There are so many stellar lines here. Among my favorites is:
“We’ve outsourced ours to meth and Mad Dog 20/20,” Shoestring interrupted. “We’re just a different kind of algorithm, brother.”
A nagging voice says that "Prophet" might be too on-the-nose for the character. Names like Prophet and Preacher don't do justice to good writing. Would you consider a name that's not quite so common? Something that reveals some other aspect of the kid. "Gandalf" or "Jeane Dixon" (that would be if Marlene gave the nickname because Jeane Dixon would be more her generation). You might be creating an era-defining character, you should give him a fresh name.
Above all, actions define a character. "Tyler Durden" means nothing as a name (except to me) but the character's actions and speeches give the name weight and meaning.
And can we have a quick aside about Mad Dog 20/20? It was the flavor of my high school years. Cheap, chemical, effective. When I was 17, the morning sun peaked over the tree line and illuminated my curled and still-drunk form fast asleep in the flower bed bordering my friend’s garage. His mother was displeased. She drove me home while I watched the world spin from the backseat, wrapped in a borrowed sleeping bag.
These are such writer-ly transitions. Seeing how the story is about web surfing and scrolling, can you invent some device -- a chorus? -- that signals the transition in a way that suggests or mimics online activity?
Brain map some words: Two-finger, refresh, swipe, side-swipe, back-swipe, scroll... Can you invent a system the reader will intuitively adopt as signposts for flashbacks or jumps ahead? This story says something so important, and I'd like to see the language reflect that by being unique. Once you have the system established ("I am Joe's white knuckles") it works like a macro ("The first rule of Fight Club is...") and reinforces the world you create, while it also tells the reader you're shifting around in time/mood.
I'm thinking something like: a single word, its own line. "Refresh." Then we're somewhere else. "Skip." Time jumps. "Buffer." We're stuck in a moment that won't load. The reader learns the system fast because they already know it. They've been doing it all day.
It could get rhythmic. Hypnotic. The way scrolling actually feels. And it solves the Prophet narrator problem too. He can use these words. He knows the language even if he doesn't have the phone.
If you get a chance, check out how Lilly Tomlin transitions between characters in "In Search of Intelligent Life in the Universe." Note how she establishes getting electroshock therapy, and the umbrella hat... beyond that she only needs to suggest an electric jolt to jump to a different character.
Thank you so much. Reading and supporting the other writers here has been really rewarding, and I’m grateful for the platform you provide that makes it all possible.
Once Marcus asks for help, I’d love for his wife and daughter to search Tik Tok about “how to help someone asking for help”, or “what to do when someone says they need help”. It would step on the lack of connectedness between the characters, and how infiltrating their phones/online has gotten into their lives. They could read off contents (pop psychology stuff typical of Tik Tok) and be really impersonal. I think it would fit well with the feeling of the story.
They could add “Tik Tok says that’s a trauma response” or “You check a lot of the boxes for BPD. You should really speak to someone about that” whilst their heads are buried in the screens and faces painted with blue light. So detached and relationshipless.
Firstly, thanks for playing this fun game Chuck started, and for your thoughtful and actionable feedback on my story and many of the other stories Chuck presented for the house calls. You've been a great writing ally, and I thank you for supporting my work and many others in our group!
1—
I liked much of what you presented in the opening. Lines like “Everyone digging. Nobody getting out.” Or “Marcus had a tell. Left eye. Two twitches. Fast like something dying under the floorboard.” These rang true and hit hard. But I wonder if you could build much of this same world in a scene rather than exposition. As Chuck says, “Action has its own authority,” and there is so much to mine from this opening exposition that could be turned into a scene.
Revision: I could see setting the whole scene on the street with Prophet, or at the dinner table as a family eats and scrolls their phones endlessly. You almost go there, presenting the ideas of the scenes as generalities, brief glimpses of quickly shared memories, but I think we, the reader, might be more grounded and engaged a bit if some of that exposition were cut by an elongated and detailed scene with our main characters. Making Marcus’ observations feel earned.
Levi, thank you so much for this. Your notes are thoughtful and really hit home. I appreciate all the insight, especially around building the scene instead of leaning on exposition. It means a lot coming from you and I’ll be adding these ideas straight to the arsenal to make the story stronger.
You mention that Shoestring has killed someone with a shoestring. That seems like a huge set-up. Can we get that story unpacked near the end? Perhaps from Marlene? Better yet, from Marcus' wife! Who's done some sleuthing and has her own motives.
For now the overall story is very linear -- we'll discuss your transitions soon -- so a dense, encapsulated, physical story about Shoestring's killing would offer a different texture. Even if Marcus has to research it or invent it.
You also establish shoe strings as an object. More to discuss. I enjoyed the story immensely!
That's a killer note (pun intended). You're absolutely right. I set up the shoestring murder like it's going to pay off and then just let it hang there. The story stays in Marcus's head too much, circling the same realizations.
I love the idea of Rachel doing the sleuthing. That would give her actual agency beyond being another screen-zombie, and it would flip the power dynamic. She knows something real about Marcus's "authentic" friends that he never bothered to find out. Maybe she discovers Shoestring's real story wasn't murder at all, or that it was, but Marcus had romanticized even that into something it wasn't.
The texture point hits hard too. Everything's internal monologue and abstraction. A concrete, physical story within the story about violence and consequences would anchor all that floating commentary. Make the "realness" Marcus craves actually real on the page instead of just described.
And yeah, shoestrings as an object. I dropped them in and never picked them back up. Should tie that through, literally maybe.
This is incredibly helpful. Thank you for taking the time with this. Really excited to dig into the transitions and wherever else this needs work.
You want a killer object? Have Marcus bring home a small box, a heavy pasteboard box. He's always being sent on errands... milk... strawberries... things for other people.
Allow the reader to grasp that the heavy little box is cremains. That way Shoestring enters their household, and becomes a continual presence. Never overtly confirm it's cremains, no matter how much Rachel frets and asks.
God, yes... Shoestring becomes this physical weight Marcus has to carry around, can't explain, can't put down. Rachel asking what's in it and Marcus just going silent. That silence is the whole story.
What if the box is already there when we meet Marcus? Like it's been sitting on a shelf or in his car the whole time, and we only understand what it is later, retroactively? Or does it arrive after the funeral and become this new thing he has to live with?
Either way, it makes everything more real. More earned. Thank you for seeing what this needed.
Here's a wild possibility. Tom would push in this direction: Make Prophet the narrator. Put the story in Prophet's voice, but don't reveal that he's telling the story until a ways in. The reader will assume it's voice-y third-person, then Prophet will emerge to prove it's first-person. The story is so deep and philosophical that a "crazy" narrator might seem less threatening to the reader than a sane husband/father.
In Prophet you have a maybe-crazy, maybe-magic character. He can even talk about himself in the third-person, thus you can keep:
"...and the kid everyone called Prophet. Prophet predicted which cars would stop at red lights based on “soul frequency.” Prophet was right more often than Marcus was happy about anything." By narrating thru Prophet you can break up the story time-wise -- wrinkle the chronology -- Shoestring can be alive in some paragraphs and be boxed ashes in others.
