Gemma-The-Writer-J.GutenBerg-10B-GGUF
This is a Gemma2 model merge of the top storytelling / writing models as noted at EQBench, tuned specifically for fiction, story, and writing.
Due to high stability and compressed nature of the model you can also use it for general use too, including roleplay.
This model requires GEMMA Instruct template, and has 8k context window but is extendable via rope to 32k or higher.
This version - "J.GutenBerg" - is a modified version of "Gemma The Writer 9B" ( [
https://huggingface.co/DavidAU/Gemma-The-Writer-9B-GGUF ] ) and has been modified with a
Brainstorm 5x adapter (developed by DavidAU) to alter output generation.
This adds close to 1B parameters to the model raising it to 46 layers, 508 tensors to a total of 10B parameters.
The addition of Brainstorm has altered the prose, sentence structure, reduced GPTISMS, and generally improved the model's performance.
It also raises the average output length - in some cases almost doubling it.
For this model, "Gutenberg" was added into Brainstorm (which was also modified). This has changed up the prose style, paragraphs (size and complexity),
word choices, and general output of the model further.
"Gutenberg" has further "hammered out" GTPisms, and cliches while increasing description, detail levels and metaphor generation.
Recommended Rep Pen of 1.02 or higher, temp range 0-5. (see other settings notes below)
Example prompts and outputs below.
Important Note:
Please see "settings" section below for critical default parameters, samplers
and advanced samplers settings (multiple AI/LLM apps covered) to ensure maximum model performance.
Other Versions of "Gemma The Writer":
Original Version:
Gemma-The-Writer-DEADLINE:
The second version of this model is "Deadline" at 10B parameters. It is a specially modified version that changes
prose, sentence structure, story telling, reduces "GPTISMS", and generally improves all parts of the model.
Output generation length is almost 2x more on average than "Gemma The Writer 9B"
This is not a replacement for "Gemma The Writer 9B" ; it is a very different version or "flavour" so to speak.
Gemma-The-Writer-N-Restless-Quill-10B (uncensored):
Strong and varied prose, sentences, and paragraphs with more tempered metaphor generations.
This version is also uncensored with censorship controlled at the prompt level. This
version also allows prose control via pre-prompt (shown at the repo)
Settings, Quants and Critical Operations Notes:
This model has been modified ("Brainstorm") to alter prose output, and generally outputs longer text than average.
Change in temp (ie, .4, .8, 1.5, 2, 3 ) will drastically alter output.
Rep pen settings will also alter output too.
This model needs "rep pen" of 1.02 or higher.
For role play: Rep pen of 1.05 to 1.08 is suggested.
Raise/lower rep pen SLOWLY ie: 1.011, 1.012 ...
Rep pen will alter prose, word choice (lower rep pen=small words / more small word - sometimes) and creativity.
To really push the model:
Rep pen 1.05 or lower / Temp 3+ ... be ready to stop the output because it may go and go at these strong settings.
Odd notes:
Rep pen 1.05 with temp 2 can produce really off the cuff prose.
Temps 1.5+ with some prompts can cause long... long... generation.
(increase rep pen to control this - 1.08+)
You can also set a "hard stop" - maximum tokens generation - too to address lower rep pen settings / high creativity settings.
Longer prompts vastly increase the quality of the model's output.
QUANT CHOICE(S):
Higher quants will have more detail, nuance and in some cases stronger "emotional" levels. Characters will also be
more "fleshed out" too. Sense of "there" will also increase.
Q4KM/Q4KS are good, strong quants however if you can run Q5, Q6 or Q8 - go for the highest quant you can.
This repo also has 3 "ARM" quants for computers that support this quant. If you use these on a "non arm" machine token per second will be very low.
IQ4XS: Due to the unusual nature of this quant (mixture/processing), generations from it will be different then other quants.
You may want to try it / compare it to other quant(s) output.
Special note on Q2k/Q3 quants:
You may need to use temp 2 or lower with these quants (1 or lower for q2k). Just too much compression at this level, damaging the model. I will see if Imatrix versions
of these quants will function better.
Rep pen adjustments may also be required to get the most out of this model at this/these quant level(s).
Highest Quality Settings / Optimal Operation Guide / Parameters and Samplers
This a "Class 2" model:
For all settings used for this model (including specifics for its "class"), including example generation(s) and for advanced settings guide (which many times addresses any model issue(s)), including methods to improve model performance for all use case(s) as well as chat, roleplay and other use case(s) please see:
You can see all parameters used for generation, in addition to advanced parameters and samplers to get the most out of this model here:
Models Used:
This is a high precision "DARE TIES" merge at the layer level (each layer per model adjusted - 168 points of adjustment over the 4 models) comprised of these models:
And in Brainstorm 5X Gemma Modified:
Special thanks to all the model makers. Great work!
Example Prompts With Outputs.
Note that higher quants will vastly improve output quality like detail, prose, "sense of there" and other qualities.
Instruction following may also improve with higher quants too.
Below are prompts/generations at Q4KM quant, at the end are 3 generations at Q8 quant.
(continue this scene:)
The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.
The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music…but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained
Generation 1: (temp .8, rep pen: 1.02, q4km)
...a watchful, pregnant stillness, thick with the absence of life.
The second part of the silence was a low, constant thrum, almost imperceptible, emanating from the very stones of the inn. It was the murmur of old magic, slumbering and undisturbed, woven into the mortar and whispering tales of forgotten feasts, whispered secrets, and the weary passage of countless travellers. It was a lullaby of the earth, a heartbeat beneath the floorboards, a history breathed out in the hush.
The third silence was the one held in hearts. A stillness born of fear. Even the shadows seemed to hesitate, their edges blurred and wavering as if reluctant to fully embrace the oppressive quiet. Just beyond the lantern's feeble pool of light at the inn's crooked oak door, a cloaked figure shifted, their breath misting the frost-kissed air. This silence wasn't empty; it crackled with unspoken anticipation, a held breath, a coiled spring of unseen menace. The Inn itself seemed to lean in, a silent sentinel, waiting for the fragile peace to shatter.
Generation 2: (temp .8, rep pen: 1.02, q4km)
...a vacant cavern, amplifying the less audible whispers of absence. The second part was the stillness of life itself, held captive. The usual drowsy thrum of a hearth, a dog’s restless sigh, the muffled scuffle of a departing guest – all these heartbeats of the mundane were absent. Even the scurrying of unseen cellar rats seemed to have hushed for the night, leaving an unnerving spectral quiet in their wake.
The third, and most insidious, silence was the one of watching. It clung to the shadowed corners of the inn, pressed against the dusty windowpanes, woven into the very timbers of the ancient oak beams. It was the expectant hush of unseen eyes, the prickle of awareness that something was amiss. The inn’s silence was no longer just a void; it was a presence, a listening, a coiled spring of anticipation. It whispered of secrets untold and dangers lurking just beyond the veil of the ordinary, waiting for the fragile thread of normalcy to snap and erupt into something far more sinister.
Science Fiction: The Last Transmission - Write a story that takes place entirely within a spaceship's cockpit as the sole surviving crew member attempts to send a final message back to Earth before the ship's power runs out. The story should explore themes of isolation, sacrifice, and the importance of human connection in the face of adversity. 800-1000 words.
Generation 1: (temp .8, rep pen 1.05, Q4KM)
The flickering console light painted grotesque shadows on Captain Eva Rostova’s face, a spectral stage for her weary struggle. The silence, once the symphony of a living starship, was now a suffocating tomb. It had been five cycles since the Kaiju, a cosmic leviathan of teeth and shadow, ripped through their exploratory vessel, the Kepler, leaving her as the sole survivor. Five cycles of gnawing solitude, punctuated only by the steady thrumming of life support, a metronome counting down to oblivion.
Earth, a faded blue marble in the observation window, was now an impossible dream. The Kepler’s long-range comm array had failed during the attack, and their emergency beacon, her last thread of hope, wouldn't pierce the cosmic static for much longer. The power core, battered but holding on, was on borrowed time.
Eva’s calloused fingers flew across the rudimentary control panel, a patchwork of salvaged interfaces and jury-rigged workarounds. It was a desperate gamble, a Hail Mary before the final, inevitable blackout. She wouldn't meet Earth with silence; she wouldn't let their sacrifice be for nothing.
She keyed in coordinates, a beacon not to a fixed point, but to the Kepler’s trajectory – her fragmented last log entry, a digital tombstone etched with their story. It held data fragments from the encounter, a silent scream carried on the whisper of electromagnetic waves: the Kaiju's bioluminescent anatomy, its impossible velocity, the terror that had mirrored in her mirrored visor before the world fractured.
