The Writing Thread
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kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2017
So, I passed the 90 day mark of writing my own story a few days ago.
I had this plan to write a book in 90 days by writing at least 1K words per day.
I followed my plan and on day 90, I was at around 130K words. I haven't missed a day yet and am pretty happy overall with the process.
The only 'problem' is, I'm only around halfway done, in my estimation. I misjudged the length by a fair margin.
Still, I plan to stick to it and finish it. We'll see where I am after another 90 days.
I suspect when I go back to do a 2nd draft, it'll grow quite a lot longer again, because I forgo any flowery exposition and keep the writing very streamlined, so I probably have a lot of floating heads in all-white rooms happening in this draft.
I had this plan to write a book in 90 days by writing at least 1K words per day.
I followed my plan and on day 90, I was at around 130K words. I haven't missed a day yet and am pretty happy overall with the process.
The only 'problem' is, I'm only around halfway done, in my estimation. I misjudged the length by a fair margin.
Still, I plan to stick to it and finish it. We'll see where I am after another 90 days.
I suspect when I go back to do a 2nd draft, it'll grow quite a lot longer again, because I forgo any flowery exposition and keep the writing very streamlined, so I probably have a lot of floating heads in all-white rooms happening in this draft.
A good story will make people care about the lore, but good lore has never made anyone care about a story.
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2022
Funny thing is, I actually do have a decent chunk of stuff I can use; back when I was younger and had a lot more free time, I was wanting to be a professional writer. Of course, life happened, but I'm happier just making what I like for fun anyways. I can agree on the time sink aspect; as the good @Commissar Fuklaw knows, I spent way too damn long on just character design alone, and that's due to a combination of IRL stuff getting in the way, plot ideas changing around, and good ol' stubbornness.
I like how you're handling your races, personally speaking. Me, I've been tossing around a few ideas here and there about some of the different races that I would want to include; got a few in mind, though I'm currently having a little difficulty getting everything lined out. Funny that you mention doing stuff by myself; I'm actually going to be talking with a guy I know this weekend to try and get some writing stuff sorted out, hopefully.
To add onto this; a shit story can actually destroy whatever lore you make. Even worse if there's lots of good lore; a bad story can ruin it all in one go.
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2026
The stuff i did years ago has changed consierably since i concieved it. It's a thing that i tell other people into writing: don't discard ideas and don't set things completely in stone. Possible options for X or Y can be implemented in other things you may never think about later down the line so keep things in mind.
It's always good to have friends to speak about since they can give you a different perspective regarding your ideas that you might have never thought about. I spoke with a buddy of mine about fantasy currencies and he helped me quite a bit regarding glass based coins.
Regarding fantasy races you should think about a set of gimmicks that make them stand out other than "human with a coat of paint". Not only in appearance and biology but also culturally so there are distinct factors that would make them easy to recognize. It takes time to get it sorted out but eventually you get somewhere with X or Y. I always say to add between 2 or 3 significant base factors that make them stand out and build up on those factors to make other related characteristics. Like dwarves hating tall people. Goblins being childish. Gnolls pissing on their belongings to mark them as their property. Stuff like that.
Meanwhile i think all i do is garbage. I have many issues.
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2022
The obvious answer is Joseph Campbell's monomyth aka "the hero's journey". His book on it is called The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Almost all structure guides and articles since this book's publishing are either inspired by it or just based on it, like Dan Harmon's tv-writing story circle. In his case, he's good enough to admit it openly. So, you could go straight to the source and read this book.
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2022
Trust me, I'm keeping just about ALL of my old ideas; even if they're outdated or don't fit the plot that I had in mind, you never know when they might end up being useful. I've still got writing ideas from the early 2000s that I'm interested in; characters, plot devices, that sort of thing.
