[PILL] Liquidity Short Story: planning, outlining, iterating

SoP24 Research
1

Hey all,

I’m creating this thread as a place to work-in-public as I develop my PILL short story that explores a Liquid Democracy protocol (PILL Pitch).

My writing process typically starts by jotting down ideas about characters, themes, and plot points. Then I’ll create a bulleted outline of the entire story, first at a high level and then on a beat by beat basis. I only start writing prose once I’m happy with the outline.

Feel free to chime in with comments, feedback, and suggestions. Once I have a completed draft, I’ll share a Google Doc version with comments enabled.

Initial Pitch

The story focuses on an enthusiastic but naive high-schooler who, after giving a passionate speech on an upcoming ballot proposition, is delegated thousands of votes from her classmates and neighbors. Her delegated votes earn her an invite to a ritzy junket on the topic, paid for by lobbyists and attended by some of the most influential delegates. Once there, she meets subject matter experts, community leaders, and social media influencers and learns how powerful, wealthy actors attempt to subvert liquid democracy. By the end, she’ll have to decide who she trusts and what she values.

Three conflicts

I like Michael Arndt’s “three conflicts” model discussed by Venkat here. Here’s my current thoughts on the conflicts for this story:

  • Internal: the protagonist doubts if she is worthy of the responsibility her community entrusted her with when they delegated their votes to her
  • External: A lobbyist / company is trying to sway the vote by manipulating the delegates – will they succeed?
  • Philosophical: Is Liquid Democracy a valid / redeemable process for participatory democracy?

The ending of the story will have the protagonist overcoming her doubts to confidently commit her vote, ideally while helping to thwart the lobbyist and validate liquid democracy. Because this is a short story, this might be a more limited victory on the External and Philosophical level, but a step in the right direction.

Policy issue

The story will focus on a specific policy issue that Liquid Democracy is being used to vote on (sort of like a ballot measure). I haven’t picked the issue yet so it’s represented by ISSUE below. Once I lock in the issue, I’ll tailor the characters to be better integrated with it.

The policy issue needs to:

  • Be somewhat easy and quick to convey to the reader
  • Be something that affects the protagonist’s community, that she feels strongly about
  • Be relevant to the Corporation and worth lobbying about
  • Be relevant to the Scientist and Activist characters
  • Have a range of possible policies for candidates to discuss and choose among

Some initial ideas I’m considering:

  • Water rights (liquidity pun?)
  • Wildfires and urban-wildlife interface (but maybe it’s less relevant to the Corporation)
  • Managed retreat due to climate change and coastal erosion
  • Some type of geo-engineering on par with dam building that will have ecological and local impacts - maybe pumped-storage hydroelectricity?

I’m very open to other suggestions - please share your ideas!

Characters

Here’s are some quick details about the most important characters to the story, how they relate to the protagonist, and how they feel about the ISSUE and Liquid Democracy (LD). Note that I typically don’t name the characters until I’m ready to start writing prose.

Protagonist

  • Senior in high school
  • Passionate about ISSUE (TBD) due to personal history and relevance to her local community
  • Book smart but naive about politics
  • Has imposter syndrome, especially about being at the junket
  • LD perspective: idealistic, could save the world

Scientist

  • Academic, subject matter expert, highly trusted as top in field
  • Maybe: iffy people skills (accidently stokes Musetta impostor syndrome)
  • Maybe: Distracted by other work so not super engaged in junket
  • Maybe: semi-popular science communicator a la Neil Degrasse Tyson
  • LD perspective: skeptical, subject to similar corruption as other approaches
  • ISSUE: nuanced take that is somewhat at odds with both Lobbyist and Activist

Social Media Influencer

  • Professional influencer and popular streamer with huge following among protagonist’s peers
  • Young 20s
  • Charismatic and manipulative, a bit of a bro
  • Accepts gifts from lobbyist
  • LD perspective: cynical, it’s a source of free trips, and fodder for streaming, and maybe a way to gain some sponsorship
  • ISSUE: no personal stakes, okay being influenced by the lobbyist

Activist

  • ISSUE based activist, with the opposite position to Lobbyist
  • Passionate and manipulative
  • Willing to inject chaos to highlight their perceived illegitimacy of the process
  • LD perspective: rigged game, use it to get other types of value / power

Lobbyist

  • Corporate lobbyist / co-sponsor of junket
  • Smooth and calculating
  • Snubs Protagonist when it’s clear she doesn’t have many votes and won’t sway the decision
  • LD perspective: the protocol is a game to be played and won. It can be high ROI

Minor characters

  • Protagonist’s parents: supportive but don’t totally get LD, have personal connection to ISSUE
  • CEO of relevant corporation: schmoozing with politicians and other business execs
  • Popular politician: grandstanding, schmoozing, maybe patronizing toward Protagonist
  • Participatory democracy enthusiast: excited about the process, takes the details seriously, uses complimentary tech to take pulse of their followers
  • Troll who is there to mess with and disrupt things, will likely get thrown out

Not sure all of these will make it into the story. Some might be remixed into other characters.

