To keep it brief: stakes.
I was in graduate school when I wrote this novel, which follows Ellie, a poor and desperate young woman who enters an experiment to save her mother and younger brother.
Just like me.
Okay, kidding. But there was enough emotional overlap that I felt uncomfortable using the story as another place to experience a loss of control.
I was not living in a dystopia organized around virtual reality, but graduate school often felt experimental in its own way. I was expected to perform while constantly evaluating whether I was talented, employable, or capable of building a life as a creative person. Every choice seemed to carry consequences, and acting moved further away from something I loved and closer to something I had to survive.
When I began writing the novel, I was desperate for fun and play.
So I let myself have both.
I wrote whatever I wanted to write. The process was instinctive and often close to stream of consciousness. I did not know where the story was going or how it would end, but I enjoyed discovering it.
The consequence was that I quietly removed many of the consequences from Ellie’s story.
She enters an experiment, but I preserved her autonomy wherever I could. Instead of being forced to surrender pieces of her identity, she receives a makeover. Instead of being compelled to participate, she is allowed to refuse certain tests. Saying no remains possible, and the institution largely respects her answer.
I gave Ellie the agency I did not feel I had at the time.
I could not leave the classroom, the program, the character, or the expectations surrounding me. Technically, of course, I could have left graduate school. But realistically, I had entered with the goal of earning an MFA, and completing it meant remaining inside the structure and following its rules, regardless of what the process was costing me.
It cost much more than I understood at the time.
Eventually, I realized that this was also the story I needed to tell through Ellie: not simply what happens when someone enters a dangerous system, but what that system gradually takes from her before she fully understands the price of participating.
Ellie helped me survive a difficult period because writing her world felt light. I could escape into a story I enjoyed rather than enter another space that made me miserable. That joy left valuable things behind. Most importantly, it gave the novel a voice I still love. Even the scenes that wander or no longer make structural sense often remain pleasant to read because I can feel how much pleasure I took in writing them.
I do not want to revise that pleasure out of the book.
But I do need to tell the story.
At its center, the novel is about how the things we accept (and refuse) can change us in ways we do not yet understand. It is about bargains made under pressure, the hidden cost of opportunity, and the consequences of allowing a system to define the terms of survival.
In other words: stakes.
Act Two cannot be repaired through cleaner sentences or more elegant transitions. Its problem is not primarily prose. The middle of the novel must place greater pressure on Ellie’s choices, narrow the distance between consent and coercion, and ensure that every opportunity carries a cost.
That means rebuilding it rather than polishing it.
This time, I have to trust that the joy of the original draft can survive stronger consequences. Ellie can remain funny, alive, and herself while the world around her becomes less forgiving. In fact, giving her more to lose may allow the qualities I love about her to matter even more.
And I’m sure she will survive all the stakes I write for her.
Just like I did.