I think part of the reason why I'm a bit hesitant about really writing/publishing anything "official" is also because of changing attitudes these days. Used to be, you could write damn near anything you'd want; I had a shit-ton of gay jokes in my earlier book drafts, and I and other people loved that shit because... well, people found it funny. Likewise, how I handled the majority of fantasy beasts was fairly old-school - pretty sure I could make an entire book series about creative ways to kill demons alone, to say nothing of vampires. Nowadays, with how everything has to be seen as "political" or "outdated", it creates a difficult writing environment in some cases.
Everyone's obsessed with deconstructionism, mainly. Can't write a "classic tale of good vs. evil" without a bunch of edgy fucksticks screaming that it's "outdated".
I've been having some issues talking to people on my end about writing stuff for a while now, honestly. Like I said, IRL just loves to get in the way.
That's actually something I've been working on a lot; primarily working on werecreatures a lot right now, wanted to focus on what kinds of monsters would be the most "logical" to focus on, what could be the most interesting to write, etc. Had an idea for one to be an MC for a story I had in mind, though certain details are giving me issues; it's part of what I was going to be figuring out this coming weekend with my friend.
"One man's trash is another man's treasure". Just because you think it's garbage, doesn't mean that other people think that way; you never know, someone might genuinely enjoy your works. Keep your chin up, yeah?
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2026
I thought once on turning my own autistic setting into something like D&D because current tabletop games are lame and gay as fuck. The main problem i have is that either i make it too convoluded or too limiting. It's extremely hard to balance.
But i really like the ideas of race specific skills and traits. And a lot of stuff i have concocted.
No matter what i stick to my guns in this. You can't please everyone and dimwits are everywhere. And while i try to write a hero's journey with a lot of greys but clear good and evil, i know some people will be out to fuck with you for any reason.
I would ask you what kind of creatures are those. Humans transforming into humanoid animals? Or humans with animalistic features? The second one can give you a lot to play with since some could be social pariahs, certain sectors of society could be dominated by X or Y due to their features... There is a lot to play with. If it's the first you need to think about a lot of stuff. Do they keep certain animalistic features in human form? Can they transform at will or certain conditions need to be met? The conserve their human intellect transformed or they are fully animal? Many questions but it can also give you many things to play with.
Meanwhile i have a lot of races with their own quirks in many ways. Like trolls being a female dominate society since women are more physically apt than males, elves being not very resilient to the point common diseases can be lethal to them, satyrs needing to get drunk once a day to keep themselves in good shape... And from those simple things many others stem.
I know, and i do this mainly for myself. But the lack of motivation is overwhelming sometimes. I'll try to keep up. I owe it to myself
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2022
I get what you mean; I make stuff similar to the World of Darkness or Monster Hunter International myself. Modern-day monster hunters, that're actually heroic individuals and not some edgy deconstructionist "humans are da REAL MAWNSTARZZZZ!!!!" crap.
Can't disagree with that; people are just sensitive and whiney as shit these days.
Bit of a mixture of both; mostly the former, but shapeshifters that get too detached from their humanity end up looking more like the later, like in Changing Breeds. I'm still ironing out the details on basically everything about them; was focusing on how ethnicity could affect what someone becomes, actually. Like, it wouldn't make much sense for some pasty American guy to turn into a tiger (far east/Indian). They do maintain their human mind when transformed... mostly, though some personality changes can happen.
Still workshopping them, for the most part; was mainly focusing on getting the MC's specific werecreature race developed, then going from there. It's actually what I was going to be talking about with my friend this weekend.
Motivation, or rather a lack of it, can be the biggest killer of them all.
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2022
Double-posting like an ass, sorry. Update for my writing stuff; talked with my friend about the werecreature setting I've been looking at; for starters, I decided to go ahead and incorporate it into my designated "urban fantasy" plotline, as I was having a bit too much fun with it. As for the creature design itself, I've got two options, both with their own issues; came up with them both over a decade ago, though with how things have changed in the writing world, I'm re-examining them. I've also been re-examining the main werecreature character, and what his overall role would be in the greater plotline; I figured he'd be something like an info broker originally, but I realized it wouldn't quite fit with his history, so now I'm taking a second look.
It's going great, in all honesty.
