In addition to the ‘Contract with the Reader‘ and various ‘Character and Chronology‘ spreadsheets, the recommendation in Step 1 of the 10-part process was to “a 2-3 page ‘Revision Blueprint’ document that you’ll reference throughout the process.” This grew out of the Contract and Chronology listings to include:

• Confirm Luna Reyes as protagonist (or choose alternative)
• Decide target word count (recommend 100,000-120,000 for SF novel)
• Identify 3 primary supporting characters who appear across multiple timeframes
• Choose your ending: What’s the final image/scene that will haunt readers?

ChatGPT advises: “A strong revision blueprint moves in layers: story first, structure second, character third, prose last. This prevents wasting time polishing scenes that may later be cut.”

At this stage I am focused on the story.

The long version of the Contract is a starting point for the story. It clearly identifies Luna as the protagonist. There are currently 50,000 words in the 12 Episodes that fill 160 pages when printed. Much of this will have to be cut, but I should have a goal of 300+ printed pages.

The main supporting characters who appear alongside Luna across multiple time frames include:

• Rosa Reyes, her grandmother. Even though she passes aged 85 in 2050 her presence is felt throughout as Luna is motivated by carrying on her legacy.
• Maya Reyes, her sister. A confident and stabilizing influence who knows her inner self.
• Curro Polo, the scientist whose consciousness is uploaded and can thus be contacted into the indefinite future (UNLESS the story would be too far out to present this as a real option. TBD)
• Sam Okoye, romantic partner. TBD. Can be a main foil for Luna’s dilemma to choose between public action and domesticity.

The ending

This is the moment when Luna hands the SCOBY that she was gifted by her grandmother to the next generation. Perhaps to Christie Steinberg the cancer survivor turned researcher? Or someone else? The ending ties back to the opening scene at grandmother Rosa’s graveside.

With this in mind, I created the blueprint.

The Blueprint

Our Fermented Future promises readers a story about teenage bio-hacker Luna Reyes, who believes that fermentation holds an answer to the looming crisis of global warming.

The story opens with Luna at her grandmother’s graveside in Oakland, making a solemn promise to honor the legacy of the old woman who had grown up in rural Mexico and brought the traditions of fermentation to the States when her son, Luna’s father, brought his mother to California.

Luna came of age at a time when the effects of global warming were beginning to be recognized, and lived to see the dawn of the 22nd Century, when the effects were all-consuming.

From an early age, she demonstrated an unusual curiosity and was driven to understand the world. As a pre-teen, she had realized that global warming would be the defining problem of her lifetime.

She is smart enough to operate on the frontiers of science. Still, she must overcome debilitating self-doubt and the anxiety rooted in witnessing her father’s struggle to re-establish his professional career in the USA as a first-generation immigrant who had to survive without papers.

She suffered the pain of seeing her father’s brilliance go unrecognized. She was driven by a desire to justify the sacrifices her parents made to give her the education that allowed her brilliance to flourish.

Her journey spans 75 years, from her family home in Oakland to courtrooms and the halls of Congress, to national and international acclaim.

Her journey began when she cracked the code to the closely guarded secrets of the Budweiser and Heineken yeast strains and released them under Creative Commons. In doing so, she honored her grandmother’s belief that fermentation is about sharing and passing living cultures between generations.

This one act, by a teenager riven with doubt, sparked a tsunami of open science information that fundamentally changed the relationship between consumers and their food.

Readers will experience the challenges she had to overcome to grow from a solitary rebel driven by a passion for citizen-science into a battle-hardened, mature leader who becomes a global figurehead of the ‘Fermentation Rights’ movement.

She was caught up in legal proceedings that overturned the corporate monopoly over fermentation and led to the passage of the 28^th Amendment. In the initial court proceedings, she was a defendant who became a figurehead for a wider movement of social change when her conviction was overturned. She went on to work with scientists, fermentation experts, chefs, and a wide variety of everyday people who saw her as a symbol of a new approach to feeding humanity in an era when global warming was challenging traditional agriculture and the industrialization of food.

She promoted the collective fermentation of foods in cities around the world.

Her dedication to the cause came at a cost. It meant choosing to remain single, turning down the opportunity to start a family, consumed by her passion for social justice and a habitable planet, rather than listening to the increasingly loud ticking of her biological clock as she transitioned into middle age. She paid the price of not having the kind of ‘normal’ family life her parents valued.  Underneath, she was perhaps relieved that she wasn’t bringing a child into an overcrowded, overheated world.

She passed the torch to a new generation when the 22^nd Century dawned, symbolically handing the SCOBY her grandmother had given her in the family kitchen in Oakland 75 years before to her young research assistant.

Readers will close the book feeling inspired to step up their own response to global warming, willing to embrace fermented foods and beverages as ‘one small step’ on a journey into a future that will inevitably require ‘a giant leap for mankind’ on a planet impacted by global warming.

NotebookLM Summary

Having written this, I submitted it to NotebookLM which generated a summary and an accompanying infograpahic.

“This is a narrative blueprint for a story titled “Our Fermented Future,” which follows the life of Luna Reyes, a visionary bio-hacker. Spanning seventy-five years, the plot details Luna’s evolution from a doubt-filled teenager in Oakland to a global leader fighting the environmental devastation of the 22nd Century. Motivated by her grandmother’s Mexican traditions and her father’s sacrifices as an immigrant, she sparks a scientific revolution by liberating corporate yeast strains for public use. Her journey involves overturning food monopolies and establishing fermented nutrition as a vital solution to global warming and agricultural collapse. Ultimately, the story serves as a call to action, illustrating how citizen-science and personal sacrifice can challenge industrial food systems to secure a habitable planet for future generations.”

Infographic