’d only add to the growing pile of misery?

I’ll never be a father, but there’s that cliché of fathers refusing firmly to get a cat or dog for the kids. Soon after the pets appear, though, that father becomes enamoured with them. Of course you are going to love them. And when they die, it’s going to break your fucking heart.

Although I sound like I’m despairing, I’m either not, or I’ve adopted over the years a sort of automatic stoicism because the alternative is losing your mind and jumping off a cliff. I expect everything to get progressively worse, and as if to prove me right, it more often than not does.

Regarding this whole thing, I think about the following Jason Lytle song somewhat often:

Anyway, tomorrow Saturday I’ll wake up at about six or seven in the morning to finish editing the next chapter of my ongoing novel. It’s going to be a juicy one. After two years of living vicariously through that tale, I have no clue how I’m going to find myself once I can’t look at the world through that framework anymore.

Life update (11/30/2023)

Yesterday I left work early so I could travel to the hospital at my hometown for a stress test, related to my heart issues. After I waited for an hour, I was ordered by a bickering couple of doctor and nurse to get naked from my waist up, attach some complicated shit to my chest, including a mesh that compressed my torso, and walk on an incline treadmill until my lungs couldn’t take it anymore. By the end I must have been a minute away from getting woozy. As an on-and-off weightlifter who also moves computers and computer-related devices around for work, I’m not a stranger to exercise, but I don’t do cardio. I hate it quite a bit, in fact.

Anyway, my heart didn’t explode. The doctor said that my case of (jab-induced) arrhythmia isn’t particularly bad, but if my episodes don’t pass spontaneously after an hour without medicating myself, and after four hours if I take flecainide, I should go to the ER. They will probably stop me from suffering an aneurysm or a stroke.

That’s one of my health issues more or less handled, apart from the fact that I’m taking beta blockers in perpetuity for now, although I’m experiencing plenty of the side effects of long-term use (disorientation, short-term memory loss, dizziness, depression, etc.). Out of nowhere, a few days ago I experienced a different, more awkward health issue that I’ll proceed to describe in detail.

One of our network cabinets at the hospital complex where I work has switches mounted so high that you need a ladder to manipulate them. Unfortunately, no ladder would fit in the narrow space between the front of the cabinet and the wall, so we steal a walking aid from one of the departments, and haphazardly perch ourselves on it. I did that for about ten minutes as I followed some connections. A short while after I got down from there, as I was heading back to the office, my right testicle hurt bad, as in “I can barely take full steps” bad. I attempted to stop in every bathroom along the way, but they were occupied, as it usually happens in a hospital with plenty of traffic. Once I got to the bathroom, I didn’t notice anything in particular: my balls weren’t swelling nor going purple, and I wasn’t vomiting from the pain, so I likely hadn’t contracted a case of testicular torsion. I tolerated the rest of that shift while trying to get up from my chair as little as possible.

The following day, my balls no longer hurt, but to my dismay, I detected a lump inside my scrotum, seemingly attached to the inner wall, located between my right testicle and whatever that zone that connects to the abdomen is called. The presence of that solid mass, about half of the size of one of my testicles, could be a coincidence; although I fondle my genitals often, I rarely go out of my way to squeeze the space between my right testicle and the rest of my body. In any case, either this is some cyst-like growth, an inguinal hernia, or testicular cancer. I hope it isn’t cancer, but the others will likely also involve a surgery of some kind. Inguinal hernias can be caused by lifting weights and pushing too hard while shitting, both things that I do regularly (I also have irritable bowel syndrome). One time I pushed so hard that I ended up with petechiae all around my eyes (google it).

A song I’ve been listening to a lot this week, as I’m playing it to get in the mood during the freewrites of my current chapter, has the following lyric line: “Don’t you realize our bodies could fall apart any second?” And that’s how I’ve felt about my body for most of my life: my brain causes me all sorts of problems (due to autism, various mental conditions, migraines), my bodily functions went haywire due to my pituitary tumor (thankfully now treated), I feel bloated constantly and I’m about to shit myself several times myself a day thanks to IBS, my heart fails, a random growth appears inside my scrotum, etc. I only wished for peace and to be left alone, but I’m not even left in peace by my own body.