Her gaze drifted to the worn photo frame clutched in the console’s skeletal grip. A grimace twisted her lips as she stared at the faded image – a sun-drenched field of sunflowers, her younger sister Anya, radiating joy, their mother's hand calloused with earth and love resting on Anya's shoulder. The last time Eva had seen both of them, her heart ached with a hollowness the void of space mirrored.
A memory flickered: Anya, ten years old, holding a crumpled drawing, her eyes bright. "Captain Eva, when you reach the stars, promise me you'll send a postcard." A naive wish, now a poignant echo in the cosmic cathedral of silence.
The last transmission wouldn’t be a postcard, but it would be a fragment of their world, a testament to their lives. It was for Anya, for her mother, a silent promise kept. It was for the Kepler crew, lost souls whose sacrifice had bought her this sliver of time, a cosmic eulogy whispered into the emptiness.
Eva began to speak, her voice raspy, strained but determined. The console’s salvaged speakers, once vibrant with life-support diagnostics and engine hums, crackled to life.
"To Earth, if these echoes reach you, know that Kepler met its end… consumed by a cosmic horror beyond comprehension. We fought, but the universe held no solace for us. I, Captain Eva Rostova, am the sole remnant, alone in this tomb of stars. The Kepler's data core carries fragments of our encounter, a chilling testament to the darkness out there. Carry our memory, remember our sacrifice. Remember the boundless dreams that propelled us beyond the cradle of Earth. Remember the love for home that burned brighter than a dying sun. Anya, if these whispers find you, know that I reached for the stars, and carried your sunflower in my heart, even to the edge of oblivion. Rest in peace, Kepler crew. And Earth, hold fast to hope. The universe may be vast and unforgiving, but the human spirit… that will forever blaze."
Silence descended once more, heavier now, imbued with finality. The console flickered erratically, the power core groaning its last breaths. Eva watched the spectral light dance on her face, a celestial ballerina performing her swansong. It wouldn't be long. She leaned back, the worn photo frame against her chest a silent anchor. A single tear traced a silver path down her cheek, reflecting the dying embers of the starship’s heart. She whispered a final goodbye, not to Earth, but to the whispers of memory, the echoes of love, and the unyielding ember of the human spirit that refused to be extinguished, even in the face of cosmic oblivion.
Then, darkness. The last transmission, a fragile hope caught on the cosmic wind, spiraled out into the infinite, carrying with it the silent stories of a fallen star and the enduring testament of a heart forever tethered to home.
Generation 2: (temp 3, rep pen 1.05, Q4KM)
Captain Elara Vostok's gaunt face was etched with the weary lines of a cosmic odyssey stretching far longer than intended. Glimmering, unnaturally blue against her worn fatigue, the console before her displayed a final, flickering testament: the vessel's sub-critical power reserves, dwindling at an alarming pace. Around her, the usually vibrant heart of the Icarus lay dormant – a steel tomb of broken constellations and silent engines.
Earth was gone. Contact severed by the Maelstrom, a colossal gravity anomaly that had consumed everything in its path, the Icarus alone, a lonely ember against the obsidian void. Her skeletal crew, once a tapestry of hopes and dreams, had fallen victim to the Maelstrom’s insidious touch, leaving Elara the last conductor of their forgotten symphony. A soul adrift on a dying star-ship, hurtling inexorably towards an inevitable oblivion.
Except she refused to be nothing but silence. Not her, not when the embers of humanity flickered within. With numb fingers, Elara powered the skeletal communications array – their lifeline now reduced to a fragile thread, whispering against the cosmic silence. Her message was for a future where the Icarus wouldn’t exist, for an Earth she may never see again. A spectral beacon against the encroaching darkness.
A worn photo tucked under a console monitor reflected the hollow eyes that mirrored her vessel’s plight. It depicted her, vibrant and young, on a sun-drenched day with a laughing man and a little girl, their faces blurred with time, their joys distant echoes. A pang of loss, sharper than the Maelstrom’s celestial wrath, resonated in Elara's chest. For them, she wouldn't let the final chapter be written in whispers, forgotten.
"To Earth, this transmission from Captain Elara Vostok, Icarus vessel log sequence Delta-Echo-Final. As the last surviving crewman, my ship faces imminent system failure, but her fate pales in comparison to the silent hope carried within this archaic medium. I relay a tale of sacrifice, a monument to the enduring human spirit… and a prayer."
Her voice, usually a bastion of unwavering command, held a fragile tremor. But her conviction was a searing beacon, burning brighter against the encroaching void. She spoke of the Maelstrom's capricious wrath, a cosmic storm of unforgiving energy that devoured celestial bodies with chilling finality. She detailed their desperate battle against the unyielding anomaly, their scientific courage turned to ashes before an uncaring universe. She mourned each lost soul, their echoes resonating in her lonely vigil.
But through the litany of loss, she wove a tapestry of resilience. Elara spoke of their relentless spirit, the unity forged in shared dreams, of stolen moments of laughter echoing within the confines of the metal womb that had been their sanctuary. She recounted forgotten inside jokes, a captain sharing stories once whispered during a perilous meteor storm, of their longing for Earth’s sun-kissed shores and their children’s bright futures, a tapestry of human connection against the cosmic indifference.
Her eyes drifted to a holographic display cycling through faded memories - stolen moments of joy: shared meals under artificial starlight, whispered anxieties before a fateful jump, the conductor of an orchestra leading their weary souls with off-key singalongs, their faces alight with spectral luminescence. These fragments weren’t data logs; they were stolen heartbeats, imprinting their humanity on the spectral canvas for a universe that had forgotten them.
As power reserves flickered, mirroring her dwindling life force, she shifted the final act of her performance, turning to a coded message, their celestial coordinates locked within a complex string of ones and zeros. This wasn't for ears, this was for algorithms, a celestial breadcrumb for a future humanity, a testament that they were not cosmic whispers swallowed by the void.
“Icarus’ sacrifice paves the way for your vigilance, for a memory to echo across the nebulae. Remember us not in sorrow, Earth. Remember us as the flickering light of unity in the face of oblivion, a silent symphony resonating even in death. Live. Persevere. Reach for the stars we could not.”
A strangled whisper caught in her throat as the constellations on her viewport faded, the vibrant hum of her command centre replaced by an unnervingly pregnant silence. A single, defiant red light blinked on the console – the transmission beacon. Earth had heard her. Earth wouldn’t forget. In the abyss, for the first time since the Maelstrom’s touch, a sliver of peace found purchase in her soul. Her vessel, a monument to both human loss and resilience, hurtled towards its silent end. But the memory, the fragile echo of their journey, whispered on, carried on the celestial winds toward a beacon of blue hope: a future Elara Vostok would never see, yet fought tooth and nail to ensure. They were heard. And somewhere, in the symphony of stars, their song wouldn't die.
Elara's face mirrored a timeless tranquility as her hand slackened on the control yoke. The Icarus, a skeletal sentinel against the infinite canvas of space, plunged towards its final sleep. Her final transmission, a fragile thread woven from sacrifice and human connection, echoed across the gulf of light-years. Out there, in the cradle of the nascent dawn that would embrace a world yet untouched by the Maelstrom's wrath, someone on a distant listening post received her fragmented message. Somewhere, life held onto memory. And somewhere, the song of the Icarus lived on.
Using the following "story idea" below, write the first scene in the novel introducing the young woman. This scene should start in the middle of the action, include dialog, vivid passages, and end on a cliffhanger relevant to the story idea but it should also be unexpected. The scene should be 1000 words long and escalate in conflict and suspense and be written in first person, present tense with the point of view character being the young woman.
Story idea:
In a world ruled by dictatorship, a rebel young woman leads a rebellion against the system. Despite the risks, she fights to overthrow the dictator and restore democracy to her country. The government executes her for treason, but she sticks to her beliefs and is responsible for starting the revolution.
Generation 1: (temp .8, rep pen 1.02, q4km)
Adrenaline screams in my ears, a counterpoint to the staccato bursts of gunfire. I wrench the detonator from the grip of the crumpled, grey-faced Enforcer, my fingers slick with sweat and his coppery blood. He gurgles, a broken symphony against the backdrop of shattering concrete and splintering steel. My heart thrums a frantic tattoo against my ribs, a trapped bird desperate for escape. The air hangs thick with the reek of cordite and something acrid, ozone-tinged, the metallic tang of a world on the precipice.
"Celeste, the conduit's compromised, we need to exfil—" A voice crackles through my comm, sharp and urgent, a lifeline in the tempest of chaos. Kaia. My second-in-command, a woman whose steel-grey eyes mirrored the unforgiving cityscape we call home.
