anactualchad

[anactualchad]

the couch story

So this is kind of a long and personal story, but we have a friend who has this idea for a movie. 

It’s about a couch that eats people. 

We’d always try to get him to explain the story to us, but he could never explain the whole thing--it’s really just a series of ideas in his head rather than an actual, developed script.

So, that led a friend and I to make jokes about what this couch story is truly about, what genre it is, what kind of characters are in it, etc. This would always make our friend mad, saying that we “don’t get it” and that we’re ruining his idea.

Last night, my friend and I we were talking about outlining/structure/plotting methods in storytelling. We discovered we had some differences in opinions, and somehow, the couch came up. That’s when we decided to put our storytelling to the test, with the couch as our victim: 

We’d each write a treatment of the couch story and see who has the more interesting story. Then we’ll give it to our friend who conceptualized the couch in the first place and make him decide which ones better (he’s gonna choose neither, we already know).

The first thing that came to mind was “What if Junji Ito wrote The Couch?” Stemming from that idea, this is what I came up with:

the couch:

A young girl is trying to push her way through art school. She stays home all day drawing but feeling like nothing inspires her. 

Her boyfriend is way out of her league and works really hard, but he loves his gf and encourages her to keep expressing herself through her art. 

The boyfriend recently got a promotion at work which has made him happier, more interested in going to the gym, and in general trying to improve himself. Meanwhile, the girlfriend stays inside most of the day and eats junk food. The boyfriend tries to motivate her to pursue her art and even once suggests that she try going to get some exercise--something that she silently resents.

To try and make the apartment more “inspiring” for her, the boyfriend comes home with a moving crew who brings in this ugly ass couch. The couch has a tan, leathery texture and a weird blend of earthy fleshy tones. Truthfully she hates the design and finds it nauseating to look at so she doesn't go anywhere near it. 

The bf says he thought she’d like it and shrugs, says he’s not really sensitive to these things since he isn’t an artist, and he decides to chill on the sofa and do his usual bedtime routine of watching TV. Meanwhile, the girlfriend does her usual routine of sketching at her desk.

After a few days, the bf comes home from work totally exhausted. He figures it has something to do with how hectic work has got so he goes and plops down on the couch. A few hours later, it seems like he’s really coming down with some kind of fever or something so she starts tending to him. She tries to sit on the couch with him to comfort him but he gets irritable and says he just wants to lay down, so she just goes back to drawing. 

The next morning he wakes up feeling even worse and decides he’s going to stay home from work. This inspires the girlfriend and gives her a lot of energy. She suddenly has all the energy in the world to cook, clean, shop for food, and to do everything he has wanted her to do. She tends to him, makes him tea and meals, and pats his head and comforts him.

One night, in between his naps, she becomes heavily inspired to sketch the boyfriend while he’s laying on the couch sleeping peacefully. However, her sketches don’t seem good enough for her. Her lines are way too stiff and she just can’t capture his essence, so she throws out all the drawings.

The next day his condition has elevated to a stronger fever and complete exhaustion, and it’s so bad that they have to call a doctor over to the house. The doctor checks him out and says he has a fever so he must be fighting some kind of infection. They’re puzzled as to what this can be. The doctor takes a blood sample and says he’ll go have it tested and call them about the results soon. 

That night the girlfriend is feeling really horny and wants to have sex with her sick as hell boyfriend, but he’s insanely exhausted and says he can’t, even though she’s been so good to him. She insists, saying that he’s just so cute right now so she rubs his cock and sucks him off all the while he’s frail and sick and she thinks this is so adorable. He basically passes out after splooging in her mouth, so she masturbates in their bed and passes out.

The next morning the boyfriend is now looking insanely weathered and emaciated. It’s a really shocking transformation from the night before, but the girlfriend insists that he’s starting to look better, and she props him up so that he can sit up instead of laying down. As she does, his body seems almost malleable with the way that he leans into the couch, almost as if he’s taking the shape of the couch rather than the couch taking shape of the weight sitting atop it.