Plot outline

Here’s my initial, very high level sketch of potential plot beats:

  1. Protagonist arrives at junket via flying car / luxury auto, sharing the ride with the Scientist who unintentionally heightens her imposter syndrome.
  2. Protag is brushed off by corp Lobbyist when they realize how few votes she has
  3. Protag talks to Influencer and is put off by their cynicism and willingness to be swayed by the Lobbyist
  4. Protag is consoled by scientist, who notes that the Influencer is much more clueless than Protag
  5. Activist pushes protagonist to make a scene and cause chaos to get more attention on the issue, perhaps something related to the Influencer
  6. Protagonist follows Activists advice and in doing so loses some of her proxied votes
  7. Moment of despair where Protag feels that she has let down her community and missed her opportunity to make an impact. She’s now below the vote threshold for the junket and thus ineligible to give a speech she was hoping to give later in the day. She worries that LD seems broken.
  8. Scientist has to leave junket early but talks to protagonist about LD being about the combination of expertise and values. Scientist decides to delegate her votes to the protagonist, putting her well above the threshold needed to give a speech.
  9. Protagonist gives speech, calls out Influencer / Lobbyist, and the voting tilts toward her position.

What do you think?

2 Likes
2

This is great! And I’m a big fan of the 5 → 6 tragedy component!

Wondering if 8 could be more protocol-y, maybe if the scientist has a very by-the-book, follow the rules personality?

3

The first (rough) draft is complete! You can check it out here. Feedback is welcome and I already have a bunch of ideas about how to improve it. Feel free to comment in the document.

4

I just finished a revision pass based on feedback. I think it’s shaping up nicely but I’d still love more input.

Here’s the link, feel free to comment here or in the doc: Liquid Democracy Story - Randy Lubin - Google Docs

5

Nice story! It has a great flow to it that really draws you through the story. I think the story has an excellent selection of characters, that all have a high degree of believability in their motives and behavior. I especially enjoyed Alden’s role as an arsehole influencer in the thrall of BigBio in highlighting the potential flaws of liquid democracy. It is totally relatable. The narrative arc is also well done, with the sense of failure and disappointment before the reversal of fate when Dr. Keliwy delegates her votes. I think where you chose to end the story was smart, not sure if you would have added to it with more here. I also really like the rich, scene building descriptions you have included to compliment and bring your story to life.

In terms of getting across how Liquid Democracy works, I think this is excellent. In that it introduces the concept, without overly focusing on the details and technology that makes it work. I think this would be accessible to most people, even those who haven’t come across the concept before.

This could be done, great work. Look forward to seeing how it evolves further.

I do have a couple of suggestions:

  • Could we learn a bit more about why privacy is so important to this issue? Perhaps through Shelby, and why privacy is so important to her? Privacy is hugely important to this issue, but currently it feels a bit vague. Although I can understand why you might not want to distract from the Liquid Demoncracy aspect. I did really like your outline of the proposal variations being voted on, perhaps some debate about why one is better could be included?
  • The one area of the narrative that felt slightly disjointed is when Musseta pretends to want to be an influencer. I understand why it is there, but perhaps there needs to be some more coaching from Shelby first?

I am also interested in what you think you have left to do with this story? Are there any major elements you want to try to integrate still? Or is it just a case of refining?

6

Thanks for the feedback Will!

I’ll add some more details on the privacy and why it’s important to Shelby and make the influencer arc more clear.

After processing this round of feedback I’m nearly done. I’m mostly refining at the point, with my main focus on clarifying bits that are confusing and smoothing transitions between sections.

I’m still mulling over the amount and positioning of the exposition – there are quite a few concepts to introduce but I didn’t want to drop them on the reader all at once. That’s always a tricky thing for this type of writing!

7

i really enjoyed reading your draft! (i’m by no means a writer, so i’m just responding to it as a regular ol’ reader. :))

the setting of the story felt near future, but plausible and familiar, so the liquid democracy system/premise was easy to grasp. i got a quick sense of the issue at hand and that there wasn’t a clear, simple answer. i also really related to this future of information overload, that feeling of being caught up in mechanisms outside your control and being naive about how they really work.

the only part where i feel like i missed something is the end of the story; i wasn’t sure what i was supposed to take away from it. if there was a lesson about liquid democracy i was supposed to gleam, or something about the responsibility of being trusted by a collective, or about navigating systems of corruption as an individual showing up in good faith.

8

I enjoyed reading this, and I felt like I did get a good intro to liquid democracy, including the downsides and potential. In short story from, there’s a challenge of not having the initial conversations and intros feel somewhat forced. I think you made good selections of individual characters, who seem more realistically likely to interact in these very direct (and somewhat nakedly transactional) ways. I wonder if there’s a way to give a bigger sense of the other attendees, to both show the scale of the event and to round out the picture of the other types of delegates you might expect to be there. I’m imagining another scene in either a formal or informal setting where she might interact with some more folks, even briefly.