When you want to reveal him as the narrator, it's a simple give-away:
"Who said that was me, me being Prophet and the telling way into this." Or some such "burnt" Big Voice direct address to the reader.
Don't be afraid to ask questions that go unanswered. Rachel asks, "Where's the leftover ravioli?" No one answers, and the reader is forced to carry that tension and knowledge. That way you can keep all the objects -- ravioli, strawberries, milk, ashes -- present in some sense.
The third person slip is genius. "Prophet predicted which cars would stop" but Prophet is telling us this. That delay before we realize who's talking, that's the same trick Marcus is pulling on himself. We're all unreliable.
And the time breaking up, Shoestring alive then ashes then alive again, that matches how grief actually works. How memory works. Not linear. Not neat.
The unanswered questions too. Where is the ravioli? We carry that. It stays in our heads like the box stays in Marcus's car.
You present so many great scene set-ups, but I felt as though they were all as distant as everyone scrolling on their devices—yes, I get this is kind of the point of the story, but how could you trick us a little more?
Revision:
I could see having Marcus planted in these scenes, viscerally relishing in the “realness" of the underpasses or alleyways tricking us that his version of reality is the truer one, only showing us later that he was “The Tourist,” as you present in the end. Make us smell and taste the scenes more than say the home life scenes.
What do those places smell like, taste like, feel like? Does the scent of ammonia from years of piss cut along the sides of his tongue, or sting his eyes? Does the sight of a woman shitting into a bucket make Marcus’ heart race with the grit and foulness of it?
Could you plant Marcus in those moments, making THOSE SCENES feel more real than other aspects of his life? This might help SHOW us that Marcus views these moments as more real and subvert the narrative, as we realize he’s just using the people and places for his own entertainment.
This is great. One of those notes that makes you laugh and then feel a little dumb for missing it. I’m honestly not sure how it didn’t click until you said it. I spent a lot of time hanging out with the homeless in my town while writing this, so I’ve got no shortage of smells, textures, and ugly little truths I can steal from real life. Planting Marcus fully in those scenes and letting them feel more real than his “normal” life is definitely going to be a big part of the revision.
Wow, really? that's kind of amazing. I would love to hear more about those experiences actually. And knowing that, your take on Marcus as a "tourist" is perfect.
This story came from a long conversation with a homeless man. Long enough that it stopped feeling like charity and started feeling risky. When I walked away, I realized I was jealous of him.
Not of sleeping outside or being hungry. I was jealous of his thoughts.
He had not been trained by algorithms. Nobody fed him the same memes, phrases, or approved opinions. His mind had not been optimized or monetized. He sounded like a person. Sure there was a bit of drug use.. but we are all on drugs of different forms
I tried talking to other strangers after that. Different bodies. Same scripts. Same recycled lines sliding out of their mouths.
Oh man, that's really great. So much there. After reading that, I realized you kind of summarize what the homeless people say except when they speak directly to Marcus about himself or about their take on his view of them. But we don't hear anything else they say that makes them "not optimized or monetized." Would it add to the story to hear an interchange between them that would show this to the reader? Instead of telling us?
I was also thinking about this line: "Marcus came here because under this bridge, people bled real blood. Made real mistakes. Felt real things. There was danger here. Mild danger. The kind that made his heart remember it was supposed to beat. Made him feel alive instead of buffering." First, I love the "mild" danger. That's actually really funny. Like, he wants something outside his comfort zone, but maybe not TOO much. So, instead of telling us that people felt real things, what can these people say to make the reader understand this concept?
My other thought, and it's tangential: for a couple of years I volunteered as a server at a soup kitchen. There was a contingent of people who came in every single week, with all their bags, all their clothes on them, staked out their special table. They were very territorial, sometimes to a physical degree. In general, I don't know how many of the 100 or so people in the dining hall had a permanent place to live, but it was pretty clear that drug use and mental illness were overrepresented. I'm just saying that things that sound profound and not "same old" can come from many places inside a person. The fact that Marcus never once wonders about the mental state or general sanity of the people he hangs out with says a lot about the degree to which he objectifies them.
Yeah, that’s how things go sometimes when we are close to the work. We can’t see the forest for the trees, as it were. You’ve got so much great stuff in this story, now just ground it with all the textural elements, and it will be unstoppable!
We barely know Shoestring by this point in the story, so it doesn't quite tug at the heartstrings, maybe the way you want it to.
Revision:
So much of this story feels like it’s floating in the air. Is there a way you could ground Shoestrings’ death a bit more? Could Marcus find him in the alley? Or, better yet, as I presented in comment 2, could Shoestring die at the dinner table, with no one noticing right away because all their eyes are glued to their screens?
Maybe Marcus comments on how the smell of Shoestring’s bowels releasing after he dies permeated over Rachel’s spaghetti or asparagus, grounding him and us in the real world as the rest of the family is immersed in the digital worlds, unaware of the dead man sitting with them.
Grounding emotional moments in physicality helps us, as readers, feel them. And thusly connect with the story on a more visceral level.
"Marcus had a tell. Left eye. Two twitches. Fast like something dying under a floorboard."
It's brilliant how it implies he's a liar, and it seizes the reader with a physical action. Do you think we should see that "tell" in action at some point? Or, did I miss it?
The danger is in overusing it until it becomes shtick. But you've trained your reader to look for it, and to not use the tell seems like a shame. Especially if it carries some brutal truth:
Not looking up from her phone, Rachel said, "You know I love you, don't you?"
Marcus replied, "And I love you." The two fast twitches.
So, stay aware that you've got the "tell" you can use at some crucial moment.
You're right. I set that up when I wrote the opening, intended to come back to it, and then completely lost track of it.
Your example with Rachel is perfect. The tell appearing right there when he's performing love instead of feeling it. The reader's been trained to watch for lies, and that's the biggest lie in the whole story.
I'm thinking one or two appearances of his "tell" should do the trick or just once right where it counts.
Funny memory: Tom Spanbauer always said "If you're going to do something, do it three times." If you only do it only twice your reader will think you're a redundant idiot, but three times proves your intention.
Still, be careful. A series of three: "Good, Better, Best" is extremely writer-ly and as such has become a hallmark of AI writing. So, if you repeat an element three times, space the occurrences irregularly and mix up the wording.
It's a brutal trick to undercut emotion as it's expressed. That's why in 'Fight Club 2,' the graphic novel, I placed "real" objects -- rose petals, pills -- over the faces of characters when they say loving things. In effect, they wear masks, even when telling the "truth."