Whatever. Are you having fun? I’ve been having quite a bit of fun preparing my latest chapter that I’ll have ready in a day or two. I can always look forward to that kind of joy, at least.

Ongoing manga: Nora to Zassou, by Keigo Shinzo

The title translates to something like Amidst the Weeds, or Lost in the Weeds. It’s been quite a while since I start an ongoing manga series and I feel compelled to write about it before it finishes. But this tale hits some of my personal spots well enough, particularly my savior complex, that I, engrossed, nearly missed my stop on the train.

The story follows a police inspector who sets up sting operations on prostitution rings. He’s a reserved guy whose hair has already gone white at forty, and who seems to be going through the motions. During a sting operation, turns out that some of the prostitutes were underage. Even worse, one of them resembles the inspector’s only child, who drowned some years ago.

She’s a runaway. The police send her back to her mother, who proceeds to beat up her daughter as a greeting. In turn, she runs away again. When this girl isn’t overtly prostituting herself, she’s pseudo-prostituting herself by announcing on social media that she’s a poor underage runaway; lots of men offer her a spot on their beds out of the kindness of their hearts. By this point, this girl is seriously broken, having lost the ability to feel happiness, and harboring little else than resentment and hate towards humanity.

The inspector realizes that she has run away again, and fears that one of those men she gets involved with will turn out to be a serial killer who stuffs his victims in suitcases, but legally our male main character can’t do much, other than try to convince the girl’s abusive drunkard of a mother to report her as a missing person. Soon enough, our girl and the inspector realize that they have something in common: they both feed the same dirty stray cat who lives among weeds in the bank of the river. Therefore, this man may not be the kind to take advantage of her. At her lowest, he finds her, and offers her to live with him.

This is a tale about two broken people discovering what happiness may look like. Neither are perfect beyond their circumstances: we learn that the inspector was an overworked, neglectful father, and the girl can easily slide into bursts of rage that resemble those of her mother, causing undeserved pain to those around her, perhaps unconsciously to sabotage herself.

The rest of the story so far focuses on trying to return the girl to normalcy, for example going to class. However, most of the school knows that she used to prostitute herself, and some of the adults that stare at her may be wondering if they could get in the action.

The girl inherited from her mother, other than a simmering rage, the talent to preserve the beauty of the world in drawings. Through art, she’s getting a taste of what fulfillment feels like.

This series may not have reached its midpoint yet. In any case, I highly recommend it to fans of good manga in general, but in particular to those who loved Kei Sanbe’s Erased, and even Inio Asano’s Oyasumi Punpun (which remains my favorite manga series). I didn’t know the newish author, who is thirty-six years old, but I’m getting the feeling that I will read plenty of his in the future: he’s great at depicting nuanced emotions both in his script and drawings, and other than a few moments that were a bit on the nose, I wouldn’t change anything from this series.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 120: AI-generated audiochapter

A ride that will end before we know it. This audiochapter covers chapter 120 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.

Cast

  • Leire: sassy thief who hangs out among rats down in the sewers of Riften
  • Jacqueline: flirty redheaded mage and friend-with-benefits of monster hunters

I produced audiochapters for the entire two previous sequences, and I intend to continue until the novel ends or I get hurled off a rollercoaster. A total of five hours, four minutes, and fifty-three seconds. Check them out.

On writing: Developing the premise #2

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Are you happy with your concept? Then grow a premise out of it. Premises involve a task to be accomplished and a character that must accomplish it in the midst of conflict.

The following notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on building the premise out of prompts, as well as imagining the general structure from the premise.