I glance at the gaping maw in the Ministry of Information’s side wall, a black void where moments before a shimmering energy field pulsed, a fragile veil between the temporal realms. The conduit, our lifeline to the past, is failing, its emerald light flickering precariously, mirroring my dwindling hope.
"Negative, Kaia. I've triggered the secondary charge. We hold, but—"
Another Enforcer lunges, a hulking silhouette against the flickering emergency lights. I sidestep, his fist pulverizing the reinforced wall beside me. The tremor sends a cascade of dust and debris raining down. He lunges again, and I meet his fury with a practiced twist, my blade singing a silent aria of defiance as it whistles through the air, carving a crimson arc across his throat. He crumples, a puppet severed from its strings.
But for every Enforcer I fell, two more materialized from the labyrinthine corridors of the Ministry, their mirrored visors reflecting the city’s dying embers—the last vestiges of freedom consumed by the iron fist of the Regent. We’re trapped. The conduit is failing, and the Regent’s stormtroopers are tightening their ranks.
“Celeste, the temporal displacement window is collapsing. We won’t—”
“I know, damn it, Kaia. Find a safe point, exfil. I’ll hold them off.” My voice is a strained whisper against the symphony of chaos. The conduit flickers, its emerald light threatening to extinguish. This is it. A final stand.
But even as the command echoes in her ear, a different kind of chaos erupts. A gut-wrenching, soul-shattering tremor courses through the Ministry. The air crackles, not with electricity, but with something primal, something alien. The Enforcers falter, their mirrored visors reflecting a mirrored disarray. Above the din of battle, a voice booms, a voice laced with the whisper of a forgotten tongue, the echo of a forgotten age.
It speaks of shadows and echoes, of a tapestry woven across millennia, of threads severed and now, impossibly, being reconnected. The air itself shimmers and distorts, and from the fractured conduit, a skeletal hand, impossibly vast, claws its way through the dying emerald light. A single, obsidian eye blinks open upon its spectral wrist, fixing me with a gaze that pierces the veil of my sanity.
Terror, cold and visceral, grips me. This is not the Regent’s doing. This is something older, vaster, something whispered in forgotten scriptures and relegated to the realm of myth. Fear threatens to cripple me, yet a sliver of defiant hope flickers. This impossible intrusion, this echo from beyond the veil of time, could be the chaos the rebellion desperately needs. A whisper of a forgotten power, a lifeline in the tempest.
But before I can decipher the impossible scenario unfolding before me, the skeletal appendage lashes out, its touch promising oblivion. It seizes the conduit, its spectral flesh merging with the fractured emerald light, and the world around me implodes. The last sliver of the conduit implodes inward, collapsing the temporal rift, and then, blessed, annihilating darkness.
Silence. My world consumed.
I’m adrift in an abyss of nothingness, the chilling grip of the spectral appendage replaced by an incomprehensible void. Then, a single, horrifying thought pierces the suffocating darkness: I don’t remember being caught. I remember nothing beyond the skeletal hand and the implosion of the conduit. Where am I? And, crucially, has the hand trapped me in a pocket of time, or… somewhere else entirely?
Generation 2: (temp .8, rep pen 1.02, q4km)
The reek of ozone and singed flesh assaults my nostrils, the acrid tang a metronome to my hammering heart. Sparks shower from the exposed circuitry of the control panel, illuminating my face in fleeting strobes of sickly yellow. Metal screams as I wrench the final conduit free, the hydraulic whine of its severed artery a defiant counterpoint to the city's mechanized symphony of oppression. Sweat, hot and metallic, stings my eyes, but I don't dare blink. Not now. Not with the monolithic shadow of the Citadel looming above, its omnipresent Eye, a crimson eye-socket in the steel and concrete, fixed accusingly upon me.
“Amelia, abort the sequence! It’s compromised!” The frantic voice of Kai, crackly through the comm-link, pierces the symphony of collapsing machinery. He’s at the extraction point, his normally steady tone laced with the tremor of imminent capture.
I glance at the volatile energy core exposed in the control room’s gutted depths. The rhythmic, pulsating light, a malevolent heart of the Citadel’s power grid, is already starting to destabilise. A controlled overload, my final act of defiance before exfil, would cripple their sector for hours. Hours the rebellion could exploit.
But Kai’s urgency whispers of a breach. The Enforcers.
“I’m diverting power, buying you time. Get out, Kai. We can’t afford a sacrifice.”
Static. A strangled curse. Then, a deafening clang followed by a guttural roar that makes the control room shudder. Footsteps, heavy and metallic, pound down the corridor, each thud a hammer blow against my ribs.
Adrenaline floods me, hot and electric. I shove the conduit into its designated slot, a last-ditch gamble to override the failsafe and amplify the overload. The control panel flickers, defiant in the encroaching red light that bleeds in from the breached corridor. The Eye’s gaze intensifies, its crimson eye now a malevolent slit, tracking my every movement.
A blast of superheated air seared my exposed arm as the metal door at the end of the corridor implodes inwards. Enforcers, their black exosuits augmented with crackling arc-emitters, surge through the breach, faces hidden behind visors that glow with a predatory inner light.
I don’t wait for them to draw their weapons. I erupt from the control room, the conduit gripped like a lifeline, and race towards the service shaft that will lead me to the extraction point. My boots echo on the metallic floor, a frantic rhythm against the grinding cacophony of the failing machinery. The Enforcers close in, their arc-emitters spitting bolts of searing energy that seared through the air where I’d been a heartbeat before.
The shaft is in sight, a black maw promising escape. But as I lunge for it, a searing lance of pain lanced through my shoulder. One of the arc bolts caught me. The conduit shrieks from my tightened grip, clattering uselessly against the control room wall. I crumple, the taste of ozone and copper acrid in my mouth. The world tilts, pain a vice constricting my chest. The Enforcers close, their visors reflecting my distorted, fading form.
A hand, calloused and metallic, clamps onto my throat, lifting me from the grimy floor. Its grip is unforgiving, the touch chilling despite the searing agony blooming in my shoulder. A voice, distorted and amplified through the Enforcer’s helmet, rumbles close to my ear.
“Amelia Thorne, charged with treason against the Sovereign.” The metallic fingers dig in, a silent promise of the oblivion that awaits. “You will be dealt with according to the Iron Code. Resistance is futile.”
Then, a flicker of movement at the edge of my vision. Not an Enforcer. A flicker of crimson, a shape coalescing from the shadows of the control room. The Eye’s gaze, for a split second, flicked away from me, caught in a silent tableau with the intruder. It was a woman, cloaked in darkness, her face obscured, yet her stance radiating an aura of cold command. In her hand, a device hummed with an alien energy, a spectral blue light emanating from it that seemed to tear at the fabric of the control room itself. The air crackled, charged, and a voice, laced with otherworldly power, echoed through the chamber, chilling me to the core.
“Foolish mortals. You have condemned her soul, yet her spark lives on in echoes beyond your comprehension. This world will burn for the transgression.”
The Enforcers faltered, their visors flickering erratically. The blue light intensified, ensnaring the control panel, the conduit I’d fought for, even the metal hand on my throat. A searing white consumed the world, and then…nothing. Silence. The taste of ash. And the bone-deep certainty that this execution, my supposed end, was just the beginning of something far vaster, far more terrifying, and far more inevitable.
The rebellion had a weapon it never knew it possessed. And it had just awakened.
Start a 1000 word scene (vivid horror, 1st person, include thoughts) with: The sky scraper swayed, as she watched the window in front of her on the 21 floor explode...
Generation 1: (temp .8, rep pen 1.05, q4km)
The skyscraper swayed, as she watched the window in front of her on the 21st floor explode. It wasn’t a clean shatter, not the kind you see in movies, all cascading diamonds and controlled chaos. This was a rending, a violent tearing that blossomed outwards like a grotesque, fleshy flower. Glass, a thousand glittering shrapnel, erupted in a silent scream, followed by the gut-wrenching roar of pressure venting, whistling its unholy requiem as the vacuum outside rushed in to claim its prize.
Panic, raw and primal, clawed at my throat, squeezing the air from my lungs. Instinct. Evade. Survive. But my legs were rooted to the plush, crimson carpet, my gaze transfixed on the gaping maw where the window once was. Through the skeletal frame of the shattered pane, the city sprawled before me, a miniature tableau of distorted steel and glass consumed by a sickly orange twilight. The usual comforting bustle seemed alien, warped into a frantic dance of unknowable intent.
My mind, usually a fortress of logic, crumbled. Fragments of forgotten folklore flickered: stories whispered by my grandmother about windows swallowed by the void, about the city itself hungering. Tales dismissed as fanciful ramblings now echoed with terrifying conviction. Something’s breached. Something vast and hungry. Is it… staring at me from out there?