I read this piece a couple of weeks ago. Ironically, in bed, covers over my head, scrolling. This piece required some time to give it the comment it deserves, and to allow myself to pull apart the feelings and implications it stirred up in my own life. Ha
This was the second piece I read of yours and you’re two for two. You articulate in a haunting, and darkly humorous way that we are beyond reliant on our devices. Not even dependent. We are enslaved. In “Life Points” I learned “we harm ourselves”. In "The Real Ones” I learned “we lose ourselves”.
The second line was perfect. “Rachel never saw it - she was scrolling”. Immediately, I am pulled in. I found myself wondering, are we talking about Marcus' left eye twitch, or are you foreshadowing what Rachel is not going to see coming? Consider me tuned in.
Then the twins. Horrifying. Your blue-lit, corpse-like description of Lily was reminiscent of a white walker. A child rendered as a creature that happens to threaten all human life, just because it is part of the fucked up system.
There were so many sharp lines that stood out. “Whatever the algorithm had decided she needed to be afraid of this week” “ Like she was the first person to discover childhood fucks you up” “ the same software”
Again I remained horrified, but found myself laughing with phrases like “the reddit threads with dental plans”
Shoestring, Marlene and Prophet immediately become symbols of hope. They seem to offer what the rest of society lacks: connection, and originality. This then raises an uncomfortable question… What does this mean, when homelessness and poverty and schizophrenia are the preferred alternative to the algorithm?
They reminded me of the “cool kids”, depicted in movies behind the bleachers, the ones that you get your first gram of weed from. The ones that listen to alternative music, and play guitar, and are dangerous and individual. The polar opposite from the “cool kids”, afraid to deviate. With their American eagle jeans, braces and bleached hair and ipods. That comparison hit a nerve.
It’s more than the plight of our society - it’s about choosing your people. choosing to fit in. Choosing where you belong. It’s rejecting your pom-poms for a ticket to the punk concert. Choosing to live.
It has always affected us in some way, the content, the fake shit. But before it was teen magazine, and you could just choose to put the mag down. But now. It's everywhere . It's all around. The blue light permeates in our homes, our marriage, our relationships, our children.
And we don't know how to turn it off.
Really well-written. Looking forward to reading some more of your writing.
Thank you. Reading this under covers and letting it settle is exactly why I write. You saw the twins, the algorithms, the blue light, and more than that, you saw what choosing your people really means. That is the heart of it, surviving, connecting, living. Your words make me feel like the story landed where it should.
Hi Iggy, very good story and profound mute scream of our epochal domestic agony.
Loved the cynicism coupled with your narrator drowning painfully in the virtues of a decent human being. I red it last week and as I had limited access to the net I'm coming late for fresh commentary. But it had time to lend quite beautifully and stayed with me more than I was honestly expecting. To the point it inspired me a paragraph for baby talk training, your scenery and plot seem solid enough to grab mind and target soul.
I remember the thrill to discover that probably surely yeah obviously Rachel was secretly banging Shoestring and received the news of his death before Marcus, in front of Marcus. For a sec that totally worked for me. Glad you are rewriting in that direction already.
Hope we'll see your last versions.
Congrats and good work. I'm heading to read your other stuff.
Hey, thank you. Seriously, that means a lot. “Mute scream of our epochal domestic agony” is such a wild and generous way to put it, I’m still smiling.
I’m really glad it stuck with you after the read. That’s kind of the best case scenario for me.
Also appreciate you coming back to it even late and with limited internet. That kind of attention feels rare, especially considering the themes and ideas of this story.
Oh I remember that misreading a few lines in family descriptions, I assumed for a while that Lily was an app Rachel was obsessed with... I concord with Karin and think you'll have to abandon at least one of the too many children for clarity purpose.
You're welcome. You find the time and courage to write, dare I say "dangerously", churning very intimate stuff in The Real Ones. And you're supporting fellow writers. My attention goes where it feels good and true.
This is just a stellar story on all fronts. Tight writing, great pacing, it feels like every word was carefully chosen (which makes it tough to offer anything critique-wise, but I’ll give it a shot).
What I particularly loved:
- The restraint and sense of distance, dissociation from emotion reminds me of Thoreau’s quote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.” I’m also hearing ‘Once in a Lifetime’ and ‘O Superman’.
- I was a little worried that this might turn into a ‘magical homeless’ story where poverty is some kind of better experience, but I think you avoided that when Marcus is confronted by that very idea.
- I really like the elements of fire and electricity. The fire casting people as angels or demons, electricity rendering them into abstraction.
- Not sure if it was intended, but nice to have the archetypes Lily (girl), Rachel (maiden) and Marlene (crone). Only Marlene though is aligned with the mythology—makes it extra painful that the girl/maiden have been absorbed.
- You have a very strong and original voice. Neither are easy to come by, so props.
Ideas to play with:
- “The story changed. That’s how you knew it was real, it was real stories that changed you.” Marcus doesn’t seem changed at the end except he has better self-awareness and is resigned to not changing. He sees his own bs and participation in the farce. Why doesn’t he listen to the crone? Not suggesting you give him a happy ending or some major shift—it could even be as small as he sees something that is a different kind of revelation, or contradicts his idea of two separate worlds. Maybe a Black Mirror kind of thing, where he gets a notification or text from Marlene or Prophet to show they’re not immune. Or the younger homeless figure out how to run a power cable and have electric lights and a cell phone.
- Prophet – I wish he spoke more. Prophet sees connections other people don’t and can tell when people will or won’t stop at a stoplight. Could something be worked in at the funeral? Like Marcus has an idea that he’s being honest now, but maybe Prophet says he’s just stopped at the light now but will blow through the next one (not that exactly, but some kind of reference since its a cool detail in the intro). He also seems consistently lucid for someone with schizophrenia. It’s stated but we don’t see it. And it could be an opportunity to have some messy language, which brings me to:
- The story is contained and perfected. Would adding something messy be interesting? Like Marcus has a reaction in the house that’s out of character? Is his perfect life not quite as safe as he makes it out to be? Maybe a neighbor’s house catches on fire, or he sees a coyote running down the street with a cat in its mouth.
- Marcus doesn’t seem to push back against Rachel or fight for his kids’ attention. He reminded me a lot of my dad who provided, came in and out of the house and showed up for dinner, recitals, etc. but was barely there. Never knew why. So I wonder what’s made Marcus give up in a certain sense at home that makes him find an outlet elsewhere.
- Would there be some bleed between these two worlds before his wife picks up his phone? Might be nice/add tension by having something he has to actively lie about.
- There’s a reference to danger in the underpass. Could that be shown? Maybe someone who’s not a regular does something threatening? Again, not a huge thing but something that makes us worry a little as readers.
- Smells/sounds/physical sensations? This could be something to play with too—when he’s feeling ‘real’ he becomes more aware. It would give you the chance to show he feels more alive instead of stating it.
And thank you by the way for offering great feedback to everyone (including me). Really enjoying your work.
