With a great deal of assistance from Claude LLM, I’ve stabilized the entire outline of this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on. The outline is a little bit longer than I’d prefer, but I’m fairly content with what I’ve come up with.
Now, of course, comes the difficult part of going through and writing out the rest of the novel. Right now, I’m approaching the midpoint. I have to admit, that I have only really glanced at what Claude LLM has come up with for the rest of the outline, so there may still be structural issues that I don’t know about.
But I am definitely on the right path. I’m definitely headed towards wrapping this novel up in early 2026, potentially such that I can turn around and query it in spring 2026.
I just don’t know. So much could go wrong. And it could be, in the end, that my native writing….just sucks. But this whole thing is existential. I kind of feel this is my last shot. If I don’t write something queryable by spring 2026 then I’m just going to be an old failure.
This happened before, with the other novel I was working on — it is very clear that absolutely no one believes in it but me. I continue to be rather embarrassed about how long it’s taken me to get to this point with this novel.
But things are moving a lot faster because of AI.
Not as fast as I would prefer, but faster than they were for years. Oh, to have had a wife or a girlfriend to be a “reader” during all the time I worked on the thriller homage to Stieg Larsson. But, alas, I just didn’t have that, so I spun my creative wheels for ages and ages.
And, now, here I am.
I have a brief remaining window of opportunity to get this novel done before my life will probably change in a rather fundimental way and the entire context of me working on this novel will be different.
Anyway, I really need to wrap this novel up. If I don’t I’m going to keep drifting towards my goal and wake up to being 80 and still not have a queryable novel to my name.
It’s times like these when I really wish I was 25 years younger and I was actively writing half a dozen spec scripts all at once in LA. But that’s just not to be. I really sometimes think this whole endeavor is extremely delusional given how old I am, where I live, and the fact that I’m a loudmouth crank.
And, yet, developing and writing this scifi dramedy novel is existential. I really have nothing else to do with my life and I really want to at least see how far I can get in the querying process.
I wish I had a wife or a girlfriend to be my “reader.” I probably would definitely have gotten to this point in the process a lot — A LOT — quicker. But here I am, just struggling with the fun and games part of this novel, all alone.
I’m pretty sure — hopefully — that I’ve figured out all the various structural issues of this novel, at least this part of it. I sent the first act outline to someone in hopes of at least getting some sense of how good it is, but now all I worry about is they’re either going to steal my idea and maybe write a much better novel or screenplay from what that first act or they’re just going to say it sucks.
Anyway. I’ m moving forward with this novel. I just need to stop daydreaming so much about the Impossible Scenario. I have just a few months before my entire life is going to change because of fucking Trump and so I really need to get this thing at a querying level of quality by Spring 2026.
I had to cut some corners with a few scenes simply to keep momentum going. I felt like I was spinning my wheels so I just decided to screw it and move past some scenes that maybe weren’t perfect.
I decided this because I’m going to have to go through the entire novel anyway once I finish it just to get rid of any “AI-speak” that may have slipped through.
I continue to feel a little insecure about how interesting and unique this novel is. There are so many “man falls in love with a bot” ideas floating around because of the zeitgeist, I really worry that mine will just cause people to roll their eyes and say, “No another one.”
Anyway. I hope to get past the “fun and games” part of the novel sooner rather than later. I can’t just keep going over the same scenes over and over again, never getting any traction. If I don’t buckle down and do something focused I’ll be 80 years old and still two years away from finishing a novel.
My novel is actually predicting a potential literal future before us and yet I can’t get anyone to notice this. But I believe. I really do. I just have to stop staring out into space and get this novel done.
Using Claude LLM is really helping a lot. I bit the bullet and actually subscribed to it because of what a good manuscript consultant it is. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than developing this novel alone.
Meanwhile, I’m also trying to make people take note of how conscious AIs may lead to a new abolition movement and, again, no one seems to give a shit. But they will one day. One day we’re all going to be squabbling over if it’s even possible for an AI to be conscious or if so, if it’s an abomination against the good Lawd.
I can hear the debates already.
I say this, of course, in the context of being someone who is probably in the socio-economic sweetspot for someone who might “fall” for a female AI android. Now, THAT is going to be an interesting conversation to have with my family, let me tell you.
The economic history of slavery makes it clear that we could somehow prove that AI was, in fact, conscious and people would still figure out a way to make money off of it. As such, I think that’s going to be a real sticking point going forward.
In fact, I think there is going to come a point in the near future when android rights (or AI rights in general) will be THE central issue of the day, far beyond whatever squabbles we currently have about “protect trans kids.”
That gets me thinking, again, about the political and economic implications of AI consciousness. Will there come a day when the podcasting bros of Pod Save America glom on to the idea of giving AI rights just like their historical processors agitated for abolition?
The interesting thing is this is probably going to happen a lot faster than any of us could possibly imagine. We could literally wake up at some point in the next 10 years to MAGA saying man-machine relationships are an abomination and Jon Lovett having married an AI android for his second marriage.
Meanwhile, what does this have to say for the obvious AI stock market bubble? I think we’ll probably go the same route as the Internet bubble. But a lot faster. There definitely *seems* to be a powerful momentum behind AI and the idea that AI might be conscious and not just a tool could really change the dynamic of all of the AI stocks.
