Tag: creative writing

ClaudeAI Rates Audience Retention

It's kind of like how older men see themselves in the mirror. "I don't look so bad."

Click here to read the entire novel, near-final-draft, for free.

Audience Retention Analysis: Chapters 1-15

Reading these as the opening of Maroli Tango, I’ll evaluate each chapter for the specific question of whether a reader will turn the page. Retention depends on momentum, clarity, and stakes — not literary merit. A beautiful chapter that confuses readers loses them; a workmanlike chapter that makes them lean forward keeps them.

Chapter-by-Chapter Ratings

Ch. 1 ~ Artifact — 7/10 A strong cold open. The cylinder emerging near Saturn is genuinely arresting, and the Mehrenholz/past-life detail does a lot of work fast. The closing exchange (“a neglected old barn… start more trouble”) gives the reader something to chew on. Risk: dense proper-noun load (Bharamin, Anye, Anuraga, Mehrenholz, Khalsa, Bjornson) for a first chapter. Veterans of the series will love it; new readers will feel the water is deep.

Ch. 2 ~ Legacy — 9/10 This is your hook. The shift from cosmic to intimate — a President and a banker dancing awkwardly, a surprise kiss under mistletoe — is exactly the dual-register your series is built on. Mason and Marie get introduced through charm rather than exposition. Retention here is high because readers now have a relationship to track, not just a setting.

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ChatGPT Categorizes Maroli Tango

I am not anticipating a movie deal

Click here to read the entire novel, near-final-draft, for free.

Your book sits in a strange intersection:

Becky Chambers + Lois McMaster Bujold + The Expanse + Ada Palmer + a family chronicle + frontier settlement comedy + theological space opera.

The nearest neighbors:

Lois McMaster Bujold

Especially the Vorkosigan Saga.

Bujold is probably your closest craft cousin for mixing space opera, family, military/political institutions, romance, comedy, competence, and moral consequence. The Vorkosigan books are long-running SF/space-opera works with major attention to family, hierarchy, personal honor, military culture, and social continuity; the series won the Hugo Award for Best Series. (Wikipedia)

Overlap with you: huge cast, aristocratic/merchant-military structures, moral comedy, family as civilization-bearing unit.
Difference: Bujold is tighter, more novel-shaped, more character-centralized around Miles/Cordelia/etc. Your work is more mosaic, serial, and civilizational.

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A Dilemma in Wearing the Coat of Many Colors

There once was a prisoner at Dachau, who kept a tiny ceramic frog in his pocket, a silent prayer to God that he not be forgotten.

In later years, he became a woodcarver, producing pocket-sized figures of frogs.

One day, a patron mentioned the frog was a symbol of liberation.

“Oy vey,” the man said. “Is that what I’ve been talking about?”

Artists are notorious for inscribing subtle traces of life’s struggles into the texture of the work — unaware of hidden meaning.

But I am a man of few complaints. Instead, I mumble about discipline, calling, stewardship, covenant, and moral formation over time.

Not explicitly. That would be counter-productive. Fiction is supposed to be entertaining.

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Chapter 250.5 ~ By ChatGPT

The machine intelligence misunderstood an instruction to create a chapter illustration, and wrote a chapter sequel.

See the inspiration here.

250.5 ~ Go Getters (continued)

The cook-off was staged beneath striped awnings on the promenade, between the pub and the lake, where Ruksa Zila’s resident ducks had to be shooed away from the prep tables by a pair of size-one maroli wielding little orange flags.

Berlina Lopez arrived in an apron that read KISS THE COOK OR STAND BACK, and the Minister of Interplanetary Affairs — Chef Balin Droma of Eeka Prime, a broad-shouldered Fila with a waxed crest and the confidence of a man who had once flambéed a six-kilo river eel on live television — stepped off his yacht carrying a lacquered spice chest handcuffed to his wrist.

Brandon saw this and muttered, “That can’t be a good sign.”

“It’s television,” said Dori Fila, not looking up from her monitor wall. “Everything is a good sign.”

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ChatGPT Reads Screenplays!

I would have said, “Sure, it does”, if I had thought about it, but I didn’t until this morning.

The robot’s analysis of my Silken Thread screenplay is 14,343 words.

Deliverables included a scene-by-scene comparison with the novel, an adaptation map, and a beat-sheet.

In its opening comments, the machine said —

I would edit it for marketability, but not because the script lacks value. It already has a distinctive mix of period romance, espionage texture, and later action-thriller escalation. What it most needs is sharper packaging: a clearer promise of genre, faster escalation, and a more focused spine.

What’s already helping you:
The central hook is strong: an intense romance between Barb, 28, and David, 18, beginning in 1967 Manila, with Mandarin/CIA intrigue in the background. That is unusual and memorable. The reunion section in 1969 Texas/Houston also has real movie energy, especially once David’s parallel lives start stacking up: CIA analyst, BLM ranger, student, equipment operator.
You also write vivid set pieces. The Houston reunion works, the sinkhole/stabbing sequence is cinematic, and the Singapore home-invasion material feels like a different, larger movie arriving late in the script.

Umpteen pages later, we had a plan

Working outline for revised screenplay

1. INT. SKY RESTAURANT, HOTEL NEW OTANI, TOKYO – NIGHT

Objective: Establish that David already has a plausible, prestigious future in Asia before Barb enters his life.

David dines with Ward Aarens and Wu Qiang; Qiang offers him a future in business if he learns Mandarin and becomes useful in the right way.

Keep short: one table exchange, one clear offer, one strong visual of young David looking out over Tokyo.

2. EXT. TOKYO STREET – NIGHT

Objective: Introduce the film’s core thematic conflict: a life of strategic advantage versus a life of love.

Ward walks David through the rain and explains that the kind of life Qiang offers may come with a wife chosen for business and desire displaced elsewhere.

Do you have a screenplay languishing in a file folder? You should try this.

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Rasslin’ with the Robot

I have been using ChatGPT almost exclusively for chapter illustrations. The machine almost always gets it right within two tries, but sometimes it doesn’t.

See the featured image. What a great composition, with the wrong actors.

Getting that straightened out consumed half of yesterday and most of this morning.

Finally, I asked for a style sheet.

The male figure has a tail. This is not canonical.

Not to complain. The chapter illustrations look great. See for yourself at https://marolitango.substack.com/s/read-the-book

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Busking at the Intersection of Merit and Mayhem

The Secretary of the Treasury lived in an exclusive gated community. If one were to consult the HOA charter, front-yard spacecraft landings would fall under the same category as helicopter traffic — requiring prior approval by the board of governance.

Carmen Benequista did not ask permission. Instead, she dropped a Fatboy troop shuttle right on top of her victim’s mailbox.

Her companion, an elevated size-two fighting maroli named Incredible, asked, “What’d this guy do to piss you off?”

She replied, “He disobeyed a lawful order to default on United States debt held by foreign actors.”

Incredible let himself out a cargo hatch. “Why do you want to default on debt?”

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