Wow, this is such a generous and thoughtful comment. I love how closely you read the story and how you picked up on the little sparks I wasn’t even fully aware of. I’m thrilled that the fire and electricity imagery landed and that the archetypes of Lily, Rachel, and Marlene came through. Your ideas about Prophet, messy reactions, the underpass danger, and sensory details feel like a box of tools I didn’t realize I had and now I can’t wait to play with. Your point about Marcus not really changing hits me hard and makes me think about showing it in small ways instead of giving him a neat epiphany.
Thank you so much for taking the time to help me out here and I’m looking forward to shaping this story up!
I feel the same way about the feedback I’ve gotten - like neurons were firing too fast for me to keep up. Looking forward to seeing where you take it from here.
can taste the perversion of screens, and also that the internet was supposed to bring us together. gets me thinking how fight club had a similar enemy, just from another generation maybe.
This is awesome and relevant. That said, one thing I noticed is that there are a lot of opportunities to build a lot of the isolation into the dialogue scenes. For example with explaining how everyone speaks with social media slang regardless of their age, maybe this can show up in Marcus’ conversations with his wife. “Marcus had noticed it three years ago. Right after Lily was born everyone started talking the same way. Same cadence. Same phrases. ‘That’s giving...’ ‘I’m obsessed.’ ‘Not me thinking...’” It would be cool to see this show up in the wife’s dialogue to him. Marcus could be talking normally to her, and she can be responding only in predetermined phrases. That would also add a contrast between his seeming separation from the algorithm and her connection to it (that it seems you later subvert). Or for “She was probably watching some seventeen-second video about narcissism. Or attachment theory” you could include the dialogue from such a video interrupting their conversation. There’s nothing like trying to talk to someone and you just hear snippets of videos coming out of their phone as they scroll mid conversation or towards the end of a conversation when it starts to get boring. I think you could really play around with this in your dialogue scenes. Then the social media video on narcissism or attachment maybe could come up again at the dinner scene.
With how you say “She’d recite it at dinner. Word for word. Like she was the first person to discover that your childhood fucks you up,” and since you have the dinner scene with the tik tok lasagna, it might be good to bring up the earlier promise of her regurgitating what she has heard online at the lasagna scene. There is a real risk beyond just turning into scrolling zombies. Such as with the narcissism, maybe the wife starts framing him as being a narcissist based on one of these posts. This could also help show the overall idea of people being controlled through the algorithms that is affecting real things in their lives.
The organic strawberries are awesome. Have you heard of this online trend of soaking your strawberries in vinegar to remove pesticides? It caught on in with my family and now you can’t get strawberries without them tasting like vinegar. All the strawberries in the house get vinegar soaked. Not other fruit for some reason. I think you could really go crazy with something like this to show how ridiculous the mind effects can be.
Not to beat a dead horse, but with this “That night in bed, Rachel scrolled. Face blue-lit. Occasionally showing him something. A meme. A video. A thing she thought was a thing but was just another thing everyone was seeing. He made the right sounds. The algorithm sounds.” It would be awesome to see this as a specific meme or something that the wife shows to Marcus. It could be fun to play around with the contrast between the silly meme and something serious he is trying to talk about.
Thanks for sharing this. I look forward to reading the edit.
Iggy what a fun gritty ride. You have an incredible cadence. The story is dense get too bogged down.
So many great lines and paragraphs.
This one slapped in the face.
“His coworkers were Reddit threads with dental plans. His neighbors were YouTube comments with mortgages. His own mother was seventy-two years old and had started saying ‘period’ and ‘slays,’ her mouth forming words designed in a server farm, beta-tested on teenagers, pushed out like a virus.”
"You were playing poverty tourist while I was raising our children alone."
This one at the end was devistiatng and spot on. What does everyone want in life.
"the truth: he didn’t want real. He never had. He wanted the story of wanting real. The performance of wanting real. The aesthetic of authenticity without the cost."
Savage. Excellent.
You really hold the triptych of the attention economies your portraying. You reflect a lot of my own thoughts on the subject.
Only critical feedback is light. Maybe one too many trips to the bridge. Wasn't tiresom, but a little too well established by the end. Very minor, didn't drag, just an observation.
Really grateful for the generosity and the honesty here. Feedback like this makes revision feel exciting instead of corrective.
You’re right about the bridge. That’s a fair observation. I think I leaned on it a little because it felt symbolically sturdy, but by the end it may have been doing more reminding than revealing. That’s helpful to hear and easy to tighten.
Wow, I really loved this. I only read Chuck's comments so if what I say is redundant to others' comments, that's the reason. I'll read the others after I note mine.
I love the premise of your story. It's dystopic, existential, and subtly disassociated all at once. Marcus is not himself disassociated, but your treatment of him is in the sense that he creates narratives about the people in his life instead of actually experiencing them. I thought all of Chuck's comments were brilliant, as usual, and working with them will definitely make this piece stronger.
One thing that I kept coming back to is that Rachel is just as much a projection for Marcus as Shoestring. It's almost as if he knows her as little as he knew Shoestring or Marlene. She is, in his mind, what he needs her to be in order to fully feel his disaffection with life, which in itself begs the question--why does he need this particular narrative? What in him stops him from saying "Okay people, phones down after 7pm." Or, "Rachel baby, let's talk."? Does he, in some part of himself, feel superior to everyone else or powerless? Or afraid of what will be required of him when the attention of an exhausted wife and three small children is on him?
But more than anything, I kept thinking about the organic strawberries and what that says about Rachel and what is it that she's looking at when she's scrolling. Yes, it's whatever will make her more afraid, but more than that, I think what's kind of suggested but not said is that she's scrolling to find proof that she's a good mother or bad mother and her stress level is through the roof because her husband keeps disappearing for HOURS AT A TIME. I mean... I was kind of feeling for her. Giving her the agency to research Shoestring is perfect, but I would also like to see a glint of the human that she really is, that Marcus is not interested in seeing, the same way he was not interested in seeing Shoestring as a human.
This already feels like such a complete story though. I think with some tweaking you can push it to stellar.
Comment #6
There are so many stellar lines here. Among my favorites is:
“We’ve outsourced ours to meth and Mad Dog 20/20,” Shoestring interrupted. “We’re just a different kind of algorithm, brother.”
A nagging voice says that "Prophet" might be too on-the-nose for the character. Names like Prophet and Preacher don't do justice to good writing. Would you consider a name that's not quite so common? Something that reveals some other aspect of the kid. "Gandalf" or "Jeane Dixon" (that would be if Marlene gave the nickname because Jeane Dixon would be more her generation). You might be creating an era-defining character, you should give him a fresh name.
Above all, actions define a character. "Tyler Durden" means nothing as a name (except to me) but the character's actions and speeches give the name weight and meaning.
Chuck, you’re right. I didn’t see how on-the-nose that name was. Changing it actually makes him more interesting to play with.
“Tyler Durden” now that’s an era defining character. Thanks for the nudge.