The bf is really weak, but he manages to explain to the girl that he fell into a very deep sleep last night, but then awoke and was experiencing sleep paralysis. He was stuck staring at the ceiling, and he could hear all these different voices all at once. It must have been several dozens of people, they were all screaming and yelling in complete hysterics. From what he could make out, they were all yelling “Let me out,” and “Someone help me” and “Get me out of here!” Some of the voices were completely incomprehensible because they were in other languages. All the while he was completely paralyzed--he had no sense of his own body and could only see the ceiling directly above him. 

Just then the phone rings so she goes into the other room to get it. It’s the doctor, and he starts explaining to the girl that the results came back. 

However, the results are inconclusive. What does he mean? Well, and he has no way of explaining how this could have happened, but they find that there’s more than one blood type in his blood sample--something that should be absolutely impossible. Not only that, but there are other “anomalies” in the sample that they cannot identify with the equipment in their clinic’s lab. He has sent an emergency rush order to have the blood inspected at a university’s laboratory. 

The doctor asks if the boyfriend’s condition has gotten any better. The girlfriend thinks for a moment about how she wants to answer, but before she can, the boyfriend starts moaning for the girl. 

She runs out into the living room to find that he is literally being bent and contorted into the shape of the couch rest. His head/neck is bent back inhumanly to the curve of the headrest, his jaw wide open and stretching, gaps forming between his teeth, the top of his head/forehead flattening and being pushed backwards. Likewise the same is happening to his body and legs.

The girlfriend goes to see if she can pick him up but finds that even his skin is beginning to fuse with the couch. Upon closer inspection, his skin is turning into the same strange leathery texture of the couch and beginning to match its tone and color. She’s no longer able to pull him up from the couch without it pulling on his skin and making him wail in pain.

The boyfriend is groaning and appears to be pleading but he can’t actually mouth any coherent words anymore because of how deformed he has gotten. He’s a babbling, incoherent, drooling mess. 

The girlfriend gets a chill up her spine and she darts off into her bedroom. She comes back with her sketchbook and she starts drawing what she sees. She is able to capture her boyfriend’s new grotesque form much easier than she ever could when trying to capture him while he was normal and healthy. She continues drawing obsessively late into the night while the boyfriend is becoming nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the couch and moaning sorrowfully.

[anactualchad]

Final draft v1

The book is not 100% done yet but it is really damn freaking close. Most of what I need left is illustrations, meta-text (Amazon synopsis, acknowlesgements, etc) and to do another sweep for misspellings, improper use of tense, and to give one final revise to any lingering fluff.

I started this thing for real about a week into July, and it has taken me until October. Truthfully there’s about one to two months of time in there, possibly more, that I could have cut out if I had just stayed diligent--but that’s a lesson to apply next time.

Now that I know I can do this shit, I just need to do it again.

[anactualchad]

second draft done

zzzz

I need to throw this thing into epub, read it and take notes as i go, and then go back and make those changes

too late to elaborate. gonna be tired for work zz

[anactualchad]

Letter to old friend,

Perhaps now you can see why I distanced myself from that pack of hyenas. You no longer know who you can trust--who is a genuine friend and who is a spy for the enemy? I have to thank you now for doing your best to drive me even further from that group, even if your methods were a bit unconventional. I could give you the benefit of the doubt and say that I simply didn't understand the value of what you were doing for me at the time. The people you spend your time with is an investment into your future. Their positive or negative effect on you increases exponentially as time passes. I'd suggest digging deep, finding what you value most, and finding some new friends who get that--even if it means being alone for a while. The discomfort you feel when alone is a sign that you should spend more time doing just that. (But I'm not supposed to give my opinion)

[anactualchad]

11 more chapters

so tired lately. 'so hot in here. pisssssssssssssssss!!!!