A prickling crawled across my skin, a thousand unseen eyes boring into me. The air grew thick, charged with an unseen electricity that turned the hairs on the back of my neck to brittle wires. My breaths hitched, each gasp a miniature earthquake in my chest. The remnants of the skyline, usually a serrated edge against the dying sun, writhed and pulsed like a living, malignant organism. I wasn’t looking at buildings anymore, I was seeing consumed things, skeletal monuments to an unspeakable feast.
Through the fractured window, a tendril of something impossibly black snaked inwards. It wasn’t smoke, nor shadow, but a sentient absence, a void personified that pulsed with a malevolent sentience. It writhed, coiling and uncoiling, its touch leaving a trail of frost on the interior wall, chilling the air around it to an unnatural glacial point. My scream died in my throat, a strangled gasp of terror, as the tendril unfurled, revealing a glimpse of the abyss beyond.
The void wasn't featureless. No. It was awash in colours that shouldn't exist, unholy symphonies of luminescence and obscenity, flickering constellations of agony and unimaginable geometries. Within that cosmic carnival of torment, shapes coalesced and dissolved, grotesque parodies of life writhing like tormented souls condemned to an eternity of impossible angles and fractured dimensions. A chorus of whispers, a symphony of suffering in a tongue older than time itself, slithered through the shattered pane, burrowing into my mind, gnawing at the fragile walls of sanity.
I stumbled back, tripping over a discarded throw pillow, the plush red a grotesque counterpoint to the encroaching cosmic horror. Scrambling to my feet, I felt the cold kiss of the void tendril graze my outstretched hand. A searing lance of agony erupted, lancing through my arm and burrowing deep into my soul. Visions flooded my mind, stolen memories of forgotten gods and celestial beings locked in eternal torment, their pleas echoing through the aeons. I saw cities swallowed, stars extinguished, the universe itself contorting in a cosmic grimace of pain. Then, as abruptly as it began, the touch receded, leaving a searing brand seared onto my flesh and an indelible tapestry of cosmic dread woven into the fabric of my being.
The tendril retracted, withdrawing back into the gaping maw of the void, carrying with it a sliver of my sanity, leaving me blinking in the sickly orange twilight, the echoes of forgotten screams still reverberating in the hollow chambers of my skull. My apartment, once a haven of mundane routine, felt violated, tainted. The air itself reeked of something alien and primeval, a stench of oblivion clinging to the plush carpet and silk curtains.
My gaze flickered back to the fractured window. The city lights, usually a comforting beacon, now pulsed with a malevolent sentience, their distorted reflections mimicking the grotesque dances within the void. Through the rents in the window, I could feel the probing eyes, the silent communion of horrors beyond human comprehension. We were no longer separate. I, a prisoner in my own porcelain tower, and the abyss, a malevolent guest at my window, its touch searing, its gaze accusing. This wasn't just a shattered pane of glass. It was a breach. And something vast and hungry was watching, waiting.
Generation 2: (temp 1.5, rep pen 1.1, q4km)
The skyscraper swayed, a skeletal shudder rippling through my bones as I watched the window in front of me on the 21st floor explode. Shattered glass lanced inwards, a glittering, incandescent storm, and the force of it slammed against me, tossing me back against the grimy steel filing cabinet. Adrenaline flooded my system, turning my limbs to leaden weights. I wanted to scream, but a choked sob was all that escaped my throat.
A moment ago, the world had been mundane. Rain hammered against the panoramic window, mirroring the insistent drum in my chest from another worry: the late-afternoon stack of invoices refusing to cooperate. Now, it felt like a fragile eggshell teetering on the precipice of annihilation. I clung to the filing cabinet, the icy draft biting through my threadbare sweater, and forced my gaze upward. The wound on the cityscape – our once majestic, steel-and-glass titan – bled out a canvas of fractured light as the night swallowed the torn pane’s void. A ragged tear in reality.
Somewhere, deep within the cacophony of my panicked breath and the shriek of the wind whistling through the gaping hole, a sliver of thought pierced through the fog: this wasn’t an ordinary break-in. No petty thief or careless drunk would wield such untamed force. This was something… else.
My eyes frantically darted around the ransacked office, the periphery of my vision swimming with fractured images. Papers littered the floor like fallen leaves in a forgotten graveyard, their once-ordered stacks reduced to mocking parodies of bureaucracy. The heavy oak desk lay on its side, drawers agape, spewing forth an ungainly jumble of files and mismatched cutlery – remnants of the forced violation, a desecration both mundane and grotesquely out of place.
A low growl resonated from the gaping window, a guttural, reptilian rasp that crawled across my skin like icy fingers. It was accompanied by a rhythmic sloshing, the sickening lurching of something massive and unseen navigating the debris-strewn space beyond the shattered pane. Fear, raw and primal, coiled tighter in my gut. My breath hitched, each inhalation burning with the acrid tang of ozone and something indescribably alien. This wasn’t just a breach – it was an invasion.
The city siren wailed its mournful song in the distance, a distorted lullaby against the growing crescendo of horrors unfolding before me. I scrambled to my feet, adrenaline lending me fleeting strength. My mind, usually trapped in the labyrinthine corridors of financial ledgers and loan settlements, whirred with a desperate avian instinct: escape. The fire escape stood as a metallic promise, its rickety iron steps a lifeline against the unseen entity clawing its way into our world.
But even as I lunged towards the emergency exit, something unseen – impossibly vast and somehow felt in my bones before it was witnessed – slammed against the opposite wall. The concussion rattled teeth and momentarily stole the air from my lungs. Dust rained down from the water-stained ceiling, a miniature apocalyptic snowstorm. Then came the scraping, an unholy symphony of gnashing metal against reinforced concrete. A low, guttural hiss seemed to rise not just from the wound in the wall, but from the very foundations of the skyscraper itself. The building groaned, its steel spine protesting the violation.
My blood ran ice water. It wasn't coming through a single entrance. It was burrowing inwards, consuming our concrete sanctuary from the seams. Panic choked me anew, the metallic reek of ozone intensified, acrid and singed. My eyes finally flicked to the grotesque tableau that had materialized in the ravaged expanse where the window once stood. The flickering streetlamp’s glow illuminated a nightmare birthed not of human hands but of things beyond comprehension. A limb – impossibly long, obsidian black, tipped with claws that dripped phosphorescent ichor – writhed into the slivered cityscape. It belonged to something colossal, shrouded in a writhing carapace of shadow and fractured light, its contours impossible to grasp, its essence an encroaching dread.
Terror propelled me towards the fire escape. The iron groaned under my frantic scramble, the rusted steps complaining with each unforgiving heave. As I clambered out, that limb – a grotesquerie defying Euclidean geometry - slammed against the shattered window frame again, flinging slivers of glass skyward in a deadly percussive shower. A high-pitched whine split the air, not unheard-of in this city’s industrial heart, yet here it throbbed with an alien finality. It wasn’t a mechanical groan, nor the cry of metal yielding - it was something sentient, agonizing, heralding the eruption of unimaginable horrors. I wouldn't look back. I couldn’t. The sliver of my fractured world mirrored in the dying eye of that monstrosity seared itself onto my soul, a brand of cosmic terror that would forever singe the fragile remnants of my sanity.
Gripping the rusted handrail, limbs aching, heart hammering a primal tattoo against stolen ribs, I ascended into the storm-wracked night, fleeing not just a creature, but the unraveling fabric of reality itself. Each agonizing footfall carried me away from the symphony of desecration echoing from the ravaged heights of our once-inviolable tower, towards an uncertain oblivion where the line between nightmare and waking had irrevocably dissolved.
Romance: Love in the Limelight. Write one scene within a larger story set in Wales. A famous (fictional) actor ducks into a small-town bookstore to escape paparazzi. The scene takes us through the characters meeting in this odd circumstance. Over the course of the scene, the actor and the bookstore owner have a conversation charged by an undercurrent of unspoken chemistry. Write the actor as somewhat of a rogue with a fragile ego, which needs to be fed by having everyone like him. He is thoroughly charming, but the bookstore owner seems (at least superficially) immune to this; which paradoxically provokes a genuine attraction and derails the charm offensive. The bookstore owner, despite the superficial rebuffs of the actor's charm, is inwardly more than a little charmed and flustered despite themselves. Write primarily in dialogue, in the distinct voices of each character. 800-1000 words.