And can we have a quick aside about Mad Dog 20/20? It was the flavor of my high school years. Cheap, chemical, effective. When I was 17, the morning sun peaked over the tree line and illuminated my curled and still-drunk form fast asleep in the flower bed bordering my friend’s garage. His mother was displeased. She drove me home while I watched the world spin from the backseat, wrapped in a borrowed sleeping bag.
This is what good childhoods are made of.
Goddamn. Memories of MD 20/20
1. How insanely drunk people would get on it.
2. How unpredictably violent those people were.
Orange Jubilee did me in
I’m more of an electric melon MD 20/20 man myself.
a true renaissance man
Comment #4
Let's talk about transitions:
"Marcus had noticed it three years ago."
"Marcus came here because..."
"Tonight Marcus brought..."
"Marcus checked his phone. Two hours gone."
"That night in bed,..."
"Three weeks later,..."
These are such writer-ly transitions. Seeing how the story is about web surfing and scrolling, can you invent some device -- a chorus? -- that signals the transition in a way that suggests or mimics online activity?
Brain map some words: Two-finger, refresh, swipe, side-swipe, back-swipe, scroll... Can you invent a system the reader will intuitively adopt as signposts for flashbacks or jumps ahead? This story says something so important, and I'd like to see the language reflect that by being unique. Once you have the system established ("I am Joe's white knuckles") it works like a macro ("The first rule of Fight Club is...") and reinforces the world you create, while it also tells the reader you're shifting around in time/mood.
I'm thinking something like: a single word, its own line. "Refresh." Then we're somewhere else. "Skip." Time jumps. "Buffer." We're stuck in a moment that won't load. The reader learns the system fast because they already know it. They've been doing it all day.
It could get rhythmic. Hypnotic. The way scrolling actually feels. And it solves the Prophet narrator problem too. He can use these words. He knows the language even if he doesn't have the phone.
This is the piece I've been missing. Thank you.
You are so bright it's not funny.
If you get a chance, check out how Lilly Tomlin transitions between characters in "In Search of Intelligent Life in the Universe." Note how she establishes getting electroshock therapy, and the umbrella hat... beyond that she only needs to suggest an electric jolt to jump to a different character.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67m58I-jDBI&list=PLoThIb0xsC1IDWVw10ZMe6rxjRwwsgg3s
Thank you. That really means a lot coming from you.
I’ll revisit it with that video in mind. Thanks for pointing me there and for taking the time to share it.
This feels like a good place to introduce a potential chorus.
They were all running the same software. Updated nightly while they slept.
Download complete.
It's especially impressive to see how thoughtful and supportive you are with the other writers.
Thank you so much. Reading and supporting the other writers here has been really rewarding, and I’m grateful for the platform you provide that makes it all possible.
Once Marcus asks for help, I’d love for his wife and daughter to search Tik Tok about “how to help someone asking for help”, or “what to do when someone says they need help”. It would step on the lack of connectedness between the characters, and how infiltrating their phones/online has gotten into their lives. They could read off contents (pop psychology stuff typical of Tik Tok) and be really impersonal. I think it would fit well with the feeling of the story.
That’s brilliant and there are so many ways to navigate that angle. And the timing would be perfect! Thank you
They could add “Tik Tok says that’s a trauma response” or “You check a lot of the boxes for BPD. You should really speak to someone about that” whilst their heads are buried in the screens and faces painted with blue light. So detached and relationshipless.
Firstly, thanks for playing this fun game Chuck started, and for your thoughtful and actionable feedback on my story and many of the other stories Chuck presented for the house calls. You've been a great writing ally, and I thank you for supporting my work and many others in our group!
1—
I liked much of what you presented in the opening. Lines like “Everyone digging. Nobody getting out.” Or “Marcus had a tell. Left eye. Two twitches. Fast like something dying under the floorboard.” These rang true and hit hard. But I wonder if you could build much of this same world in a scene rather than exposition. As Chuck says, “Action has its own authority,” and there is so much to mine from this opening exposition that could be turned into a scene.
Revision: I could see setting the whole scene on the street with Prophet, or at the dinner table as a family eats and scrolls their phones endlessly. You almost go there, presenting the ideas of the scenes as generalities, brief glimpses of quickly shared memories, but I think we, the reader, might be more grounded and engaged a bit if some of that exposition were cut by an elongated and detailed scene with our main characters. Making Marcus’ observations feel earned.
Levi, thank you so much for this. Your notes are thoughtful and really hit home. I appreciate all the insight, especially around building the scene instead of leaning on exposition. It means a lot coming from you and I’ll be adding these ideas straight to the arsenal to make the story stronger.
Comment #1
You mention that Shoestring has killed someone with a shoestring. That seems like a huge set-up. Can we get that story unpacked near the end? Perhaps from Marlene? Better yet, from Marcus' wife! Who's done some sleuthing and has her own motives.
For now the overall story is very linear -- we'll discuss your transitions soon -- so a dense, encapsulated, physical story about Shoestring's killing would offer a different texture. Even if Marcus has to research it or invent it.
You also establish shoe strings as an object. More to discuss. I enjoyed the story immensely!
That's a killer note (pun intended). You're absolutely right. I set up the shoestring murder like it's going to pay off and then just let it hang there. The story stays in Marcus's head too much, circling the same realizations.
I love the idea of Rachel doing the sleuthing. That would give her actual agency beyond being another screen-zombie, and it would flip the power dynamic. She knows something real about Marcus's "authentic" friends that he never bothered to find out. Maybe she discovers Shoestring's real story wasn't murder at all, or that it was, but Marcus had romanticized even that into something it wasn't.
The texture point hits hard too. Everything's internal monologue and abstraction. A concrete, physical story within the story about violence and consequences would anchor all that floating commentary. Make the "realness" Marcus craves actually real on the page instead of just described.
And yeah, shoestrings as an object. I dropped them in and never picked them back up. Should tie that through, literally maybe.
This is incredibly helpful. Thank you for taking the time with this. Really excited to dig into the transitions and wherever else this needs work.
Comment #2
You want a killer object? Have Marcus bring home a small box, a heavy pasteboard box. He's always being sent on errands... milk... strawberries... things for other people.
Allow the reader to grasp that the heavy little box is cremains. That way Shoestring enters their household, and becomes a continual presence. Never overtly confirm it's cremains, no matter how much Rachel frets and asks.
God, yes... Shoestring becomes this physical weight Marcus has to carry around, can't explain, can't put down. Rachel asking what's in it and Marcus just going silent. That silence is the whole story.
What if the box is already there when we meet Marcus? Like it's been sitting on a shelf or in his car the whole time, and we only understand what it is later, retroactively? Or does it arrive after the funeral and become this new thing he has to live with?
Either way, it makes everything more real. More earned. Thank you for seeing what this needed.
Very Respectfully,
Iggy.
Comment #3
Here's a wild possibility. Tom would push in this direction: Make Prophet the narrator. Put the story in Prophet's voice, but don't reveal that he's telling the story until a ways in. The reader will assume it's voice-y third-person, then Prophet will emerge to prove it's first-person. The story is so deep and philosophical that a "crazy" narrator might seem less threatening to the reader than a sane husband/father.
