Ideas for an independent story, one perhaps not based on Dad’s girlfriends. Too many characters and too based on real life. Let’s write fiction. Characters: we need them. None based directly on myself, although that is an awesome character to be tapped. We’ll make the dialogue,
“Look like this.” See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? You just slip it on in there, among the text. And talking is exciting, especially for women (who make up 70% of your audience).
“Spiritually, we’ll need motivation.”
“We'll run out, and play World of Warcraft, the massively multiplayer sensation.”
“We’re vain—how about posting shit? In others, we find it annoying and self-focused, but in us…”
“Hmm. I suppose if we were to publish it, it would be like posting it. Back to step one: characters.” The characters, he decided, would have to be based on people he knew. This is what Tolstoy did, and the rest of the masters, and it wouldn’t do to run around copying ideas from the hacks at Writer’s Digest when there was a wealth of classic shit sitting right in his bookshelf. Yet he had no wife, no romantic relationships of substance, and he spent the majority of his time running around, convincing people he was alive.
Was he?
Oh shit.
We didn’t mean to come here, and yet here we are. Would his characters face some sort of existential crisis, like he had? His roommates talk to him, ignorantly, as if we were.