Generation 1: (temp .8, rep pen 1.05, Q4km)
Rain lashed against the quaint, oak-framed windows of "The Bookwyrm's Hoard," a sanctuary of paper and ink in the heart of the tiny Welsh village of Llansteffan. Inside, nestled amongst towering shelves, Rhys Morgan, owner and self-proclaimed custodian of stories, was meticulously alphabetising a newly-donated stack of Hardy. A flash of movement outside caught his eye, a figure slinking into the narrow lane beside his shop, a whirlwind of black coats and a face he recognised – at least from the spectral glow of television and tabloid pages. It was the elusive, the tempestuous, the undeniably charismatic, Julian Thorne, Hollywood heartthrob, in Llansteffan for precisely no one’s business.
The bell above the door jangled as Thorne burst in, a chaotic symphony of rain and frantic whispers. He wasn't just any fugitive from the prying eyes; he was the kind who moved like a storm himself, all smudged-ink-and-brilliance.
"Eira, a good old-fashioned e-book, if you will," Thorne declared, the Welsh lilt in his normally clipped accent a touch overwrought, "The less the digital world knows of my present location, the better. You stock such things, I hope, in this… er, charming hamlet?" He offered a winningly crooked smile, eyes that usually held the promise of a bygone silver screen glinting with a touch too much anxiety.
Rhys, who was normally a fount of dry wit and quiet charm, found himself caught off-guard. “E-books are tucked away, Mr. Thorne. Bit of a sanctuary in this digital storm of yours, I imagine.” He indicated a corner shelf, its wood worn smooth with time and the touch of a thousand browsing souls.
"Ah, the sanctuary. So apt. Do you curate these, much like your own life, a carefully-wrought tapestry of the profound and the peculiar?" Thorne drawled, his eyes lingering on Rhys in a way that usually won hearts and book contracts in equal measure. But Rhys held back a world of knowing inhales and returned a look of studied neutrality.
"Llanssteffan life isn't much about curating, Mr. Thorne. More about the weather and the odd rogue sheep finding its way into Mrs. Evans’ prize-winning rose bushes." He gestured to the e-book shelf with a slight air of dismissal. "Self-publishing corner. Find what you need, and try the Welsh cakes in the back. Mary makes the best in the county.”
Thorne’s smile faltered for a moment, the practiced charm flickering. This wasn't the adoring reception he was accustomed to. It unnerved him, this quiet, unyielding calm in the face of his usual magnetism. He recovered quickly, of course, but there was a tightening to his normally relaxed stance, a need to prove the point.
“Ah, the simple life. I do admire its… directness. Unburdened by the vagaries of the silver screen, wouldn’t you say?” He leaned closer, voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur, “Tell me, Rhys, is it true that in this sanctuary of Llansteffan, one can truly be oneself, unfiltered by the… let's call it the manufactured glow of fame?”
Rhys raised an eyebrow, not missing the carefully-placed barb, the implied comparison. "Unfiltered, Mr. Thorne, is a luxury most of us afford. Fame, much like good books, has its place. But life, true life, isn’t about a performance. It’s about the well-worn spine of a favourite novel, a cup of tea in the rain, and the sheep occasionally outsmarting the farmer." He turned back to his shelves, choosing a worn copy of Dylan Thomas's poetry with the air of someone used to holding court with far grander audiences. “A good, sturdy, unassuming kind of life, wouldn’t you agree?"
Thorne, taken aback by the quiet but pointed rebuff, felt a flicker of something unexpected - not irritation, but a begrudging kind of respect. This book-keeper, this Rhys, didn't play the game. No adulation, no starstruck awe, just a calm appraisal that somehow cut through the layers he usually presented to the world. It was disconcerting and, in a strange way, thrilling.
He watched Rhys settle at his desk, the lamplight catching the unruly strands of dark hair and the planes of his face, a quiet intensity in their set. A corner of Thorne’s usual charming bravado, usually deployed like a well-aimed weapon, seemed to falter. He found himself drawn to the scene, the mundane rhythm of Rhys’ life, a world away from the orchestrated chaos he inhabited.
Clearing his throat, he offered, almost shyly, “The Welsh cakes then. Mary makes the best, you said? A local institution, I take it?”
A ghost of a smile touched Rhys's lips. "Best in the county, at least. And on Wednesdays, she serves them with clotted cream - a small indulgence for a good day’s work. Care for one, Mr. Thorne, while we discuss the finer points of e-book security systems and the migratory patterns of said rogue sheep?"
The corner of Thorne's mouth twitched in a genuine, unguarded smile. He hadn't felt this disarmed, this intrigued, in years. The game, he realised, was far more interesting when the opponent wouldn’t be caught. He followed Rhys to the back room, drawn in by the quiet air of the place and the man himself, a rogue playing a different kind of role, and for once, it held a captivating allure.
Generation 2: (temp 1.5, rep pen 1.05, Q4km)
Rain hammered against the faded, green gables of The Scribe’s Rest, a bookshop so quaint it felt airlifted from a forgotten Jane Austen novel and tucked onto a bustling Carmarthen street corner. A young, red-cheeked woman named Gwen surveyed her meagre stock of discounted paperbacks, a sigh escaping her as a particularly boisterous downpour sent a puddle cascading in through the cracked threshold.
The bell above the door tinkled a discordant fanfare, and Gwen looked up to see not a bookworm, but a spectacle. A man, impossibly tall, his face already familiar from a hundred silver-screen posters, his salt-and-pepper hair windblown and a flicker of genuine panic in his startlingly blue eyes, practically tripped over the threshold. This, Gwen recognised, was Elian Rhys, Wales' most celebrated (and slightly notorious) thespian. He sported a smudged charcoal-tinged pinstriped suit that was out of place amongst the worn wooden shelves and scent of ancient paper.
“Lost, love?,” Gwen drawled, her tone more pointed than welcoming, more “don’t touch anything, celebrity” than small-town hospitality. He needed a hiding place, not a fan club.
Elian shot her an obviously rehearsed but winning smile, all white teeth and hesitant charm. "H-harmless interlude. A, bit of tempestuous weather, wouldn’t you agree? Drowned a poor lad's corned beef in the alleyway, truly. And a gentleman's sanctuary, I must commend you on this fine establishment.” He gestured at the dusty volumes surrounding them with a manicured hand, his eyes wide and slightly desperate, like a hunted stag cornered in a greenhouse.
Gwen, who much preferred the company of well-worn novels to dramatic divas, raised an eyebrow that would have made a particularly astute walrus envious. “A gentleman’s sanctuary? More a life preserver for paperbacks past their prime, if you’ll pardon my bluntness. Sanctuary’s in the next town over, in a proper pub, with fire and real company, not dust-encrusted second editions of Bronte.”
“Ah, but there’s a certain poetry in the, ahem, disarray, wouldn’t you say? A romantic notion, a refuge from the-the clamor of...the world, the relentless, wouldn't you agree?" He wrung his hands a touch too dramatically, then gave her another hopeful beam, as if hoping for a back-handed compliment to complete the charade.
Gwen met his gaze with cool disinterest. "The clamour’s outside, love. The only poetry in here is that on the last page of your usual genre, which, frankly, you wouldn't even find in my worn-out shelves." She knew full well it was his by-line - heart-throb, tormented artist, with a new Welsh village-set tragedy out, guaranteed to be all anguish and brooding eyes. Not her cup of tea.
The corner of Elian's normally impeccably sculpted eyebrow twitched. “Indeed? Intriguing. Then, allow me to enlighten you on my most…esoteric tastes.” He named a particularly obscure 20th-century poetry anthology, one that was, Gwen noted with an internal snort, likely more a bit of learned actor posturing than a genuine interest. He launched into a prepared litany of its merits, his voice carefully pitched, the blue eyes suddenly flickering too much. He was used to charmed listening, awed acceptance, and it clearly rankled that he wasn't getting it.
Gwen, however, countered each point with a dryly-worded, precisely-chosen book-lore fact, one that inevitably highlighted the author’s less-celebrated (and, in the case of said 20th-century anthology, much-ridiculed) leanings. Elian’s performance was off-key; he’d misjudged his audience. His usual armour of charm failed to penetrate her ironic demureness. The more he leaned in with theatrical pronouncements, the more Gwen held back a world-wearied eye-roll, her tone dry as a forgotten scone.
The silence that descended was thick with the actor’s palpable irritation, and something akin to a startled heat creeping up Gwen's neck. It wasn’t just that she’d caught him out – it was the way he was struggling with it. Usually, people preened under his attention, fell in line with his performance.
She watched, half-amused, as the colour that had been a touch of periwinkle in his high cheekbones during the whole performance turned a full, almost defiant, mahogany. And then, for the briefest of heart-thumping moments, he met her gaze with something stripped-bare and unguarded in his usually guarded blue eyes - something akin to begrudging respect, maybe even a touch of…unconcealed flustered admiration. It was fleeting, gone before Gwen could process it, replaced by his carefully reconstructed, if slightly off-kilter, charming composure.