  • Put your premise in the form of a sentence: My story is about a (character and vocation) who is (death stakes situation).
  • Try to compose your premise such as this: “the story is about a [most appropriate adjective] Main Character whose [fatal flaw] causes him to [what terrible troubles his adherence to the fatal flaw causes him], as he [how he uses his fatal flaw to navigate an increasingly difficult setting/plot] in order to survive by [whatever he feels his needs to feel he’s survived what life has thrown at him]”
  • What if a (flawed protagonist) (encountered some problem) and had to (overcome the flaw) to (solve the problem)?
  • State your premise in a sentence: Some event that starts the action + some sense of the main character + some sense of the outcome of the story. Ex. “A tough America expatriate rediscovers an old flame only to give her up so he can fight the nazis”.
  • A [adjective indicating longstanding social problem] [profession or social role] must [goal, sometimes including the ticking clock and stakes].
  • Write a one-sentence summary that touches on several key story elements: the conceptual basis of the story, the hero, what the hero needs and wants based on a problem or opportunity, what opposes the hero’s quest, and the stakes.
  • Once upon a time there was [ ]. Every day, [ ]. One day [ ]. Because of that, [ ]. Because of that, [ ]. Until finally [ ].
  • A hero faces a problem, a challenge, or a need that launches him down a path of reaction to a new quest. The hero, under pressure from the antagonist and a ticking clock, then proactively manages the new quest toward a desired end.
  • Choices and events should propel the main character into a world far more exciting, different and challenging than the ordinary day-to-day experience.
  • A character is flawed, an inciting incident throws them into a world that represents everything they are not, and in the darkness of that forest, old and new integrate to achieve a balance.
  • Take a flawed character, and at the end of the first act plunge them into an alien world, let them assimilate the rules of that world, and finally, in the third act, test them to see what they have learned.
  • Successful stories plunge their characters into a strange new world; involve a quest to find a way out of it; and in whatever form they choose to take, in every story ‘monsters’ are vanquished. All, at some level, have as their goal safety, security, completion and the importance of home.
  • How is it about rich characters driven by extreme need and passion and going after a specific goal, while facing tough inner and outer conflict along the way?
  • Premise is, in essence, the plot itself, driven by the character’s or hero’s decisions and action, summarized in one or two sentences. It describes a hero’s quest or mission that stems from a newly presented or evolved problem or opportunity and is motivated by stakes and consequences. Finally, there is a villain (or other antagonist, which doesn’t have to be human or even a living thing; it could be a weather or disease, for example) blocking the hero’s path, creating confrontation and conflict that requires the hero to take action to achieve resolution.
  • Conflict is in play, forcing the hero into confrontation. Obstacles create and define that confrontation and conflict. The quest or journey challenges the hero and draws out her courage and claverness, which become instrumental in reaching the goal of the story, and thus the resolution. The pursuit of the goal takes the hero into uncharted territory, both internally and relative to what opposes her, by forcing her to confront inner demons in order to square off with the threatening exterior opposition.
  • Dramatic tension arises from a compelling dramatic question, connecting to a hero who must do something in pursuit of a worthy goal, with something blocking the straight line toward the goal, and with something at stake.
  • How is the plot focused on how it might affect a specific person?
  • Think of your premise as back cover copy, offering up the plot problem your protagonist will face, how it will escalate, why it is a problem, and what it might cost her, emotionally, to solve it.
  • Stories are often built in three acts, which can be regarded as representing 1) the hero’s decision to act, 2) the action itself, and 3) the consequences of the action.
  • Something bad happens and the heroes don’t understand the nature of the problem right away, and it’s the purpose of the middle to figure it out.
  • When we start to solve a large problem, we don’t perceive the size of the problem–and that’s good, because if we did, we would never begin. In most stories, heroes shouldn’t have any idea how long or how much work it will take to solve this problem. They should fully intend to wrap everything up in almost every scene and be overconfident about imminent success until the big crash wrecks those delusions.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 120 (Fiction)


The three of us are queueing on the terracotta tiles of the station, behind a bunch of parents and their pre-teens, when the rollercoaster car glides in. The side frames of its seats resemble stylized waves, painted ocean blue except for golden-yellow flourishes.

One by one, the passengers rise from their seats and disembark. As they step off the station in a cacophony of footsteps, laughter, and animated chatter, Nairu’s gaze follows the children that pass by: their hair windblown, their faces flushed, their eyes wide with the thrill of the ride.

“Each bench only fits two people,” Jacqueline points out.

“Go ahead and sit with Nairu,” I say. “I’ll be right behind.”