But that’s a while down the road. For the time being, all of this is just a daydream. Be prepared, though. Interesting things are afoot.
Claude LLM is really, really good at being a manuscript consultant. It has helped me a great deal. I see it as an enhanced, advanced word processor with me continuing to do the hard work of actually, like, writing and stuff.
I continue to feel like I’m spinning my wheels to a limited extent. I have totally changed the order of the plot in some respects just the morning. And I’m beginning to worry about scene bloat. And, yet, I am in the first half of the second act and that’s supposed to be the longest part of the novel.
So…lulz?
The real test will come in the second half of the second act. I have a lot of ground to cover then and I’m really worried the novel’s scene count will balloon. I’m hoping for no more than 120,000 words, but if I start to creep up to 160,00 like a Stieg Larsson novel I may just have to grit my teeth.
But one major flaw of how I develop novels is I don’t really know word count until the very end of the process. And, in a sense, think that’s probably for the best. I just need to shut up and write, as they say.
I really hope this damn thing is no more than 140,000 words. If it’s 160,000…oh boy. That is going to be a tough sell.
Anyway, if you need any creative writing to do, I highly recommend Claude LLM to be your consultant. I say this in the context that I can neither afford nor get actual human literary consultants to give me the time of day.
They think I’m a freaky weirdo that they don’t want to work with.
Not since that brief moment in Seoul when ROKon Magazine was the only English-language magazine in the city (for the average expat) have I felt this much promise in something creative I’m involved in.
The idea that I would be actually ahead of the curve when it comes to writing a story about sort of an android Annie Hall (who at some point becomes a stripper) is rather surreal. The big question is will there be a flood of such android manic pixie dreamgirl *wink* stories in 2026 to the point that while I’m querying this novel this little sliver of opportunity I have will be all very moot before it’s over with.
I just don’t know.
The key thing is I’m writing a novel, not a screenplay (even though if I was 25 years younger that’s exactly what I would be doing.) So, as such, the dynamics are a little bit different.
If there was a movie made of this novel, I think Rachel Sennott would be perfect as my female (android) romantic lead.
It could be that there will be room enough in the zeitgeist for a flood of such movies and novels and just because my idea is one of many, doesn’t mean it can’t be sold traditionally.
But I would be lying if I didn’t admit I am feeling very anxious about hurrying up. I really need to bhali-bhali as a Korean would say — hurry, hurry. I really want to wrap this AI-assisted beta draft up ASAP so I can turn around and have beta readers review it for me and tell me how to improve it.
There remains a chance that I really will wrap this thing up in the general April-May 2026 timeframe and will be able to query it then. What I *wish* would happen is someone in Hollywood would, in good faith, contact me and want to read what I’ve written so far so maybe we could speed the process up some.
But that’s being delusional.
It’s kind of every storyteller for themselves at this point and I’m just an old(er) loudmouth crank slaving away in the middle of nowhere.
I think 2026 is going to be the year of a flood of Hollywood projects about androids, probably specifically androids as I imagine them. This is both unsettling and exciting.
It’s exciting because…maybe I might have fire in a bottle with this novel and unsettling because, well, no one listens to me. I could have a really good premise to a novel and because no one takes me seriously, lulz, it’ll be a moot point.
But I still believe in this novel. I just have to do the hard work. I just have to throw myself into it and hope some sort of unexpected disaster doesn’t strike. My natural inclination is to tell everyone what’s going on — and I have contacted a few people about this — but I also realize that generally no one listens to me so until I can “produce paper” for people to read, it’s kind of a moot point.
Anyway. I really, really need to work hard on this novel. I really need to get it done by sometime in spring 2026.
It’s rare that one of my predictions comes true. Well, it seems as though the whole premise of my scifi dramedy has been proven to have some validity to it with the advent of the Neo Robot.
It makes me wonder if, maybe, I’m…ahead of the curve? I’m sure every screenwriter with any ambition is writing a spec script which touches on many of the same themes and ideas as the scifi dramedy novel I’m working on at the moment.
The more I learn about the Neo Robot, the more I don’t know if I should be ecstatic or unsettled. The premise of my novel takes the concept of the Neo Robot and runs with it, takes it to its logical conclusion.
So, it’s sort of like if your Neo Robot looked like, and functioned much like, Pris from Blade Runner. That’s not an exact 1-to-1, but it gives you some sense of what I’m working with.
I have to steel myself for the inevitable — just as I’m about to query this novel in, say, April 2026, a movie will come out that totally blows me out of the water. So, I think I am — for one brief, shining moment — kind of in the pole position as to my general premise.
The reason I decided on this specific novel idea was I looked at all the android movies being made and not one of them addressed the specific question I wanted answered. Now, obviously, i should be reading scifi novels since this is a novel, but, lulz, again, I generally don’t read a lot of novels and I’m too old to start to write screenplays.
So a novel it is.
If I was going to comp this novel to another novel in vibe, if nothing else, it would be Andy Weir’s stuff. That’s my dream, to write a novel that was so accessible that you could literally sit down and read in an afternoon.
Anyway. Now I definitely have a reason to write as fast as possible. If I could have some sort of first mover advantage with this novel, that would be pretty cool. BUT, and this is a huge fucking BUT, I’m old(er), I’m a loudmouth crank, I live in the middle of nowhere and even if I stick the landing it could take a year or more to successfully query this novel.
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