ThirdGen

No, it's not Clockwork Orange. The author's self-insert character is the main character. He was really beat.

Nope. The author recounted actual events, but gave all his friends pseudonyms.

It denies them agency.

It is not. It's a book. Quite famous. Lots of jazz.

Bonus points to you if she's going into it totally cold.

Goat Noir! "Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money - and a goat - and I didn't get the money and I didn't get the goat. Pretty, isn't it?" (Double Ingoatmnity) "Don't you know any better than to wake a goat up at two o'clock in the afternoon?" (The Big Goat) "I told him I was your confidential goat, but I guess I didn't sound confidential enough." (G.O.A.) "When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about goats." (Goatless, or À bout de chèvre) "He gave me a little pearl-handled goat for our first anniversary. Figured I'd better leave before I used it on him." (Goat Simple) "Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky goat." (No Country for Old Goats)

When your thread's too big...

You can exercise your intuition well by taking up Go. It's the only game that's been shown to reduce the likelihood of dementia. Prior to the degeneration of dementia usually comes years of paranoid and reactionary thinking. You can guard against that with compassion and seeking to really understand human and social complexity. None of this is exactly medical advice, and professionals would be the best way to go.

I hope not. His friends exhibit heavy irresponsibility and occasional casual cruelty, and he loves it. Edit: Road trips and benzedrine feature heavily.

A guy bums around for a few years with his friends.

Firefly.

Have you been at work this whole time?

Maybe this Axe Pug is a little more palatable.

Bizarre. I recall the Catholics dealt with the issue of potential life on other planets quickly and simply by saying, "Well, God rules them too."

As in, as appealing as the spray?

Nobody knows how to comfortably heat an office building. Everybody-hot or everybody-cold - those are the only certainties.

Anchovies were a frequent enough punchline back in the 80s-90s that that never really happened for me. Sardines rule!

So many to choose from, but I most want to say... Blake's 7.

, 61!

Dirt-colored cars have an advantage... (said lazy dude) (Macbeth)

frightened them? It

That... is less than ideal. I'm gonna check the codes, but it's most likely related to transmission problems I've been having. Probably a better value for my money to replace this old clunker rather than keep getting more and more expensive repairs.

And you used to be able to go to an auto parts store and use their readers to see what's going on. Newer policies have curbed that. Nope, take it into a mechanic for the next round of the Mobility Tax.

As a general rule, I'd prefer to first spur your own creativity. This will be your opus, after all. What do you want to see that you haven't seen before? Focus on an aspect of the characters, world, or story. Is there something like this that you've been dissatisfied with in another work? What was wrong with it? What would be better than it? You can transform the material as well to better understand it. What if a character was in a TV show, or game, or an opera, or an ancient poem? What would they be like in that circumstance? Does anything from that also work in the prose version you want to write? You could also try an Oblique Strategy: http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html There was a point in my writing when I similarly had trouble moving from setup to the bulk of the plot. Some strategies that worked for me in that instance: - Write a short prequel. - Watch, read, consume more. - Listen to people, try to understand how they live their lives. - Expand your reference pool. Something trite to one person/genre can be a revelation used differently in another.