The queue shuffles forward, filling up the seats. Jacqueline guides our girl onto the second-to-last bench, and once seated, Nairu slides her butt to the far end. I take off my backpack and settle in the middle of the wooden bench behind them. This car lacks harnesses, seat belts, and even safety bars to grip; when humans built the rollercoaster a hundred years ago, they must have been that eager to die.

Nairu giggles as she sways her head with giddiness. Further down the car, a kid is slapping excitedly on the back of the bench in front of him.

While I stow the backpack between my calves, the car lurches into motion. I’m distracted by the yellow-and-green tent of the carousel below until our car tilts for its inaugural plunge. In a rush of wind and a clattering rumble that makes me vibrate, we barrel down a shadowed, narrow space squeezed between a rock wall and the back of the buildings that house carnival games. Jacqueline has wrapped an arm around Nairu, who lets out a thrilled squeal. The momentum is tossing their tresses in chaotic waves.

We crest the hill only to surge down again, rocketing toward the next incline. A spontaneous grin of euphoria has spread across my face. I feel buoyant, as if the burdens I have carried around all my life had been mercifully lessened.

Before I know it, the ride will end. Some day I will try to remember how it felt to be lifted off the seat of this car as it thundered down a slope, but these sensory impressions will have been distilled into a summary: that today I went on a rollercoaster with my loved ones, and that I wished for time to slow down so this joy would last forever.



Author’s note: today’s song is “Unless It’s Kicks” by Okkervil River.

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout the novel so far. A total of a hundred and ninety-seven videos. Check them out.

Are you too busy to read even such a short chapter? Listen to it instead.

This short chapter, shortest in the novel, concludes the sequence “A Stoic Face in the Darkness.” I originally intended this trip to an amusement park to serve as an epilogue to the previous sequence, but visiting the location ended up providing plenty of notes.

The next chapter will kick off the second-to-last sequence, titled “The Great Pretender.”

On writing: Developing the premise #1

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Are you happy with your concept? Then grow a premise out of it. Premises involve a task to be accomplished and a character that must accomplish it in the midst of conflict. The following are the notes on the subject I gathered years ago from many books on writing. Warning: I can’t be arsed to order these notes into specific subsections.

  • In the context of the concept, create a central issue: a problem to solve, an opportunity to seek, or some other milestone the hero needs to pursue and achieve to avoid dark consequences or achieve something wonderful.
  • How does the story pose a dramatic question, generically stated as this: “will the hero achieve X?” with X standing in for what the hero needs or wants. If X doesn’t happen, it will yield dark consequences.
  • A story inherently chronicles something that is changing. Usually that “something” revolves around a problem the protagonist must solve in order to actually get from the shores of “before” to the banks of “after”.
  • How does the premise give a character some specific problem to solve and/or an opportunity to go for?
  • Almost all successful plays, films and novels are about primal human desires: success (Legally Blonde), revenge (Falling Down), love (Notting Hill), survival (Alien) or the protection of one’s family or home (Straw Dogs). Why else would we consume a story so ravenously? Love, home, belonging, friendship, survival and self-esteem recur continually because they’re the subjects that matter to us most.
  • Test a premise casting it as a experiment that the story would “validate”. Ex. “What’s the worst that could happen if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position and married my mother?”
  • What prompts the need for the task to be accomplished, turning the concept into a premise? Ex. “an evil power searches for a ring that’s been lost for ages, and in order to prevent him from taking over the world, that ring must be destroyed.”
  • You need to give your character a challenge, a need, something to do, something with a purpose, something with stakes, and then layer in an antagonist force, a villain, who seeks to block the quest or path of your hero.
  • How is the core story about what the character needs to do and accomplish to obtain peace and happiness?
  • How is it about what the protagonist has to learn, to overcome, to deal with internally in order to solve the problem that the external plot poses?
  • How would the plot force a protagonist to struggle with a problem, and in the process, change?
  • The journey is one they’ve needed to take for a long time, and their goal is to change their lives for the better, not just return to zero.
  • Is your hero proactively choosing to seize an opportunity that’s materialized rather than merely reacting to a problem (which is something anyone would do)?
  • You need an antagonistic force (usually a villain) seeking to block your hero’s path, then another major twist that sets the hero toward an inevitable confrontation, perhaps with a final shocking twist that allows the hero to confront the villain and resolve the goal, one way or another.
  • Does the core of the story ask a juicy dramatic question with vivid and urgent stakes?
  • What is the story about dramatically? Who wants what, and why? What opposes that? What is at stake, and why? And what does your hero do about it?
  • How is it a compelling situation that requires some specific action?
  • How does the concept imbue this premise with compelling energy?
  • How would the premise leverage the underlying power of concept to become bigger and better than before?
  • Try to match your premise to this definition: “a story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how he or she changes as a result.”
  • Does your premise involve a hero meeting their opposite, assimilating it and changing?
  • Could the premise revolve around something unexpected happening that throws a monkey wrench into someone’s well-laid plans?
  • Does it plunk someone with a clear goal into an increasingly difficult situation they have to navigate?
  • Does your premise involve a character who wants something badly and is having trouble getting it?
  • Does it involve someone with some passion needing to deal with a situation in the midst of huge conflict?
  • Does your hero have a problem or an opportunity that calls for a response in the face of opposition to the goal? Is something at stake?
  • Would this premise translate into an in-the-moment story, one that showcases all the character facets you hold near and dear and positions them as catalysts, obstacles and complications with an external hero’s quest?
  • How does this premise relate to the dichotomy between the external world (how we live among our fellow man pursuing what we want) and the internal world (how we find peace within ourselves by getting what we need)?
  • How does the story involve at least one character being thrown into an alien world, a place that represents everything outside their previous existence?
  • Is there a single yes/no question to be answered by the end of the story? Ex., “Will Dorothy get back home?”