In Prophet you have a maybe-crazy, maybe-magic character. He can even talk about himself in the third-person, thus you can keep:
"...and the kid everyone called Prophet. Prophet predicted which cars would stop at red lights based on “soul frequency.” Prophet was right more often than Marcus was happy about anything." By narrating thru Prophet you can break up the story time-wise -- wrinkle the chronology -- Shoestring can be alive in some paragraphs and be boxed ashes in others.
When you want to reveal him as the narrator, it's a simple give-away:
"Who said that was me, me being Prophet and the telling way into this." Or some such "burnt" Big Voice direct address to the reader.
Don't be afraid to ask questions that go unanswered. Rachel asks, "Where's the leftover ravioli?" No one answers, and the reader is forced to carry that tension and knowledge. That way you can keep all the objects -- ravioli, strawberries, milk, ashes -- present in some sense.
The third person slip is genius. "Prophet predicted which cars would stop" but Prophet is telling us this. That delay before we realize who's talking, that's the same trick Marcus is pulling on himself. We're all unreliable.
And the time breaking up, Shoestring alive then ashes then alive again, that matches how grief actually works. How memory works. Not linear. Not neat.
The unanswered questions too. Where is the ravioli? We carry that. It stays in our heads like the box stays in Marcus's car.
This changes everything. Thank you!!
4—
Tricky, Tricky.
You present so many great scene set-ups, but I felt as though they were all as distant as everyone scrolling on their devices—yes, I get this is kind of the point of the story, but how could you trick us a little more?
Revision:
I could see having Marcus planted in these scenes, viscerally relishing in the “realness" of the underpasses or alleyways tricking us that his version of reality is the truer one, only showing us later that he was “The Tourist,” as you present in the end. Make us smell and taste the scenes more than say the home life scenes.
What do those places smell like, taste like, feel like? Does the scent of ammonia from years of piss cut along the sides of his tongue, or sting his eyes? Does the sight of a woman shitting into a bucket make Marcus’ heart race with the grit and foulness of it?
Could you plant Marcus in those moments, making THOSE SCENES feel more real than other aspects of his life? This might help SHOW us that Marcus views these moments as more real and subvert the narrative, as we realize he’s just using the people and places for his own entertainment.
This is great. One of those notes that makes you laugh and then feel a little dumb for missing it. I’m honestly not sure how it didn’t click until you said it. I spent a lot of time hanging out with the homeless in my town while writing this, so I’ve got no shortage of smells, textures, and ugly little truths I can steal from real life. Planting Marcus fully in those scenes and letting them feel more real than his “normal” life is definitely going to be a big part of the revision.
Wow, really? that's kind of amazing. I would love to hear more about those experiences actually. And knowing that, your take on Marcus as a "tourist" is perfect.
This story came from a long conversation with a homeless man. Long enough that it stopped feeling like charity and started feeling risky. When I walked away, I realized I was jealous of him.
Not of sleeping outside or being hungry. I was jealous of his thoughts.
He had not been trained by algorithms. Nobody fed him the same memes, phrases, or approved opinions. His mind had not been optimized or monetized. He sounded like a person. Sure there was a bit of drug use.. but we are all on drugs of different forms
I tried talking to other strangers after that. Different bodies. Same scripts. Same recycled lines sliding out of their mouths.
😬
Oh man, that's really great. So much there. After reading that, I realized you kind of summarize what the homeless people say except when they speak directly to Marcus about himself or about their take on his view of them. But we don't hear anything else they say that makes them "not optimized or monetized." Would it add to the story to hear an interchange between them that would show this to the reader? Instead of telling us?
I was also thinking about this line: "Marcus came here because under this bridge, people bled real blood. Made real mistakes. Felt real things. There was danger here. Mild danger. The kind that made his heart remember it was supposed to beat. Made him feel alive instead of buffering." First, I love the "mild" danger. That's actually really funny. Like, he wants something outside his comfort zone, but maybe not TOO much. So, instead of telling us that people felt real things, what can these people say to make the reader understand this concept?
My other thought, and it's tangential: for a couple of years I volunteered as a server at a soup kitchen. There was a contingent of people who came in every single week, with all their bags, all their clothes on them, staked out their special table. They were very territorial, sometimes to a physical degree. In general, I don't know how many of the 100 or so people in the dining hall had a permanent place to live, but it was pretty clear that drug use and mental illness were overrepresented. I'm just saying that things that sound profound and not "same old" can come from many places inside a person. The fact that Marcus never once wonders about the mental state or general sanity of the people he hangs out with says a lot about the degree to which he objectifies them.
Yeah, that’s how things go sometimes when we are close to the work. We can’t see the forest for the trees, as it were. You’ve got so much great stuff in this story, now just ground it with all the textural elements, and it will be unstoppable!
Thanks man
3—
Emotional/Physical authority.
This felt unearned: “Shoestring is dead.”
We barely know Shoestring by this point in the story, so it doesn't quite tug at the heartstrings, maybe the way you want it to.
Revision:
So much of this story feels like it’s floating in the air. Is there a way you could ground Shoestrings’ death a bit more? Could Marcus find him in the alley? Or, better yet, as I presented in comment 2, could Shoestring die at the dinner table, with no one noticing right away because all their eyes are glued to their screens?
Maybe Marcus comments on how the smell of Shoestring’s bowels releasing after he dies permeated over Rachel’s spaghetti or asparagus, grounding him and us in the real world as the rest of the family is immersed in the digital worlds, unaware of the dead man sitting with them.
Grounding emotional moments in physicality helps us, as readers, feel them. And thusly connect with the story on a more visceral level.
Comment #5
Let's talk about your opening:
"Marcus had a tell. Left eye. Two twitches. Fast like something dying under a floorboard."
It's brilliant how it implies he's a liar, and it seizes the reader with a physical action. Do you think we should see that "tell" in action at some point? Or, did I miss it?
The danger is in overusing it until it becomes shtick. But you've trained your reader to look for it, and to not use the tell seems like a shame. Especially if it carries some brutal truth:
Not looking up from her phone, Rachel said, "You know I love you, don't you?"
Marcus replied, "And I love you." The two fast twitches.
So, stay aware that you've got the "tell" you can use at some crucial moment.
You're right. I set that up when I wrote the opening, intended to come back to it, and then completely lost track of it.
Your example with Rachel is perfect. The tell appearing right there when he's performing love instead of feeling it. The reader's been trained to watch for lies, and that's the biggest lie in the whole story.
I'm thinking one or two appearances of his "tell" should do the trick or just once right where it counts.
Thanks for catching that.
Funny memory: Tom Spanbauer always said "If you're going to do something, do it three times." If you only do it only twice your reader will think you're a redundant idiot, but three times proves your intention.
So basically, three times isn’t overkill, it’s proof you meant it. I’m already imagining my grocery list in threes… apples, apples, apples.
