The Grand Writing Adventures of Victor Chang

The Last Five Days was a story that took me a very long time to write.

The basic premise of the story was that there was a virus that essentially wiped out half of the world by making blood pour of their mouths. Very original. The event happened on “Day Zero” and the story takes place the next five days after Day Zero.

Outlining and imagining the plot beats in my head was very tedious. During brainstorming (I wanna say around 2014-2015), I remember thinking how unbelievable it was that authors came up with languages, number systems, lore, mythology, and all this amazing stuff, and I could barely come up with a way my virus worked. I had a hard time establishing how it spread from person to person, what the symptoms were, how fast it acted, etc. I really struggled thinking about being symptomatic, asymptomatic, a carrier, etc. And yes, that definitely prepared me for what would happen the following year.

(Spoiler alert!)

I think that the biggest takeaway for me was that I really connected with the emotional beats. Robert and Susan’s guilt, Robert’s desperation with Lauren, Susan’s hopelessness, the tragic turns of Kyle and David… that was all very good and I think holds up today. I think the forgiveness aspect and how Susan has to let go of her sister and become an agnostic by the end again is good. I think the Atheistic vs. Agnostic approach was solid (although I think I kind of mixed up the character arc of each person. Susan begins as a hopeless Agnostic, then becomes Atheist, then Agnostic again. And Robert was flipped. That was the plan anyway).

BUT: the lore, the way the virus spreads, that it was innate in everybody, that it was triggered randomly, that there are carriers and hosts, that they can develop vaccines… Ugh, that did not hold up. It’s very messy. And the worst part is I spent a lot of time thinking about this and it still turned out not great.

Storywise, I remember almost every plot beat in this story. I remember establishing the twist right in the beginning, that Susan’s sister Norah was killed by Robert’s wife, and that’s why they found themselves in that intersection when they woke up. Maybe back then I thought that was like super mind-blowing but looking back it seemed obvious. As Susan lay dying, she says something like “somehow I knew all along.” I did always want to end it back at that intersection. That full-circle idea was pretty solid.

I remember this one part where they are in a hospital camp and they see a bunch of holes where they kept dropping dead people in. That part ended with a breakout happening and them escaping, not realizing until later that they caused the outbreak. Clearly I had been watching one too many zombie movies. I also remember the part in the hospital trailer and thinking that Pat and Cheryl were going to be quirky and funny. But that didn’t work out. However, later, when Rachel shoots herself, my friend told me that she had that image stuck in her head when she read it and sarcastically thanked me. I will never forget that. I also remember writing a part where Peter and Susan watch a couple hold hands and jump off a waterfall because they were infected. I still think about that part from time to time.

I also remember thinking that Daughters of Sons was so sprawling and had so many characters that I ended up getting lost and overburdened. That’s why I made the next one a road trip with 2 characters, which is something I’ve really latched on to. Keeping it simple and character driven.

(End spoiler)

Weirdly, I didn’t have any songs that I kept revisiting to accompany the fake movie in my head. For some reason, I didn’t strongly associate any one song to any one particular part of the story. I also started to date my soon to be wife around this time, so the brainstorming and planning of this did take longer than usual. I remember one night sitting on the Upper West Side, drinking shitty white wine, and posting on Facebook about how cool I was for writing for so long. I also began attending Gotham Writers Write Ins where I made some friends that may have influenced how I wrote this. Again, the brainstorming / planning period on this was so long, so a myriad of things may have manifested themselves in how I wrote this.

Reading through this again, I’m reminded of how much I’ve always wanted to just write dialogue. I definitely think there’s parts that I could get across better with a simple paragraph and not dialogue, but there aren’t many. I am fundamentally all about dialogue. Some of my Gotham writer friends told me they loved my dialogue and they had trouble with it. It makes sense why the next thing I wrote was a play, and intended for my Gotham writer friends.

Different parts of the story trigger different memories for me. Since this one took the longest to write (and all on Google Doc!) it naturally spanned a very long and important part of my life. I fell in love. I left the Upper West Side and moved to Brooklyn. I traveled Europe.

At the end of the day, I’m happy with how this turned out. I think a lot of people actually read this one too. Another friend said they should make it into a movie. Obviously that’s a bad idea, because this story is kinda bad, but what a nice compliment!

I think overall my creativity was leaps higher for Daughters of Sons in terms of planning everything but I see why this one took so long.

Basically, life got in the way. And the next year, it eerily emulated this disease, DZV.