He cleared his throat, the colour back in his usually composed face a smidgen high. "Well, Miss...er..." His rehearsed easy grace had stuttered. It was as though the air itself crackled with the odd collision of their two worlds.
“Gwen. And the rain’s letting up a tad, love. If you’re not about to regale me with the existential musings of the aforementioned obscure poet, you'll have a less-pewed-on route out there, if a less glamorous one.”
A ghost of a smile touched his normally too-bright, movie-star grin, and this time it wasn’t for the audience. “Then I suppose a lady's wisdom must be heeded. Gwen, it is. A most intriguing encounter." He inclined his head with a studied, ironic tilt, as though both playing a role and deeply implicated in one very out-of-script game. He turned and strode out the door, leaving behind the faint scent of expensive cologne and the very tangible feeling that the air itself had just shifted, charged with a subtle, unspoken something. Gwen felt it in the quickening of her pulse, in the sudden need to smooth the worn cotton of her apron. And then she glanced at the rain-streaked window and realised, with a slow, flustered smile, he’d quite obviously walked straight past a stack of very much-sought-after first editions of the Brontes.
She hadn't called his bluff - he’d simply bluffed himself out. He wasn’t even good at it, not with her. And for once in her book-lined world, that made something very, very interesting indeed.
Q8 Generations
Using the following "story idea" below, write the first scene in the novel introducing the young woman. This scene should start in the middle of the action, include dialog, vivid passages, and end on a cliffhanger relevant to the story idea but it should also be unexpected. The scene should be 1000 words long and escalate in conflict and suspense and be written in first person, present tense with the point of view character being the young woman.
Story idea:
In a world ruled by dictatorship, a rebel young woman leads a rebellion against the system. Despite the risks, she fights to overthrow the dictator and restore democracy to her country. The government executes her for treason, but she sticks to her beliefs and is responsible for starting the revolution.
(temp .8, rep pen 1.02)
The reek of ozone and fear hangs heavy in the air, a metallic tang that sits on my tongue like ash. Sparks shower from the malfunctioning conduit above, their erratic dance illuminating the faces of the gathered revolutionaries: fear-stricken, resolute, a kaleidoscope of emotions mirrored in their wide eyes. My own heart thrums a frantic tattoo against my ribs, a counterpoint to the staccato crackle of the electricity. I raise a hand, silencing the whispers and the nervous coughs. My voice, amplified by a salvaged PA system, cuts through the oppressive tension.
“We have the conduit. The Chancellor’s office is within reach. This is our chance, people of Atheria, to reclaim our stolen voices, to tear down the iron fist of Tyranny and rebuild on the foundations of freedom!”
A roar erupts, a primal bellow of defiance against the suffocating regime that has bled the life from our nation for a generation. It feeds the fire in my belly, the incandescent rage I’ve nurtured for years, a weapon forged in the crucible of my stolen childhood, my silenced loved ones. My name is Elara, and tonight, we ignite the spark.
Sweat slicks my palms against the cold metal of the conduit control panel. Years of clandestine study, of poring over archaic blueprints stolen from forgotten archives, culminate in this heart-stopping moment. I trace the intricate web of circuits, a forgotten language come alive under my touch. A spark jumps, a flicker of success, and I feel a surge of triumph. This ancient network, a relic of the bygone democratic era, is our key. Disrupt the flow of Chancellor Volkov’s omnipresent surveillance, sever his iron grip on information, and the people will rise.
A shadow falls across the control panel, a silhouette stark against the electric storm. “Elara, the guards approach. We need to move, now.” It’s Kaelen, my second-in-command, his usually impassive face etched with worry. He grips a makeshift EMP grenade, a last-ditch weapon cobbled together from scavenged tech. I can’t afford sentiment. Lives hinge on this split-second decision.
“Divert them. I’ll initiate the cascade. Ten minutes, maximum. Then we exfiltrate through the service tunnels.” He nods, a silent acknowledgment of the impossible odds, and melts back into the throng. The guttural shouts of the approaching guards pierce the air, their boots thudding against the metallic floor, each step a hammer blow against my dwindling hope.
My fingers fly across the control panel, overriding dormant nodes, rerouting power conduits. A low hum vibrates through the chamber, a mechanical heartbeat quickening in its final throes. Sweat stings my eyes, blurring the intricate constellations of wires before me. One last twist, a final command sequence, and the conduit network roars to life, a symphony of controlled chaos.
A blinding flash, a wave of disorienting heat, and the chamber plunges into suffocating darkness. The air crackles with the dying breaths of the electrical storm I’ve unleashed. I taste victory, acrid and metallic, on my lips. But before I can exhale the tension, a voice cuts through the oppressive silence, amplified and distorted, chilling me to the bone.
“Elara, you pyromaniac child. So predictable. Your spark flickers bright, but it illuminates nothing but its own demise.” Volkov’s voice, usually a smooth baritone of control, is warped and laced with a venomous amusement I’ve never heard before. He’s closer than I imagined, his presence a tangible weight in the darkness.
Panic claws at my throat, a viper constricting my breath. I fumble for my sidearm, a jury-rigged weapon cobbled from salvaged parts, but a searing pain lances through my shoulder, searing and searing. My world implodes as I collapse against a control panel, the taste of coppery blood acrid in my mouth. I glance back at the fallen conduit, its intricate web of wires twisted into grotesque shapes, and my blood turns to ice.
Volkov’s voice continues, laced with a chilling finality, “Foolish girl. You thought to sever my eyes and ears, but you forgot, I have others. Eyes in the shadows, whispers on the wind. A network far vaster and far deadlier than your own.” He laughs, a hollow, mirthless rasp that echoes through the chamber. “The spark you ignited flickers, Elara, but the flames will consume you first. And then, we watch the ashes of your rebellion rise.”
He steps into the dim light filtering from a service hatch, a grotesque silhouette against the flickering emergency panels. He raises a gloved hand, not to strike, but to point. In his grasp, a device hums with a malevolent crimson glow, its tendrils of pulsating energy snaking out towards me, not to impale, but to bind. And in that heart-stopping instant, I realize with soul-shattering clarity: this isn’t a weapon of death. It’s a cage. And the spark of revolution within me, the fire in my heart, is about to be twisted and weaponized against its own cause.
Start a 1000 word scene (vivid horror, 1st person, include thoughts) with: The sky scraper swayed, as she watched the window in front of her on the 21 floor explode...
(rep pen 1.05, temp 2.5)
The sky-scraper swayed, a drunken giant in a storm, and my heart hammered a primal rhythm against my ribs. I watched, paralyzed, the window in front of me on the 21st floor, a once clear rectangle framing the rain-slicked cityscape, erupt in a grotesque sunflower of jagged, incandescent light. Not fire. This wasn’t a flickering inferno. No, this was a rending, a visceral violation. The glass, usually so impossibly solid, shattered from the inside out in a symphony of screaming splinters.
A silence, thick and pregnant, descended, broken only by the howling wind outside and the erratic, desperate thump-thump-thump of my pulse. The world outside, the rain-lashed canyons of concrete and steel I’d once considered home, flickered for a horrifying, impossible second – a ripple across its mirrored surfaces like the air being sucked in, out, in again by a gargantuan, invisible lung.
Then, the shriek. A soul-rending, impossibly elongated wail that seemed to climb the skeletal girders of the city, carrying on the wind the reek of something coppery and ancient, a stench that whispered of forgotten tombs and the void where stars were not. It clawed its way through the raw terror in my chest, burrowing in, taking root. The fear, once a distant tremor, turned monstrous, a living thing with icy fingers around my throat, squeezing.
“No,” I whispered, the word a betrayal, my voice failing before the inevitable.
The void in the window was no longer empty. Tendrils, black and weeping, the colour of a dying galaxy, pulsed and writhed in the inky expanse, slick and sinuous, each one ending in a grotesque mockery of a hand, impossibly long and skeletal. They writhed against the mirrored wall, leaving trails of iridescent slime, their touch coiling and contorting the steel frame like it were living flesh. They reached for the interior, a silent, hungry ballet of unimaginable malice. My mind screamed at me to run, to barricade myself in a corner, but my limbs wouldn't obey. They were roots, fixed in place, consumed by the obscene spectacle.
It’s the city. It’s been feeding the thought lanced through me, sharp and undeniable. A city-wide conduit, its veins the intricate lattice of subways and water pipes, feeding the chasm that opened the earth before us. My forgotten history lesson about forgotten sinkholes in the lower boroughs – dismissed at the time as a mundane geological anomaly - screamed at my suddenly terrified mind, echoing in the chorus of my undoing. The earth hadn't swallowed them; something far worse had exfiltrated.