EDIT: Going to go ahead and post some more of my thoughts on everything so far; I've jotting down and developing both the character and the setting a bit, and I've got some stuff to share.
The setting is going extremely well; I've got a (somewhat small) list of plot points I'd like to hit, locations I'd like to go to, etc., and it's coming along quite well - genuinely satisfied with it. Only concern on it right now, really, is just how short I should make the story; I could easily put everything I want to in just a few simple scenes, but I'm *considering* expanding it a bit. Decisions, decisions...
The werecreature race is the "real" issue here; like I said, got it knocked down to two overall designs, but there's actually quite a bit of variance between them. The race picked does actually determine a decent chunk of the overall story; while the overall plot stays the same, the introduction and werecreature MC's starting "build" (for a lack of a better term) does vary pretty drastically. Basically, one's simple but boring, the other is fun but has a rather negative rep. Still, I'm going to keep working on them both, and see what I can come up with.
It's going great, in all honesty.
EDIT: Going to go ahead and post some more of my thoughts on everything so far; I've jotting down and developing both the character and the setting a bit, and I've got some stuff to share.
The setting is going extremely well; I've got a (somewhat small) list of plot points I'd like to hit, locations I'd like to go to, etc., and it's coming along quite well - genuinely satisfied with it. Only concern on it right now, really, is just how short I should make the story; I could easily put everything I want to in just a few simple scenes, but I'm *considering* expanding it a bit. Decisions, decisions...
The werecreature race is the "real" issue here; like I said, got it knocked down to two overall designs, but there's actually quite a bit of variance between them. The race picked does actually determine a decent chunk of the overall story; while the overall plot stays the same, the introduction and werecreature MC's starting "build" (for a lack of a better term) does vary pretty drastically. Basically, one's simple but boring, the other is fun but has a rather negative rep. Still, I'm going to keep working on them both, and see what I can come up with.
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- Joined
- Nov 1, 2021
I should probably have posted here before I started writing, but I'm just shy of a full year's work on my first attempt at a fiction. I'm up to almost 117,000 words, and I feel like I've been telling myself 3-4 more chapters for the last 6 chapters. Very excited to see how many other Kiwis are doing their best to write, and with so many different genres to boot. Does anyone have any advice on the rewrite(s) after the initial pass? I’ve had some good critiques, and I was pointed at tools like Scrivener as something to better organize, but I’m open to any Kiwi’s recommendations.
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2021
I use Scrivener to organise it. As for rewrites, I guess it's all vibes and harsh criticism? I find myself reading over it for the 30th time and get lost and forget that I'm supposed to be doing work and I just keep on reading. If you don't feel that I guess it's not what you wanted to create.
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2026
Do you still feel this way? I've heard that both kind of suck because of how much AI has meddled with actual suggestions
Also
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2015
ok but bruno was the guy who wrote the rape factory manifesto then committed die so i mean should we really listen to him
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2021
I'm not sure, my skill has passed a need for it. At the time it gave good assistance and forced me to stop writing passive in real time which was like having a teacher read over your shoulder and hit your knuckles with a ruler. About 2 years ago it did an update and for fun I had a look at a couple of its flagged suggestions and they were so awful I uninstalled it. I believe the post 2023 AI integration really hurt what was once a really solid tool. Who knows, I might be wrong and it would still help a developing writer like it helped me, even if it's just a 'hey, look, this is shit, do better' prompt and you ignore its suggestions.
