I thought of the plot of my life. The curve going up to the climax, then the slow come down. How do I do this except as fiction. The story will be about a writer who is an agnostic. He lives out in the middle of nowhere, near a beach in Wisconsin. He writes this book, a waking up Jesus variant. The best can be woven into the story. A cult builds up around him.
He writes about liking his privacy and how he would never be treated as famous in his small town, where they knew he was idiotic as any other human. Statements like this are taken as scripture. The FBI becomes interested. The books he wrote before the Jesus book are taken as scripture as well. This will have to be handled like one form of murder, or something. The cult must be very different than the guy. Ridgway is always talking about free will, etc... passage on how little you have, and how desperate you should be to hang onto this. No matter if unto death. This is liberty itself.
A year passes. His book barely sells and he moves onto something else. Strange phone call from a terrified ex professor of his. Asking if his next book is violent. She keeps asking this over and over, no matter what he says. This freaks him out.
I need various ways to show the cult is doing things, but he has no idea these events are related to him, or his writing. He is bugged, and they also have film on him. They watch him thinking he is Jesus who they have always told would usher in the end times. This is a question in his book answering by climate change, saying science and religion have come together.
Another character has to be in the cult. THIS will be difficult for me to write. They cannot be bad people. Just confused. Though they have done some of the things in his book; these things he finds out when the FBI comes into his cabin, loaded for bear. He does not even own a gun. They have invented a cult leader role for him, bugging and watching the cults feed.
Hard to imagine such a story.... he is told over and over again.
If it was a movie, I would open with a man sitting in a police interview room. As the opening credits go a man is throwing pictures down on the table. They fall in slow motion... moving to quick at times. The pictures show the ghastly nature of what was unleashed by his work. Then they tell him there was a network behind all of this... he knows nothing about this? They believe he does.
The network, as I could call them, the Network folk were set up by a different group which has taken control of getting money from people, which he does not know about. He could even do a webcast to try and promote the book, where he recites his work as Jesus. His long brown hair and beard add to the illusion. He thinks no one is watching his videos, or buying his books. He has no idea that the intelligence agencies are all worried about them, with good reason.
The actions he goes through are taken as signals to the cult by the FBI. Ridgway is stunned as hell. That people have died because of his work. That there was a cult, mistreating others. Underground until they became too large. Started living in communes. He is a smoker, hates himself for it. They follow in his path, chain smoking like he does. They kill and in another book he has a character who is a cannibal. They get rid of their enemies by making them into sausage.
He is horrified beyond belief by what he is hearing? He has no girlfriend, or particularly close relatives. A few friends from college, other than that he went by the old adage of choosing his friends by who his neighbors were.
Johnathon could move out into the woods after writing the book. There is no book tour, and the book sales are just enough to get him an advance for another. He is able to buy a place, where he can live with his wife, huskies, cats, etc... when he is interviewed, he says that he likes to connect with people who like his work, though a nod of the head, and recognition of each other as humans was enough for him.
Or this should 4be first person.
If I had only known then.