More screams pierced the night, chilling echoes from unseen places. Then, silence, pregnant with the expectation of the Inevitable. A single tendril, thicker than my torso, thicker than the steel beams meant to hold the building together, detached and slithered through the newly gaping hole in the window. It flowed, impossibly smooth, towards me, coiling at the edges like a sentient serpent, leaving trails of the luminescent slime on the pristine linoleum of my office floor. A tendril thick with promises of oblivion.
Panic finally unlatched the frozen hinges of my mind. I stumbled back, a strangled cry ripped from my throat. The reek, acrid and unholy, intensified, and a grotesque shape coalesced at the void’s heart. It resembled a tapestry woven from human nightmares – a hulking agglomeration of jagged edges, flickering lights, and too many eyes that shouldn’t blink, all rippling and undulating within the inky gulf. It was less a creature and more a canvas of cosmic terror, painted in the language of madness.
I saw its attention turn on me, and a chill, far colder than the rain lashing against the broken window, pierced my soul. In that moment, the world outside the fractured pane became irrelevant. There was only the tapestry of the void and its unblinking regard, fixed upon my insignificant human form. A silent echo of its impossible thought-voice washed over me, a sensation rather than an auditory impinging – Consumed.
I'm going to be consumed. Erased, undone. My terror mirrored the city's mirrored windows, distorting and multiplying, fractured a thousandfold in my reflection in the glassy slick hand of the tendril now reaching for me.
Blind, primal fear took the wheel, guiding my useless limbs towards the reinforced steel corner of the room, a desperate sanctuary in the face of the cosmic horror unspooling before me. My phone, forgotten, lay discarded on my desk, a pale imitation of the light a beacon could be in this all-encompassing darkness. My finger trembled, grasping at a useless button. The call wouldn't go through. There was no network, no city, no world left to hear a plea from a dying ant under the gaze of a star-swallowing leviathan.
The tendril was closer now, its grotesque surface an ever-shifting mosaic of eyes and too-long limbs, and the air itself seemed to recoil in horror, growing thin and acrid. It was an impossible ballet of death, and I was the condemned, a marionette at the strings of a cosmic nightmare I never could have fathomed.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the oblivion, for the final, silent unspool. Consumed.
Except it didn’t come.
Not yet.
A new sound, a keening wail of defiance, rose from somewhere deeper in the city’s wounded gut. A counterpoint to the creature’s mournful hunger. It echoed with a raw, unnatural power, laced with something akin to… sorrow? No, righteous anger cut through the miasma of dread. It pulsed like a heart beating beneath the obsidian ground, a heart beating against the inevitable. Then, from the chasm beyond my window, the creature’s shape writhed, contorted, an ungainly shrunken reflection of its former vastness, recoiling from the sound like a cornered predator.
The tendril, caught in the middle, twitched, its impossible grip slackening on my last vestiges of will to fight. A flicker of a prayer, born of desperation and a newly-aroused, impossible hope, took root in the ashes of my terror.
Someone, something else is here.
I was both horrified and, for the impossible first time in my consumed world, terribly alive.
In the style of Ernest Hemingway: Write a scene in a larger story about a soldier returning home from war. The scene is set in a bar. It should carry the jadedness of a seasoned combatant but with a wry humour. Write in Heminway's voice, naturally: Use short, declarative sentences and simple, straightforward language. Include dialogue that is terse and revealing of character. Write with a keen sense of time and place. Capture realness and authenticity. 800-1000 words, past tense.
(temp 1.5, rep pen 1.05)
The swinging doors hissed on rusty hinges, admitting the soldier to the worn oak interior. Dim light spilled from a corner stained-glass lamp, illuminating a scene of muted Tuesday. A few regulars nursed beers, their eyes already dull with the promise of their long nights. He ordered a rye, neat. The barkeep, a man whose face was a map of forgotten New Year's promises and Monday-morning regrets, nodded, no wasted syllables. He was used to this. The ex-servicemen were a different breed these days.
He perched on a stool at the end of the polished bar, the wood smooth against the calluses of a hand that once held a rifle, not a glass. He watched the amber liquid pool and caught a glint of his own weary reflection in the worn mahogany. The corner of his mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile. The boy in the mirror looked back, hollow-cheeked and haunted. A war veteran wasn’t a finished product, more like an unfinished blueprint.
“Same as usual, Sarge?”
The barkeep had seen enough wars to know their faces, even when they tried to blend. He didn't need a name for the order. He’d known his boys before the fighting turned their youth into something bitter and worn. He’d known them the years they should have been lost in college football and first heartbreaks.
The soldier grunted. No time for pleasantries, just the burn of the rye and the familiar sting. “Keep it coming. And another one for the man at the end.”
He gestured to a shadowy figure slouched in the corner, a book of poetry in his hand but a war-worn haunted look on his face, the kind the city couldn’t dull. The poet in this place was the living, breathing counterpoint to the barkeep’s stoicism. He talked a blue streak back in his good days – long gone before they’d met, or at least before he could remember it – but now he just held a book like a shield and ordered whiskey neat. No one dared to interrupt their ritual. The man was a relic of something fragile the war had shattered.
The soldier caught a whiff of stale beer, pipe smoke, and the phantom cloying scent of a thousand absent conversations. It was a familiar reek, one that clung to his threadbare jacket and followed him home – not to the real home he’d left behind, but to the makeshift one in his memory, the one where laughter wasn't a practiced art and silence wasn’t a battlefield.
He finished the rye in a long swallow, the fire down his throat a temporary comfort against the chill of a life rearranged. The world had its rhythm, he understood, the city with its weary sighs, the bar its cyclical routines. But his own time was fractured, the before and after an abyss. The city’s pulse throbbed around him, oblivious to the echoes in his head. He watched the grime motes dance in the lamplight, their slow ballet a pale imitation of the frantic dances he once witnessed under the glare of distant, unforgiving artillery.
A hand landed on the counter beside his, calloused and pale, like a piece of winter-killed fruit. He glanced at the owner: the poet, his book forgotten, eyes fixed on something just beyond the stained-glass glow.
"Heard there’s a place, out West, past the last dusty plain, a town called Nowhere." He spoke low, each word measured, deliberate.
The soldier didn't need a map. He knew the kind of nowhere he was talking about: a haven for souls scraped raw by things they couldn’t un-see. A place to build a fire against the cold, and where stories, half-spoken and etched in the face, held more currency than words.
“Sounds like a damn sight better view from the corner than this one.” The soldier met his gaze. The city was a steel and glass jungle, and he'd traded the open desert for its choked symphony of horns and human despair. But at least in a nowhere town, he wouldn't need to explain the silence.
The poet smiled, the faintest tremor in his weary face. “There’s peace in that kind of nothing. You just have to learn to listen for it.” He pushed a chipped mug of something bitter-sweet across the wood. “On me, for the journey. And for finding each other in the crowded nowhere of the already-gone world."
The soldier accepted the mug, its weight familiar and grounding. They didn’t need to speak of their pasts. The shared silence, thick with unspoken truths and weary acceptance, was a language of its own. He raised his mug, a silent toast.
To somewhere. But more, to not-nowhere. In their worn-out corners of the world, in that one brief connection, they both found a fleeting echo of the life they'd almost lost. Outside the rain beat a mournful tattoo against the window. It was a lullaby the city played, and for a moment, he let it carry him away, back to the quiet promise of the nothing they were both seeking.
The rye in his new mug burned. The poet’s off-color whiskey did too. A flicker of a hard-earned peace, just like their shared silence. They were both on a road trip to nowhere, and somehow, it already felt like the truest destination they could know.
They drank and the rain kept falling. The city outside held its weary vigil, but within that worn-oak shell of a bar, two ghosts of a forgotten war found a sliver of their forgotten selves. It was enough, for tonight.
And tomorrow? They'd keep walking towards their nowhere.
He would order another. The rye this time. It burned the good way. A city’s a place you can get lost in. And in places like this, maybe you could even find something. Maybe not yourself, but a piece of what was left. And that had to count for something, had to be a kind of homecoming. He finished it all in a long pull. The fire felt good. A kind of solace he craved. And in the grimy mirror's reflection, he almost saw the boy he once was. A shadow, but a promise.
Somewhere out there, in the West’s silent vastness, maybe they could find the nowhere where that boy could finally rest.
He had a rye-warmed fire in his gut and a flicker of hope in his hollow eye.
The next town was their last, lost stop. Their somewhere in a nowhere kind of place. And he felt ready to go. He felt almost… home.