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2021
Preface
I began to write this originally as a shitpost, but it became something far greater (in size, not in quality). The idea was a short story about 'clown world' written in an overly literary tone in the manner of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. The story expanded into something that is closer in form to a novel. I will publish it here serially. To make the theme and purpose of the story more explicit, I have decided to also couple it with a direct discussion on my own personal feelings about the future, at least as far as I can predict based on my own experience with this world. It is, in the truest sense, meant to be serious, even though I am also trying (emphasis on trying) to be funny. I am not an author. I don't want to publish this work for money or fame. I just want to share it with all you fine people. I hope these writings are both thoughtful and entertaining for anyone who reads it.Introduction
It is possible, even now, to describe the future with a degree of confidence. Not precisely, and not in its details, but in its structure. The problems that define it are already present. They have been measured, modeled, discussed, and reframed more times than can be easily counted. What these problems are depend on perspective, and their priorities shift over time. What remains constant is something else: a lack of final resolution. Problems persist. Solutions tend to be partial, temporary, or contingent. The future is no different.It is often assumed that this persistence reflects a lack of adequate solutions—that the problems themselves are too complex to admit complete answers. But the opposite may be closer to the truth: there is no shortage of solutions. They emerge from different domains, proposed by groups with little direct awareness of one another. Engineers, policymakers, researchers, private firms, public agencies—each, working within its own frame, arrives at answers that converge more often than they diverge. The details vary, but the underlying logic tends toward the same conclusions. What might be done is rarely unclear
This convergence has a reassuring quality. It suggests that the structure of the problem is well understood, that independent lines of thinking arrive at similar ground. Agreement, even indirect, implies that the solution is not arbitrary. It exists within the conditions already given. And yet, such agreement has not, historically, ensured that solutions are put into use.
The distance between proposal and implementation is not defined solely by difficulty. It is mediated by structures composed of requirements, validations, compatibilities, and approvals—each intended to ensure that any solution, once enacted, behaves predictably within a broader system. Individually, these constraints function well. Taken together, their effects are less predictable.
A solution that satisfies one requirement introduces new conditions under another. A process designed to verify correctness alters the context in which correctness is measured. Policies accumulate, intersect, and generate pathways that were not explicitly designed but must nonetheless be followed. What emerges is not disorder, but a kind of over-definition: an environment in which every step is justified, and yet direction becomes increasingly difficult to establish.
Under such circumstances, inadequacy does not arise from a lack of effort or intention. On the contrary, it often appears alongside high levels of activity, coordination, and care. Measures are taken, systems are adjusted, and interventions are deployed that address aspects of the problem without resolving it. These actions are not incorrect. They are, in most cases, the result of applying existing processes faithfully to conditions that those processes were not designed to accommodate.
Meanwhile, solutions that would appear sufficient in isolation remain provisional. They are recognized, evaluated, and tested. They demonstrate their function. They produce expected results. This is not enough to move them into use. Instead, it initiates further steps—confirmation of applicability, alignment with existing structures, assessment of interaction with other systems. At each stage, the question shifts slightly, from whether the solution works to whether it has been shown to work under all necessary conditions. There is no point at which it is rejected. There is only the continuation of the process that precedes it. In this way, it becomes possible for a solution to exist, to be understood, and even to be obvious, without ever becoming operative. It remains present, but not applied. Its absence in practice is not experienced as failure, but as continuation—further steps, further verification, further alignment.
What follows is not a forecast, but an example. A situation in which a solution, arrived at more than once and recognized as such, is introduced into the conditions it is meant to address. It functions as expected. It encounters no fundamental objection. There is no single decision that prevents its use. And yet, within the system that receives it, it does not take hold. The problem remains—not because it could not be solved, but because the conditions required for its solution never fully converge. The system continues to operate, in every part, under full definition and perfect care.
Under Full Sun
Chapter One: Arrival
Daniel woke to the faint glow of a face he recognized before he remembered where he was. Jack Nicholson, frozen mid-expression, watched him from the seatback screen—half amused, half suspicious, the look of a man who already knew the answer and didn’t like it. The movie had ended. The selection menu had crept back in, looping its quiet grid of titles, but the system had held on that image a moment too long. It lingered there now, as if waiting for him to finish something.Daniel blinked, throat dry. The overhead lights were still dimmed, a thin imitation of night stretched across the cabin. A few rows ahead, someone coughed. The air had the stale, recycled thickness of something run too long without interruption.