[anactualchad]

update

This last week really sucked for progress. I finally did some work today and got a good roll going on, but I gotta sleep now.

I discovered that cigarettes are like, really bad... I tend to smoke very very casually, maybe one pack within the span of 6 months. But last week I had gotten into a dirty funk and decided to pick up on some ciggies I had wrapped in duct tape and thrown in the back of my drawer. For that whole week I must have smoked at least two times a day.

But here’s the point:

I realized that whole week I was having a really hard time getting to sleep and I was completely exhausted almost every day. Once I’d get home, I’d be too tired even to focus on writing at all. Like, normally I can be tired but still write, but this time, it was like my brainsponge was completely dry and I couldn’t afford to spend any mental power task. I even started feeling kinda flushed and clammy this weekend.

But anyways here’’s the point for real:

Pretty sure the, like, cumulative nicotine in the body can cause some bad effects for health and ultimately for productivity. Usually I associate smoking with the brief nicotine high and the relaxation, but I hadn’t considered the lasting effects it could have beyond that. I don’t know if this science is solid or wahtever, I just know that i felt like shit the entire week I was smoking lol.

But anywyays, I haven’t had a painful enough reason to stay away from cigarettes entirely, but this kind of thing really gets to me, so I think it’s time to put them down for a very very long time. 

[anactualchad]

planned drafts

As I was doing some rewriting today, I hapapend to make one passage especially..... flow-y. It just felt so smooth to write and read it. I was even thinking, “I don’t even need amazing characters or story if I can manage to write this buttery!!!” That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s true. 

But then, looking back at everything else I’ve rewrote this last week... it has none of those smooth qualities!!!

So I think here’s how the rewrites need to go:

1. Rough draft - DONE

2. Rough draft v2 to sharpen up language, reduce clutter, and just make things better in general - CURRENT

3. Rough draft v3 for rhythm and flow

4. Use Calibre to convert the manuscript to epub and read it on my phone. Any weird pacing issues should then make themselves apparent, at which point Ill fix them.

5. That should then put us in some final draft territory

Might need to push my deadline back a week but I don’t mind if it ends up being super productive.

[anactualchad]

3 and a half chapters revised

Not bad for a weekday.

Normally I wouldn’t care to do updates like this, but I want to see just how much I can get done with this kind of task, i guess. 

Today I rewrote a scene and really let loose into something that was way funnier than it was originally. I look at that now and think “Can I go back in a second round of revisions and spice things up even more?” I’m eager to see, and I hope I have the patience to let that inspiration come instead of rushing off to try and deliver a finished product. 

[anactualchad]

More chapters + sketch

Only 6 today. But I’m still good for my projected deadline. We’ll see how much I get done during the week.

I’m in talks with an illustrator (she just started up her official art profile: check it out here). They read some of my current draft and whipped up some sketches for me. Here’s an idea they were playing with:

[anactualchad]

progress report 9/7/19

I rewrote 10 chapters today and it ended up taking all day. Some of them I did a light rewrite of because they didn't hit quite right the first time. For the others, it was an exercise in clipping words and rewriting the lines I really wanted to have stand out.   

That gives us about 40 chapters left to revise. I gave myself a deadline of 9/20 for the whole thing, but if I keep at this pace, it could definitely be sooner. Some rough math:  

10 chapters for an entire day. Probably about 3 to 4 for each weekday after work. Meaning about 15 total for Monday through Friday. 

Saturday (today): 10 Sunday: 10 M-F: 15 Saturday: 10 Sunday: 5

[anactualchad]

version 1 of a rough draft: done

I stayed up late for this, but it worth.

Still expecting to add some major words in a few sections, but as it stands, we are conceptually in a much better place... I don’t foresee a need to completely revise/rearrange scenes anymore. It’s now just about making this turd shine (and fixing all of those tense issues good lord)

[anactualchad]

have to be dilligent

It’s insanely easy to fall into the trap of “wahhh I worked all day and now I feel tired and don’t want to do writing” but I’ve already proven to myself that that’s bullshit. Even when tired, if I just sit down and push past the resistance and start writing, I’ll be able to write just as well as other days. 