Still, be careful. A series of three: "Good, Better, Best" is extremely writer-ly and as such has become a hallmark of AI writing. So, if you repeat an element three times, space the occurrences irregularly and mix up the wording.
It's a brutal trick to undercut emotion as it's expressed. That's why in 'Fight Club 2,' the graphic novel, I placed "real" objects -- rose petals, pills -- over the faces of characters when they say loving things. In effect, they wear masks, even when telling the "truth."
I read this piece a couple of weeks ago. Ironically, in bed, covers over my head, scrolling. This piece required some time to give it the comment it deserves, and to allow myself to pull apart the feelings and implications it stirred up in my own life. Ha
This was the second piece I read of yours and you’re two for two. You articulate in a haunting, and darkly humorous way that we are beyond reliant on our devices. Not even dependent. We are enslaved. In “Life Points” I learned “we harm ourselves”. In "The Real Ones” I learned “we lose ourselves”.
The second line was perfect. “Rachel never saw it - she was scrolling”. Immediately, I am pulled in. I found myself wondering, are we talking about Marcus' left eye twitch, or are you foreshadowing what Rachel is not going to see coming? Consider me tuned in.
Then the twins. Horrifying. Your blue-lit, corpse-like description of Lily was reminiscent of a white walker. A child rendered as a creature that happens to threaten all human life, just because it is part of the fucked up system.
There were so many sharp lines that stood out. “Whatever the algorithm had decided she needed to be afraid of this week” “ Like she was the first person to discover childhood fucks you up” “ the same software”
Again I remained horrified, but found myself laughing with phrases like “the reddit threads with dental plans”
Shoestring, Marlene and Prophet immediately become symbols of hope. They seem to offer what the rest of society lacks: connection, and originality. This then raises an uncomfortable question… What does this mean, when homelessness and poverty and schizophrenia are the preferred alternative to the algorithm?
They reminded me of the “cool kids”, depicted in movies behind the bleachers, the ones that you get your first gram of weed from. The ones that listen to alternative music, and play guitar, and are dangerous and individual. The polar opposite from the “cool kids”, afraid to deviate. With their American eagle jeans, braces and bleached hair and ipods. That comparison hit a nerve.
It’s more than the plight of our society - it’s about choosing your people. choosing to fit in. Choosing where you belong. It’s rejecting your pom-poms for a ticket to the punk concert. Choosing to live.
It has always affected us in some way, the content, the fake shit. But before it was teen magazine, and you could just choose to put the mag down. But now. It's everywhere . It's all around. The blue light permeates in our homes, our marriage, our relationships, our children.
And we don't know how to turn it off.
Really well-written. Looking forward to reading some more of your writing.
Thank you. Reading this under covers and letting it settle is exactly why I write. You saw the twins, the algorithms, the blue light, and more than that, you saw what choosing your people really means. That is the heart of it, surviving, connecting, living. Your words make me feel like the story landed where it should.
Hi Iggy, very good story and profound mute scream of our epochal domestic agony.
Loved the cynicism coupled with your narrator drowning painfully in the virtues of a decent human being. I red it last week and as I had limited access to the net I'm coming late for fresh commentary. But it had time to lend quite beautifully and stayed with me more than I was honestly expecting. To the point it inspired me a paragraph for baby talk training, your scenery and plot seem solid enough to grab mind and target soul.
I remember the thrill to discover that probably surely yeah obviously Rachel was secretly banging Shoestring and received the news of his death before Marcus, in front of Marcus. For a sec that totally worked for me. Glad you are rewriting in that direction already.
Hope we'll see your last versions.
Congrats and good work. I'm heading to read your other stuff.
Hey, thank you. Seriously, that means a lot. “Mute scream of our epochal domestic agony” is such a wild and generous way to put it, I’m still smiling.
I’m really glad it stuck with you after the read. That’s kind of the best case scenario for me.
Also appreciate you coming back to it even late and with limited internet. That kind of attention feels rare, especially considering the themes and ideas of this story.
Thank you!
Oh I remember that misreading a few lines in family descriptions, I assumed for a while that Lily was an app Rachel was obsessed with... I concord with Karin and think you'll have to abandon at least one of the too many children for clarity purpose.
You're welcome. You find the time and courage to write, dare I say "dangerously", churning very intimate stuff in The Real Ones. And you're supporting fellow writers. My attention goes where it feels good and true.
This is just a stellar story on all fronts. Tight writing, great pacing, it feels like every word was carefully chosen (which makes it tough to offer anything critique-wise, but I’ll give it a shot).
What I particularly loved:
- The restraint and sense of distance, dissociation from emotion reminds me of Thoreau’s quote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.” I’m also hearing ‘Once in a Lifetime’ and ‘O Superman’.
- I was a little worried that this might turn into a ‘magical homeless’ story where poverty is some kind of better experience, but I think you avoided that when Marcus is confronted by that very idea.
- I really like the elements of fire and electricity. The fire casting people as angels or demons, electricity rendering them into abstraction.
- Not sure if it was intended, but nice to have the archetypes Lily (girl), Rachel (maiden) and Marlene (crone). Only Marlene though is aligned with the mythology—makes it extra painful that the girl/maiden have been absorbed.
- You have a very strong and original voice. Neither are easy to come by, so props.
Ideas to play with:
- “The story changed. That’s how you knew it was real, it was real stories that changed you.” Marcus doesn’t seem changed at the end except he has better self-awareness and is resigned to not changing. He sees his own bs and participation in the farce. Why doesn’t he listen to the crone? Not suggesting you give him a happy ending or some major shift—it could even be as small as he sees something that is a different kind of revelation, or contradicts his idea of two separate worlds. Maybe a Black Mirror kind of thing, where he gets a notification or text from Marlene or Prophet to show they’re not immune. Or the younger homeless figure out how to run a power cable and have electric lights and a cell phone.
- Prophet – I wish he spoke more. Prophet sees connections other people don’t and can tell when people will or won’t stop at a stoplight. Could something be worked in at the funeral? Like Marcus has an idea that he’s being honest now, but maybe Prophet says he’s just stopped at the light now but will blow through the next one (not that exactly, but some kind of reference since its a cool detail in the intro). He also seems consistently lucid for someone with schizophrenia. It’s stated but we don’t see it. And it could be an opportunity to have some messy language, which brings me to:
- The story is contained and perfected. Would adding something messy be interesting? Like Marcus has a reaction in the house that’s out of character? Is his perfect life not quite as safe as he makes it out to be? Maybe a neighbor’s house catches on fire, or he sees a coyote running down the street with a cat in its mouth.
- Marcus doesn’t seem to push back against Rachel or fight for his kids’ attention. He reminded me a lot of my dad who provided, came in and out of the house and showed up for dinner, recitals, etc. but was barely there. Never knew why. So I wonder what’s made Marcus give up in a certain sense at home that makes him find an outlet elsewhere.