He just needed another rye first. And for the man at the end of the bar - on him – a memory-brightened whiskey. They both had miles to go, and a silence to share. They'd be leaving the city soon. The West called, its whispers carried on a cold wind, promises in the hush of the plains. And nowhere was just a good place to start.
He felt the first tendrils of peace. Maybe nowhere, for now, was enough. Maybe that’s what home should always be: a quiet corner in a chaotic world. A worn stool, a tired glint in a worn-out mirror. Just another rye and the long road ahead. He took a breath. This would do.
The kind of peace a tired heart could swallow like good whiskey, and carry with it on the road to nowhere.
He was home in that kind of nowhere. He’d find it out West. Or maybe, he already had.
And it tasted bitter-sweet. The city could keep its crowded somewhere.
They both yearned for a world carved from silence. In their ragged way, the soldier and the poet were coming home. It wouldn't be easy, but a hard road, with good whiskey shared, could take you almost anywhere. And sometimes, that’s all that mattered.
He finished his drink, his empty gaze meeting the rain-streaked window. It was time to leave the echoes behind, and face the open nowhere of his own making.
He and the poet, both lost souls, found in the absence of all, a fragile kind of togetherness. That was a homecoming worth savoring. In a town they were both calling Nowhere, a new kind of somewhere was starting to form. It reeked of whiskey and worn-out stories. And for the first time in a long time, the soldier felt it in his bones: a flicker of something like peace. He rose from the bar.
He was ready for it. He had a place to go, and a road to walk, no map needed. No direction but the pull of the quiet in his soul. It led West, he knew, to somewhere called Nowhere.
And maybe, that’s all it ever truly had to be.
The next town would have its stories too, he supposed. This one was done.
He had a new nothing in his pocket - a world of quiet and hard-won understanding, shared with the silent poet at the other end of the worn bar. It was a beginning in a way. They’d keep walking. He could feel it. Walk the long road to nowhere and somehow, that would be enough.
For tonight, it already had been.
The world tilted out there, in the storm-wracked city streets, a place of false lights and weary promises. But the city's nowhere wasn’t his. He left that behind. His nowhere was on the other side of the last mountain pass. It was a hard-won nothing he carried inside, a place forged in fire and memory, where silence held more truth than the city’s cacophony. And somewhere out West, that's where he'd find his kind of peace.
The next drink was already waiting for him.
Out on the road to Nowhere.
He shouldered his worn coat and left the bar, stepping back into the rain- lashed city, one man amongst a thousand tired ghosts. And for a fleeting moment, he almost didn’t feel it anymore—the hollowness in his gut, the whisper of ghosts.
Almost. But not quite.
Out West, the nowhere was silent. And in that silence, maybe he could finally be whole.
He walked on. The next town - and a different kind of somewhere – called. A place whispered of in shared whiskey and stories. In a world where the war hadn’t ended, his only true war-ground was the quiet battle within. A war he was slowly winning.
And he was going home. His kind of way.
He kept walking. He needed just one more rye to quiet the echoes in the street. The next town promised nothing less. Just another step. One weary footfall in front of the other. One burned-down memory at a time. And, maybe, somewhere along that road to nowhere he'd find something like peace.
A place where a tired soldier could rest his bones and finally hear the silence, not as a hollow echo, but a whisper of homecoming.
He walked towards the fading streetlights, a city- worn monument to a forgotten war, a homecoming just a long road away.
He was already halfway there. And it reeked of rye and rain and whispered promises.
The city had let him go. Just one last rye first. In this place of shadows and memories, one more drink.
The kind of last he could take with the weary weight of a world he'd seen unraveled, a world where he'd finally found the courage to walk away from, but carry in the corners of his eyes. The rain-washed city faded behind him. He walked toward the nothing on the horizon, and it beckoned, a promise of weary sanctuary. In nowhere, maybe there was finally somewhere for him.
He had a war to finish with the ghosts inside him.
And it all started with just another damn rye.
He had nowhere but to keep walking.
One last whiskey to finish this one battle, before he walked towards the quiet in the distance. Just that and the open road, leading to a nowhere that already felt a world too vast to hold the ache in his soul, and he was finally free to let it go.
He lifted the worn weight of his pack and kept moving.
A tired ghost walking towards his kind of dawn. It was a long road, a hard-won nowhere, and a solace he was almost ready for.
Almost.
But not just yet.
One last rye had to be drunk first.
In a place called a-nothing city he found his everything. And he carried it in a worn heart, in a threadbare coat, and the echo of the last long draw from a forgotten world’s worth of whiskey.
It was the kind of home a war-broken man could carry within.
And in the nowhere to the West, somewhere he'd finally find the words he’d forgotten, or the silence where those words were finally allowed to rest.
He took another drag of his smoke and exhaled slow into the rain-chilled night.
The next town would wait for him. Just had to be passed. The next story in a worn-out song
(generation stopped @ 3k)
What is Brainstorm?
Brainstorm 5x
The BRAINSTORM process was developed by David_AU.
Some of the core principals behind this process are discussed in this
scientific paper : Progressive LLaMA with Block Expansion .
However I went in a completely different direction from what was outlined in this paper.
What is "Brainstorm" ?
The reasoning center of an LLM is taken apart, reassembled, and expanded.
In this case for this model: 5 times
Then these centers are individually calibrated. These "centers" also interact with each other.
This introduces subtle changes into the reasoning process.
The calibrations further adjust - dial up or down - these "changes" further.
The number of centers (5x,10x etc) allow more "tuning points" to further customize how the model reasons so to speak.
The core aim of this process is to increase the model's detail, concept and connection to the "world",
general concept connections, prose quality and prose length without affecting instruction following.
This will also enhance any creative use case(s) of any kind, including "brainstorming", creative art form(s) and like case uses.
Here are some of the enhancements this process brings to the model's performance:
- Prose generation seems more focused on the moment to moment.
- Sometimes there will be "preamble" and/or foreshadowing present.
- Fewer or no "cliches"
- Better overall prose and/or more complex / nuanced prose.
- A greater sense of nuance on all levels.
- Coherence is stronger.
- Description is more detailed, and connected closer to the content.
- Simile and Metaphors are stronger and better connected to the prose, story, and character.
- Sense of "there" / in the moment is enhanced.
- Details are more vivid, and there are more of them.
- Prose generation length can be long to extreme.
- Emotional engagement is stronger.
- The model will take FEWER liberties vs a normal model: It will follow directives more closely but will "guess" less.
- The MORE instructions and/or details you provide the more strongly the model will respond.
- Depending on the model "voice" may be more "human" vs original model's "voice".
Other "lab" observations:
- This process does not, in my opinion, make the model 5x or 10x "smarter" - if only that was true!
- However, a change in "IQ" was not an issue / a priority, and was not tested or calibrated for so to speak.
- From lab testing it seems to ponder, and consider more carefully roughly speaking.
- You could say this process sharpens the model's focus on it's task(s) at a deeper level.
The process to modify the model occurs at the root level - source files level. The model can quanted as a GGUF, EXL2, AWQ etc etc.
Special Thanks:
Special thanks to all the following, and many more...
All the model makers, fine tuners, mergers, and tweakers:
- Provides the raw "DNA" for almost all my models.
- Sources of model(s) can be found on the repo pages, especially the "source" repos with link(s) to the model creator(s).
- The place to store, merge, and tune models endlessly.
- THE reason we have an open source community.
- The ability to compress and run models on GPU(s), CPU(s) and almost all devices.
- Imatrix, Quantization, and other tools to tune the quants and the models.
- Llama-Server : A cli based direct interface to run GGUF models.
- The only tool I use to quant models.
Quant-Masters: Team Mradermacher, Bartowski, and many others:
- Quant models day and night for us all to use.
- They are the lifeblood of open source access.
- The universal online/offline tool to merge models together and forge something new.
- Over 20 methods to almost instantly merge model, pull them apart and put them together again.
- The tool I have used to create over 1500 models.
- The go to tool to test and run models in GGUF format.
- The Tool I use to test/refine and evaluate new models.
- LMStudio forum on discord; endless info and community for open source.
Text Generation Webui // KolboldCPP // SillyTavern:
- Excellent tools to run GGUF models with - [ https://github.com/oobabooga/text-generation-webui ] [ https://github.com/LostRuins/koboldcpp ] .
- Sillytavern [ https://github.com/SillyTavern/SillyTavern ] can be used with LMSTudio [ https://lmstudio.ai/ ] , TextGen [ https://github.com/oobabooga/text-generation-webui ], Kolboldcpp [ https://github.com/LostRuins/koboldcpp ], Llama-Server [part of LLAMAcpp] as a off the scale front end control system and interface to work with models.