NO MORE EXCUSES after work. You get home, you dress into your casual duds, and you get to work. 

[anactualchad]

Consider having the most unsettling thing possible happen to you right at this moment and you might have a creepy story on your hands

[anactualchad]

Progress report 8/21

Work is good. Training is slow but I think I’ll be able to enjoy work and not get too bored too quickly. There are certain feelings that will never change, though, regardless of where I go (spoilers: it’s me, not them).

The truth is, when you’re feeling down and shitty, there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just a temporary emotion that will pass just like rain clouds.

The danger comes in not realizing this, and in trying to distract or pass the bad mood by relying on some kind of vice: validation from others, sex, video games, violence, whatever. Since the depression cannot be remedied no matter what, it will just make those activities feel empty and you won’t feel satisfied. 

Think that human validation will make you feel better when you’re sad? It will just make you feel more ignored, empty, sad, worthless, etc. You’ll blame yourself and others for it. In reality, you just need to let the mood pass. Nothing is going to be good during this time. Just keep doing the good work and let it pass.I wrote several thousand good words despite the bad mood.

Novel progress:

Several of the chapters got condensed into one, but that’s not a bad thing. Sill got a little bit of a ways to go until this draft is done.

[anactualchad]

progress update

Wrote 12,000 words today. About 18 chapters. That kind of varies though as I realized that some chapters needed to be combined since they were a bit short in the outline.

Some pretty good passages/ideas came out of this session today. I was really distracted for the first half of the day and didn’t think I’d do any good work, but I pushed through it and ended up writing some stuff I was really proud of.

It sounds a little conceited, especially if this whole novel ends up being a massive piece of shit, but yeah, I’m actually really proud of myself for being so clever with a few of these sections! If anything these are just more points of motivation because I think people will really get a kick out of reading them--it would be a shame to put them to waste.

[anactualchad]

updates

Damn so I really got scared there for a bit--almost got too afraid to start writing my novel. After I finished my outline, I kind of let myself get distracted. I ended up playing Dangitronpaul (slowpoke.jpg) and got really into it. But then, during a conversation with one of my friends, the stuff he was saying... It’s the kind of thing exactly that my novel is a response to. His feelings and attitudes about Japan and being a weeaboo were 100% what my novel is a response/cautionary tale about. It seriously got me back on my ass and writing again. It also gave me a pretty good idea for a new scene that I think is going to help flesh out a major part of my main character. Also, I’m starting the new job officially tomorrow--today was some onboarding. Here’s to employment!

[anactualchad]

58 chapters!!!

So i completed this new outline. Apparently it has taken me about 6 hours! Yeah sure there was some eating and fucking around between that, so it’s probably more like 4 to 5. Either way, I feel very good about this draft. Everything is UNIFIED now and it all ties in together. All the fluff has been eliminated.

Here’s the thing about the last draft I was writing: Since I hadn’t tried to summarize by chapter, I was still firing ideas off every which way direction. That means every chapter has a ton of unnecessary rambling and details that, while certianly seem cool, don’t actually add anything interesting to the story. Now that I’ve boiled this outline down to the absolute essential plot points + the necessary details, this thing is laser focused, easy to follow, and makes complete sense. I’ll go through it again tomorrow to really iron it out and then give myself some distance before starting the actual writing, but for once, that part doesn’t feel that scary anymore. 

I was also able to come up with some ideas that TBH I think are really clever and awesome. Whenever I do that, I hope to god that I don’t die or have my computer wiped. It’s kind of like when you collect 50,000 souls in dark souls and suddenly start getting anxiety about losing them all before you can get back to the bonfire. That kinda thing.