On writing: Testing concept potential of story seed #2

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Once you have ensured that the story seed you came up with connects with you enough, you should probably test its concept potential. The following are the notes on the subject I gathered years ago from many books on writing.

  • Think of the preliminary answers to the dramatic questions that your “What if?” implies. What is inherently compelling and wonderful about those answers the story could provide?
  • See if this could be the case: many different stories could arise from your concept, because it is fresh and different, it is rich with dramatic and thematic potential, it creates a wonderful story landscape and arena for the stories that arise from it, it has massive potential for conflict and confrontation with an antagonist (the villain), and most important, it is simply and almost overwhelmingly compelling.
  • Could it be so high concept that it will draw an audience without any other components? Could it, all by its lonesome, get people saying ‘wow’?
  • Are you sure the concept strikes you as unique and worthy and exciting, so it could be for someone else?
  • Is the conceptual centerpiece going to be compelling to anybody besides me? Can I get outside myself and explain why?
  • Is it so appealing that readers would want to believe in it?
  • Will this concept cause the reader to feel something?
  • How would it make the reader experience wonder?
  • Are you creating a world that will intrigue readers (like The Hunger Games)? Are you creating a world readers will want to visit (like Jurassic Park)?
  • Does it unfold within a setting, time, or culture that would allow the reader to take an appealing, vicarious trip into such a place?
  • Is it so strong that it will make nine out of ten people say that they want to spend some time in that world?
  • Could your concept push buttons?
  • How could you tweak the concept to infuse it with something outrageous, tense, full of conflict?
  • Could the concept contain some intriguing ironic contradiction?
  • Can you make it dangerous, fun and attractive, like the idea of a dinosaur park? Desirable and original?
  • If the concept has been used before, how is yours taking an unique approach, or is framed in unusual or intriguing circumstances (setting/locale or world/local events), or features characters whose careers or passions frame the concept in a fresh, compelling way?
  • Could this concept produce high-concept set pieces that would push the envelope, that won’t look like any other story?
  • How could you twist the whole idea so that it poses an intriguing dilemma or conflict?
  • Are you sure the concept is inherently interesting, fascinating, provocative, challenging, intriguing, disturbing, engaging, even terrifying, before adding character or plot?
  • How would this concept give a premise something to work with, something that fuels that story world, the characters, and the situational dynamics with conceptual givens, suppositions, truths, and constraints that drive and color everything that happens?
  • Explain how the premise is set up to be compelling because of its concept, which contributes rich dramatic fodder to the story that arises from it.
  • How can the concept go deeper?
  • You are holding the secret weapon of storytelling in your hands. Think bigger. Go further.