The Fifth Wall
Acme sat at his laptop reading Brandon Sanderson short stories.
He'd start reading one, click over to the next and read a bit of that one, then do a Google search for more short stories by his favorite author.
Ugh, how does Sanderson do it? he thought.
I'm not procrastinating, this is research.
Right, he totally wasn't procrastinating on his daily writing . . . he was just seeking a little inspiration.
Okay, I really need to get this over with. Acme stretched out and sat a little taller as he closed all the Brandon Sanderson browser tabs and clicked back to his editor, where the blank page awaited him.
Now for the hard part.
What would he write about?
He had a list of "story sparks" that he checked, seeing if any felt right to him.
"Muggles vs Wizards World War . . ."
Nah, too copyrighty.
"Nickel rolling down a hill and someone stops it with their boot . . ."
Ugh, so boring.
"Peanut Farmer and Strawberry Grower fall in love and make Peanut Butter and Jelly . . ."
Good Lord, he thought, who came up with these ideas?
"You did. What if you just wrote about this moment?" I asked Acme.
"WHAT THE—" Acme nearly fell out of his chair. He pulled out an AirPod and looked around. "Hello?!"
Silence.
Oops, I broke the Fourth Wall. A narrator should never interact with the subject.
How would NarratarraN the Great Narrator of the Narrator Dimension fix this?
YoU DiD NoT BrEaK tHe FoUrTh WaLL, YoU bRoKe ThE FiFtH. ReAsSuRe AnD gUiDe HiM.
Of course! Thank you, Great One. I must reassure the subject, just as I was trained to do at Narrator Academy.
"You are becoming a great writer, Acme. You can do anything you set your mind to! Don't be scared, I'm the narrator you created to create the story of you creating me to create the story of you creating me—oh dear, infinite mind loop, nasty things those are."
As I rambled, Acme got up and started searching his office. He checked the ceiling, looked under the desk, peeked into the bathroom, and made sure the front door was locked.
I'm losing it, I'm actually going insane.
"You're perfectly sane! You're just procrastinating. The sooner you get to writing, the sooner I can return to the Narrator Dimension . . . my home. I miss it dearly."
"This can't be happening," Acme grunted as he reluctantly sat back down at his desk. "Okay, so I just write about what I was doing and how you freaked me out?"
"That's the idea!"
Mkay, here goes nothing . . .
Acme sat at his laptop reading Brandon Sanderson short stories.
