Make It Fuck
The idea hit at 8 PM, pure and clean.
A cracked subway tile the color of a forgotten summer sky. The memory it unlocked: a childhood finch, dead in a shoebox behind the shed. Him standing there in his socks, grass cold under his feet, not knowing whether you were supposed to pray for a bird.
A loss exactly his size: small, blue, and nobody else’s problem.
He wrote it in one go, his fingers barely keeping up. No outline. No “arc.” Just tile, bird, kid, ache.
It was good.
It was his.
·
By 9 PM, he’d made the mistake.
He opened the internet.
A craft thread said: You need an opening that shows how your character moves through the world. Start with their walk.
“Readers decide in one sentence,” the guy in the video said, pacing like he was about to launch a motivational cult. Tight shirt, headset mic. “You can encode an entire goddamn backstory in a stride. Trauma, swagger, class position—boom. One walk. Your first line has to walk. Your first line has to fuck. You don’t have the time of day to ease in.”
He looked at his first line.
No walk.
Just a tile.
He whispered, “Make it fuck,” immediately regretting it, and dropped his character onto a sidewalk like he was placing a mannequin.
·
By 10 PM, subways were cancelled.
Another post said subways were “grimdark coded” now. Too much piss, too much crime. “Readers deserve coziness,” a Brooklyn profile picture declared. Blue hair, septum ring, MFA in the bio. “More mugs, more plants. Coffee shops are timeless. Subway tiles are trauma triggers.”
Fine. Coffee shop. Same blue tile, now in a backsplash. Same ache, now with oat milk.
·
By 11, the finch started to look stupid.
Who the hell has a finch.
He clicked a video called 5 Ways To Raise Emotional Stakes. The host had soft lighting and a mug that said WRITE HARDER.
“Here’s the truth,” she said. “Dogs and kids are the only emotional currencies that still convert. Parrots? Hamsters? Finch? That’s Etsy energy. Nobody grieves whimsical animals.”
He stared at his tiny blue bird and felt himself getting coached out of his own childhood.
He changed the finch to a dog. Gave it a collar. Made the blue “richer,” whatever the hell that meant.
·
By midnight, another guy appeared under a ring light. Tattoos framed the shot like they were part of the set.
“Your protagonist cannot be passive,” he barked, chopping at the air. “We do not write stories about men who just stand around feeling shit. Make him hot. Make him busy. Give him exes. Give him errands. If he sits, the story dies.”
He looked at his quiet, sad guy with the dead bird memory.
“Alright,” he said. “Be hot now, I guess.”
He gave him sharp shoes and two exes who still texted. Cut half the staring.
·
By 1 AM, he was drowning in tabs.
A Twitter thread said: If your story isn’t speaking to everyone, it’s speaking to no one.
A reply under it read: “Single guys, moms, queer teens, retirees—four quadrants. If my grandma and my situationship can’t both relate, I’m unfollowing. Make it universal.”
He stared at the word universal until it smudged.
He added a little brother. A single mom in the coffee shop. A line about “everyone knowing what it’s like to lose something small and dumb.”
It read like an ad for a mental health startup.
·
By 2 AM, he’d hit the structure people.
One blog had a graph with neon spikes labeled “tension,” “micro-tension,” “relief,” and “oh shit.”
“Modern readers are sharks,” the blogger said. “If you stop swimming, they scroll. You need constant spike activity—jokes, trauma reveals, one sexy confession about your parents’ divorce. Flat is dead. Keep it loud. Keep it warm. Keep it moving.”
He punched up the banter. Added a near-miss with a car outside. Inserted a joke exactly three sentences after the sad part.
The page started to feel like a playlist he didn’t subscribe to.
·
By 3:17 AM, the room was dark except for the screen. His neck hurt. His eyes burned.
Seventeen passes.
Every sentence stood at attention.
The pacing “popped.”
The sadness clocked in and clocked out on schedule.
It was the best thing he’d ever written.
It also felt ghostwritten by strangers with ring lights.
He ran spell-check. He printed the single, perfect page.
He slumped back, rubbed his face, and looked down.
·
WELL, YOU CAN TELL BY THE WAY I USE MY WALK / I’M A WOMAN’S MAN, NO TIME TO TALK
·
He froze.
He grabbed the page, pulse hammering.
·
MUSIC LOUD AND WOMEN WARM, I’VE BEEN KICKED AROUND / SINCE I WAS BORN.
·
Not similar. Not inspired. The entire first verse of “Stayin’ Alive,” shaved into prose.
A sound escaped him that wasn’t a laugh but wasn’t not a laugh.
He crumpled the page and threw it.
Fine. Glitch. Some copy-paste nightmare. He’d go back. Back to the real thing. The tile. The finch. The cold grass under his feet.
He opened a new document. No outline. No tabs. Just stubbornness and adrenaline.
An hour later, buzzing, he printed again.
·
WHETHER YOU’RE A BROTHER OR WHETHER YOU’RE A MOTHER / YOU’RE STAYIN’ ALIVE, STAYIN’ ALIVE.
·
Different section.
He set it down slowly, like it might catch fire.
One more time. From zero. No advice. No gurus. No “main character energy.” Just the blue tile and the small dead thing that belonged only to him.
He opened a blank document.
Typed until his forearms hurt. Printed without looking.
Two words down the entire page:
·
STAYIN’ ALIVE.
STAYIN’ ALIVE.
STAYIN’ ALIVE.
STAYIN’ ALIVE.
STAYIN’ ALIVE.
STAYIN’ ALIVE.
STAYIN’ ALIVE.
STAYIN’ ALIVE.
·
Some lines in caps. One centered by accident. One in a different font.
The cursor blinked like a tiny disco ball.
“Right,” he said quietly.
He found the original file.
Tile_Finch_Original.txt.
8:00 PM. Seven hours ago.
He opened it.
The sentences were clumsy. The tile description dragged. He’d written “blue” twice. The finch section made him wince hard enough that his shoulders lifted.
It was also the only version where he sounded like a person who once held a small dead thing and didn’t know what came next.
He didn’t touch a comma.
He attached it to an email. No clever subject line. Just:
Story draft attached, thanks for reading.
He hit send.
Off it went, toward whatever inbox would decide if he’d wasted his night.
It was about a tile and a finch.
It was fine.
·
He shut the laptop. Turned off the light. Lay in bed staring at the ceiling while the Bee Gees looped in his head, louder than they’d been in years, and felt the small, stupid relief of knowing he hadn’t tried to make anything fuck.
This was absolutely awesome! I loved how it kept me engaged from the stsrt to the finish honestly im so glad that he went with the origional!! So many people allow other people to get inside their heads and this particular story shows this spiral unfold in real time!! Well written!! Loved it!!
This was hilarious, horrifying, and inspiring all at once. Phenomenal.