He’d meant to stay awake through the ending. Something about the way the story had folded in on itself had kept him there—water, land, ownership, and one man trying to unbury it all. He hadn't planned to think about it, but he had anyway. It wasn't the kind of movie you watched passively. Now he just had the residue of it, like a problem half-solved. He had no feeling to go back to it. The moment had passed.
He shifted in his seat and thumbed the call button once, not out of entitlement but to confirm the rules of the place. The attendant passed a row behind him, moving carefully down the aisle with an empty cart. Someone asked her for water.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not stopping, her voice even and rehearsed. “We’re under a restricted service window. Company policy.”
He exhaled through his nose. He hadn’t missed anything. There was no drink service, no water. He sat back and stared again at Nicholson’s face, still hovering on the screen. There was something accusatory in it now, or maybe that was just the angle. Daniel toggled the screen off and let the cabin return to its dim, regulated quiet.
For a while he just sat there, awake but unwilling to move. Slowly he began to smack his lips to relieve his tongue of some of its dryness. Eventually the cabin lights brightened in stages. People stirred. Daniel had the row to himself—two seats, an empty armrest between him and the window. He shifted over and, as the plane began its descent, slid the shade up on the window seat.
Out the window, the land came into focus in pale, uneven patches. The Inland Empire spread below in muted browns and tired grids—industrial corrugations, long roads, sections of housing that seemed to thin out toward the horizon. It didn’t look like a place built to last. It looked like something that had been extended past its original intention.
Daniel watched it for a while, then reached into his bag and pulled out his phone. No signal yet. He considered opening his notes, flipping through the installation specs again, but stopped halfway through the motion and let the phone rest in his hand instead.
He felt a quiet anticipation settle in. Things lined up, the way he’d hoped. But he also had a lot of work to do.
The plane touched down harder than expected. A few people flinched. The engines reversed, a long mechanical sigh, and they slowed along a stretch of concrete that shimmered faintly in the heat. Daniel stayed seated, watching through the glass as the runway markings slid past in thick white blocks.
Not long after they cleared the main runway, a service truck appeared off to the side—moving parallel to them at an unhurried pace, its spray arms fanned wide like wings. Water sheeted out in clean, even lines, darkening the concrete behind it. A placard on the truck’s door flashed in block letters: DUST SUPPRESSION / FOD CONTROL, as if naming the reason made it less strange. The mist caught the late-afternoon light and drifted sideways in the jet wash, briefly copper, then gone. Daniel watched it with the same dry focus he brought to instrumentation, noting the steadiness of the pattern, the deliberate overlap, the way the wet surface began drying almost as soon as it was laid down. He could imagine the memo behind it: particulates, tire wear, safety margins. He could also feel his throat tighten at the thought of all that clean water becoming vapor before it hit the ground.
By the time the doors opened, the cabin had already begun to warm. Passengers stood too early, lifting bags, shifting in the narrow aisles. Daniel waited. He always did.
When he finally stepped out onto the jet bridge, the air changed: thicker, warmer, and carrying the day’s heat like it had been stored in the concrete. He followed the current of people into the terminal, past advertisements and closed kiosks, toward baggage claim. It was mid-afternoon, he had some hope he could find a place to buy a bottle of water, but nothing was open.
His bag came down in the first wave, as if the system wanted credit for that much. He tugged it free and stood for a moment beneath the fluorescent signage. There were car services advertised in three different fonts, and a line for ride-shares that curled behind a stanchion like a low-grade emergency. Daniel opened his email instead with a link to his car reservation. The site he was headed to sat outside the last dense cluster of development, a farming region that had been selected as a prime candidate for the project he was working on. Ride shares didn’t make sense out there.
The rental center was a glass tunnel of kiosks and polite screens. No counter, no person, only a row of tablets mounted at chest height and a rolling banner that congratulated him for choosing a contactless experience. He tapped through the prompts with his thumb. License: scanned. Face: centered in an oval until the app pulsed green. Payment: already on file. In less than a minute the app issued him a space number: B-17, and a make and model he barely registered, something mid-size and gray.