- Would there be some bleed between these two worlds before his wife picks up his phone? Might be nice/add tension by having something he has to actively lie about.
- There’s a reference to danger in the underpass. Could that be shown? Maybe someone who’s not a regular does something threatening? Again, not a huge thing but something that makes us worry a little as readers.
- Smells/sounds/physical sensations? This could be something to play with too—when he’s feeling ‘real’ he becomes more aware. It would give you the chance to show he feels more alive instead of stating it.
And thank you by the way for offering great feedback to everyone (including me). Really enjoying your work.
Wow, this is such a generous and thoughtful comment. I love how closely you read the story and how you picked up on the little sparks I wasn’t even fully aware of. I’m thrilled that the fire and electricity imagery landed and that the archetypes of Lily, Rachel, and Marlene came through. Your ideas about Prophet, messy reactions, the underpass danger, and sensory details feel like a box of tools I didn’t realize I had and now I can’t wait to play with. Your point about Marcus not really changing hits me hard and makes me think about showing it in small ways instead of giving him a neat epiphany.
Thank you so much for taking the time to help me out here and I’m looking forward to shaping this story up!
I feel the same way about the feedback I’ve gotten - like neurons were firing too fast for me to keep up. Looking forward to seeing where you take it from here.
can taste the perversion of screens, and also that the internet was supposed to bring us together. gets me thinking how fight club had a similar enemy, just from another generation maybe.
Thank you!
This is awesome and relevant. That said, one thing I noticed is that there are a lot of opportunities to build a lot of the isolation into the dialogue scenes. For example with explaining how everyone speaks with social media slang regardless of their age, maybe this can show up in Marcus’ conversations with his wife. “Marcus had noticed it three years ago. Right after Lily was born everyone started talking the same way. Same cadence. Same phrases. ‘That’s giving...’ ‘I’m obsessed.’ ‘Not me thinking...’” It would be cool to see this show up in the wife’s dialogue to him. Marcus could be talking normally to her, and she can be responding only in predetermined phrases. That would also add a contrast between his seeming separation from the algorithm and her connection to it (that it seems you later subvert). Or for “She was probably watching some seventeen-second video about narcissism. Or attachment theory” you could include the dialogue from such a video interrupting their conversation. There’s nothing like trying to talk to someone and you just hear snippets of videos coming out of their phone as they scroll mid conversation or towards the end of a conversation when it starts to get boring. I think you could really play around with this in your dialogue scenes. Then the social media video on narcissism or attachment maybe could come up again at the dinner scene.
With how you say “She’d recite it at dinner. Word for word. Like she was the first person to discover that your childhood fucks you up,” and since you have the dinner scene with the tik tok lasagna, it might be good to bring up the earlier promise of her regurgitating what she has heard online at the lasagna scene. There is a real risk beyond just turning into scrolling zombies. Such as with the narcissism, maybe the wife starts framing him as being a narcissist based on one of these posts. This could also help show the overall idea of people being controlled through the algorithms that is affecting real things in their lives.
The organic strawberries are awesome. Have you heard of this online trend of soaking your strawberries in vinegar to remove pesticides? It caught on in with my family and now you can’t get strawberries without them tasting like vinegar. All the strawberries in the house get vinegar soaked. Not other fruit for some reason. I think you could really go crazy with something like this to show how ridiculous the mind effects can be.
Not to beat a dead horse, but with this “That night in bed, Rachel scrolled. Face blue-lit. Occasionally showing him something. A meme. A video. A thing she thought was a thing but was just another thing everyone was seeing. He made the right sounds. The algorithm sounds.” It would be awesome to see this as a specific meme or something that the wife shows to Marcus. It could be fun to play around with the contrast between the silly meme and something serious he is trying to talk about.
Thanks for sharing this. I look forward to reading the edit.
This is brilliant. I love the idea of bringing the phrases back with the wife. It adds so much comedy and weirdness that I totally missed.
And the vinegar-soaked strawberries idea is amazing and painfully so relatable . I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.
Thank you so much for taking the time to dig into this. I’m really grateful and excited to work with these ideas on the next pass.
Iggy what a fun gritty ride. You have an incredible cadence. The story is dense get too bogged down.
So many great lines and paragraphs.
This one slapped in the face.
“His coworkers were Reddit threads with dental plans. His neighbors were YouTube comments with mortgages. His own mother was seventy-two years old and had started saying ‘period’ and ‘slays,’ her mouth forming words designed in a server farm, beta-tested on teenagers, pushed out like a virus.”
"You were playing poverty tourist while I was raising our children alone."
This one at the end was devistiatng and spot on. What does everyone want in life.
"the truth: he didn’t want real. He never had. He wanted the story of wanting real. The performance of wanting real. The aesthetic of authenticity without the cost."
Savage. Excellent.
You really hold the triptych of the attention economies your portraying. You reflect a lot of my own thoughts on the subject.
Only critical feedback is light. Maybe one too many trips to the bridge. Wasn't tiresom, but a little too well established by the end. Very minor, didn't drag, just an observation.
Chapeau well done.
Really grateful for the generosity and the honesty here. Feedback like this makes revision feel exciting instead of corrective.
You’re right about the bridge. That’s a fair observation. I think I leaned on it a little because it felt symbolically sturdy, but by the end it may have been doing more reminding than revealing. That’s helpful to hear and easy to tighten.
Thank you!!
Wow, I really loved this. I only read Chuck's comments so if what I say is redundant to others' comments, that's the reason. I'll read the others after I note mine.
I love the premise of your story. It's dystopic, existential, and subtly disassociated all at once. Marcus is not himself disassociated, but your treatment of him is in the sense that he creates narratives about the people in his life instead of actually experiencing them. I thought all of Chuck's comments were brilliant, as usual, and working with them will definitely make this piece stronger.
One thing that I kept coming back to is that Rachel is just as much a projection for Marcus as Shoestring. It's almost as if he knows her as little as he knew Shoestring or Marlene. She is, in his mind, what he needs her to be in order to fully feel his disaffection with life, which in itself begs the question--why does he need this particular narrative? What in him stops him from saying "Okay people, phones down after 7pm." Or, "Rachel baby, let's talk."? Does he, in some part of himself, feel superior to everyone else or powerless? Or afraid of what will be required of him when the attention of an exhausted wife and three small children is on him?
But more than anything, I kept thinking about the organic strawberries and what that says about Rachel and what is it that she's looking at when she's scrolling. Yes, it's whatever will make her more afraid, but more than that, I think what's kind of suggested but not said is that she's scrolling to find proof that she's a good mother or bad mother and her stress level is through the roof because her husband keeps disappearing for HOURS AT A TIME. I mean... I was kind of feeling for her. Giving her the agency to research Shoestring is perfect, but I would also like to see a glint of the human that she really is, that Marcus is not interested in seeing, the same way he was not interested in seeing Shoestring as a human.
This already feels like such a complete story though. I think with some tweaking you can push it to stellar.
Great work!