/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2211970]

Hi /lit/

I have written the first draft of a short story. I dont plan to submit it or sell it, but just put it up in some anonmous corner of the internet. Its about a person (23, male) who is pretty much like a hikimori. He is paranoid about remaining anonymous in every aspect of his life. He has no online social footprint. He surfs the web using the name of a nameless bum on the streets, mines the social web for trends and profiling people, then creates virtual copies of them with different names and has them live out alternate lives. He gives traits and characteristics to these people, and from this identity farm intends to create a cities of people who dont exist. All the while, he himself, is ungooglable. His only human interaction is on boards like /b/. Now I'm at the this point of my story where I dont know how to end it.

I started writing it to talk about how boredom, underachievement and a sense of lass bring indivduals to perversions that are nothing but massive exercises in pointlessness. But I seem to have done a neat job building up how he lives, his ideology, his subtle ways of gaining information, that it appears he does it with almost clinical precision. Why should such a person be left dumbfounded and confused at the end that he has nothing to do with all this data. It seems a bit of a let down.

I am looking for ideas and opinions /lit/. How should I end my story?

[Anonymous No.2211976]

You've got a decent premise, but it doesn't sound like you really have a story. Do you even have a beginning or middle properly thought out, let alone an ending?

[Anonymous No.2211983]

>>2211976

I have about 23 pages written out. They are mostly about how he goes about farming these identities. They describe a bit of technology and mathematics he uses to mine publicly available data. That was the beginning and the middle.

However the ending I planned simply doesnt fit with the tone and atmosphere of the middle. The ending now seems almost nihilistic while the middle describes a cautious, clever, pragmatic person.

[Anonymous No.2211985]

>the name of a nameless bum

Alrighty then ...

[Anonymous No.2211997]

it sounds cliche it needs some conflict.

Maybe the girl next door is intrigued by this bizarre man who cannot make eye contact.

Maybe he leaves the house once at night but witnesses something horrible. An alcoholic cop gets cctv footage of him watching the crime and decides to track him down. The protagonist, finding he has already amassed data on the cops daughter...

Or maybe he's never leaves the room but manages to upload his consciousness.

[Anonymous No.2212003]

Be patient. Keep writing.

[Anonymous No.2212044]

Dont go with the ending you have in mind OP. There can be a million better ways to end this, or even carry this forward.

[Anonymous No.2212702]

>>2211997
>cctv