Outside, the garage smelled of hot rubber and old rain. An electronic board hung above the lanes like a departures screen, scrolling names and stall assignments. Daniel found his: RUIZ/D, and waited for the matching number to appear. It flashed B-12. He refreshed the app. Still B-17. His phone buzzed with a reminder—check-in window, installation briefing call in two hours—small clockwork that didn’t care what stall a car occupied. He walked to B-17; the app had been right the last time this happened. The space was empty. At B-12 there was a car, but not the one he’d been given: a compact with a different badge, a different shape, the sort of substitution someone would make only if they assumed nobody could tell. Daniel weighed the choices: hunt for a human that didn’t exist, or accept the mismatch and keep moving. The trunk opened as he approached, so he let that count as agreement. The app chirped: Your vehicle is ready.
He loaded his bag and slid into the driver’s seat. The wheel adjusted itself away from him, then toward him, as if searching for an ideal version of his posture. A chime sounded. The dashboard asked him to place his hands lightly on the rim while it verified his identity. A camera lens in the column glowed, took him in, and rendered his face as a wireframe on the center screen. Identity confirmed, it said. A second later a message appeared: Please present your driver’s license at exit.
The car backed out on its own and threaded through the lanes with slow, careful confidence. Daniel kept his hands where it wanted them. At the exit, two cars idled ahead of him, each paused a little longer than the last, as if the system were learning caution by repetition. When it was his turn, a gantry read his plate and lowered a bar halfway, jerking as if someone had to force it down. The screen on the post instructed him to look into the camera. He did. A soft tone acknowledged him—then another prompt appeared, brighter: Insert ID. He fed his license into the slot. The machine held it for an extra second, then another, long enough for Daniel to imagine the failure mode: barrier down, queue building, a supervisor somewhere approving exceptions one at a time. It returned the card and finally released the bar with a reluctant lift, as if embarrassed it had asked for anything at all.
Once it merged onto the freeway, the car took over completely. The fading lane lines being its guidance, but it was autonomy with supervision, the kind that required a human presence without human authority. Daniel watched the city thin out in layers: warehouses giving way to open lots, open lots to scrub, scrub to long empty stretches where the billboards advertised water in the abstract: purity, protection, security. The route turned off the main highway and into roads that still had shoulders made of dirt. Here and there a house sat back from the asphalt with a tank in the yard, sun-faded and practical. The car navigated it all without complaint, as if rural and urban were the same problem expressed at different resolutions.
His phone chimed once, soft and insistent, and the dashboard echoed it with a polite banner: Scheduled call: Brody, Sam — 4:00 PM. Daniel tapped accept. The car immediately brightened a warning on the instrument panel: Driver attention required. A second message followed, as if clarifying the first: Hands on wheel.
“Howdy, Daniel,” a voice said, warm as if they’d spoken ten minutes ago instead of weeks. “You land in one piece?”
Daniel glanced at the empty road ahead and then, because the car demanded it, tightened his hands on the wheel in a show of participation. “So far. The plane ran a restricted service window. The rental seems to run under restricted communications.”
Sam chuckled. “Yeah, well, reality can sometimes be out of spec. Listen, I’m glad to be catching you before you get settled. Tomorrow’s an early roll—sunup if you can manage it. Site wants eyes on the array before the heat starts doing its afternoon opinions.”
“Copy,” Daniel said. The car pulsed the warning again, as if offended by the conversation. He adjusted his grip—ten and two, like he was sixteen—and watched the icon soften back to green.
“Good man,” Sam said. “We’re doing a standard field validation. Same box you’ve been babysitting: solar storage, water output, no moving parts where it matters. It’ll sit there all day soaking up sun, and it’ll give you power on one side and a clean stream on the other. The trick is convincing the division to sign off on it.”
Daniel nodded even though Sam couldn’t see it. “I’ve got the latest firmware map and the output curves. If the irradiance holds, we should clear the minimum, power plus water, before lunch. The unit isn’t the variable.” He paused, then added, “It’s everything labeled around it.”
“Exactly,” Sam said, pleased. “So here’s the dance card. You know everything I can do is through a screen and a few people who still answer the phone, but I’ll work to get you through the gate.”
The car issued a delicate chime again. Driver attention required. Daniel gave the wheel a small, pointless nudge. “The car’s threatening to pull over if I look away too long,” he said. “Like I’m the one driving.”
Sam laughed, a soft rasp. “These new ones’ll file a report on your posture. Give it a little wheel-love now and then—just enough to keep it from tattling. Now. Tell me what’s already gone sideways.”
Daniel watched the lane lines slide under them, the car steady as a metronome while he kept one hand making small, periodic corrections for appearances. “Couple things,” he said. “The rental handed me a compact. I’ve got to pick up cases tomorrow. I don’t love the idea of driving to the site with equipment piled in the back seat like a teenager moving out. And I don’t have confirmation the office will recognize my badge in the morning. The work order on my end is digital.”
“Alright,” Sam said, like he’d been waiting for a list. Daniel could hear the clicking of keys, the faint adjustment of an earpiece. “Car—don’t waste your brain on it. You’re not hauling anything in that thing. Maribel has a company truck. She’ll meet you at the gate with the cases loaded up and a cab full of clipboards. You just bring yourself and the serial numbers.” A pause, then Sam added, “I’ll message her now to confirm.”
Daniel felt the pressure ease a notch, not because the system had improved, but because someone inside it had made a choice. “Appreciate it,” he said, and gave the wheel its required nudge as the attention icon drifted toward yellow.
“Badge,” Sam continued. “Give me thirty seconds.” More keys. “Okay. I’ll push the request for a temporary access credential tied to your license plate. Security will still do their little ritual, but it should end in your favor. Just send me a photo of the plate when you stop.”
“And paper,” Daniel said, already anticipating the next problem. He reached into his bag at the passenger-side floor and thumbed the edge of a folded printout he’d brought as a habit, not a requirement. “I’ve got the work package header and the safety sheet. I can print the rest if I have to.”
“That’s why they send you,” Sam said, not flattering him so much as naming a function. “Send me what you’ve got, I’ll make it look official. Worst case, I route a full packet to a shop that still remembers toner.”
Daniel glanced at the time on the dash. “Tomorrow,” he said, more to anchor himself than to instruct Sam. “Intake photos. Baseline readings. Irradiance log. First-hour checklist: seal integrity, output stability, water line flush, then we let it run.” He heard the steadiness of his own voice and liked it. “If it’s going to fail, it’ll do it early. I don’t think it will.”
“It won’t,” Sam agreed. “Which means the conversation shifts.” The warmth in his tone held, but the words changed shape. “After the field window there’s a budget and scheduling touchpoint with the program office. They’ll call it fifty minutes. It won’t be. They’ll want burn rate projections, labor codes, travel justifications, and where we’re classifying the water—byproduct, co-deliverable, environmental mitigation. If you hear any sentence that starts with ‘in alignment with,’ just breathe and let me take it.”
Sam kept talking, and the call drifted the way these things drifted: from gates and credentials into calendars, then into the soft math of constraints. Next week’s availability. A review board two time zones away. A cap on overtime that didn’t apply to emergencies because emergencies weren’t a budget category. Daniel answered when asked, mostly in times and quantities, letting Sam translate the rest into language that could survive email.
“Alright,” Sam said finally, not ending it so much as placing a bookmark. “You’re five minutes out. I’m going to let you get checked in without me narrating your life.”
“Copy,” Daniel said.
“And Daniel?” Sam added. “If anyone tells you the unit is the problem, make them say it twice. Out loud.”
The hotel was the closest thing to an anchor near the installation; a low building pressed against the edge of a service road. By the time Daniel reached it the sun was beginning to slide down, the light flattening across the lots and throwing long shadows under the few parked cars. His phone went quiet and the cabin returned to the car’s steady hum. The vehicle dropped him at a painted curb and announced, in the same calm voice it used for lane changes, that his trip had ended. Inside, check-in was supposed to happen by proximity—walk in, be recognized, receive a digital key. The automatic sliding doors at the front were taped open and half-dismantled, a plastic curtain hung behind them like a temporary organ. A printed sign apologized for the inconvenience and directed guests to a side entrance. Daniel followed the arrows down a short corridor and pushed through a plain metal door that stuck slightly before yielding.
The lobby was empty except for a kiosk and a potted plant that looked convincingly artificial. His phone vibrated as he crossed a threshold the app must have recognized. Welcome, Daniel. Room 214. A key icon appeared, pulsing once, then holding steady. He rode the elevator alone. On the second floor, the hallway carpet muffled his footsteps the way it was designed to. The holographic eyes of a housekeeping robot gave him a friendly emote. He nodded while wondering if there was any other soul in this hotel. At his door, he held the phone near the lock. It clicked open without any visible confirmation, like a favor.
Inside, the room had been prepared for someone else’s idea of arrival. The bed was dressed with folded towels shaped into swans. Paper hearts were scattered across the comforter in a deliberate spill, and a laminated card on the nightstand read Happy Anniversary! in looping script. On the dresser, a bottle of wine stood in a plastic bucket of ice beside two stemless glasses and a pair of chocolate squares wrapped in gold foil. Daniel set his bag down and stared at it all for a moment, trying to imagine the algorithm that had decided this was appropriate.
He didn’t bother calling anyone. The card didn’t have a number on it anyway, just a QR code. He twisted the cap off the bottle with his fingers and poured himself a glass. The wine was too sweet and too warm in the way hotel wine always was, but it was wet, and that was enough. He drank half of it standing up, then sat on the edge of the bed and opened the room-service menu on the television. It offered a choice of pre-approved meals in square photographs, each with a countdown timer beneath it. Daniel scrolled past the obvious defaults: pasta, a burger, something described as a “power bowl”; and stopped on a plain plate: rice, vegetables, grilled chicken, soy sauce. Close enough to real food that he could predict what it would do in his body. He tapped confirm and watched the order settle into the system: Your delivery will arrive in 28 minutes. The number felt oddly reassuring. He had a room. He had a car, even if it wasn’t the right one. The day had held together. When the knock finally came, the tray included a sweating glass of water sealed with a paper band. Daniel broke it himself and took a long drink, satisfied in the small, private way he measured progress.
After dinner, Daniel called his wife and said goodnight to the kids. The connection was clear but thin, each of them speaking in turns like they were waiting for a signal that never quite came. When the call ended, the room returned to its quiet arrangement. He finished the bottle of wine without paying much attention to it and let the television run on mute, the movement of people arguing visible but distant. For a while he considered reviewing the installation notes again, but the thought passed. He wondered if the thermostat was set low enough, what security would be like, what Maribel would look like. He set his phone face down on the nightstand and lay back, listening to the low, steady hum of the room’s climate system. Tomorrow would start early. The forecast called for full sun.
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AskNotForWhomthePozLoads
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2025
Every writer's great ambition is to be the owner and CEO of a rape factory known as a novel or poem. It's just that when you're actually pounding out your readers with words on a page instead of only vaguely fantasizing about doing it on film like he did they thank you for it.
Just don't collect pissbottles and steal your geriatric dad's antique guns like he did.
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2021
@George Lucas dont be a fucking nigger, put that shit in a god damn spoiler. Do you not thumbnail your images too?
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2021
Sure. The second post of the thread, which is the first writing sample, isn’t spoilered, so didn’t realize the precedent.
EDIT: can't edit it lmao. I reported it so if a mod deletes it I will repost with spoiler.
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2021
Fair point, my inner janny assumed it was a given. In an actual constructive note, I do think you’ve got a solid writing style and I do look forward to reading more of what you cook up.
- Joined
- May 21, 2019
If it's going to be the length of a novel by the end you could just make a separate thread for it since this one's more about kicking shorter snippets/ideas/general brainsharts around than posting full length works.