Which one of these sounds like a better story?

I just got out of a really toxic relationship with a narcissist. She was one of my best friends for two years, then when we got together I saw her ugly side and by then my heart was fully in it. It changed my life. At first I thought I was ruined, but now I know it’s made me into an even better version of myself.

Anyway, I always take experiences in my life and use them as a template to write a good story, and because my mind is always swimming with possible story ideas because i love to write, I wanted to write a book about my relationship with her. But idk how I want to do it. Obviously I’m gonna change a bunch of stuff, but one idea I had was to make it a long distance relationship. So in this story I am a very lonely guy, depressed, have nobody. I’m an alcoholic, my place is a disaster, and every day I’m slowly rotting away my life (none of this is true btw lol). Then I meet this amazing girl online and suddenly everything just feels right. Two year perfect friendship then toxic hell of a relationship. The main character’s entire happiness is based on her and he slowly descends into madness the more she controls him through the internet and makes him believe it’s true love forever and then drops him. The reader is eagerly awaiting her next text message because everything else the main character does is boring since she becomes his entire life. So in a way, the reader would get to experience the push/pull feeling of a toxic relationship and the isolation/loneliness of this guys world and routine. The way the long distance girl uses and manipulates this guy would be insane, but I want the reader to not be able to know for sure if she’s actually a good or bad person, like see enough of her good side to think that MAYBE there’s something more to this. At the end she finally visits him and tells him she loves him and wants to be with him forever. He’s so excited, he gets on the ground and tells her how happy he is, all the pain, suffering and fighting just to get to this perfect moment. Then he happily goes up to a random person to introduce her and the guy says “hey buddy you ok?”. The twist is that she’s not even there. In fact she never even existed, she was just the figment of his mind. The toxicity was his mind telling him “you have to wake up and make something of yourself. Get away from me, you have so much to offer the world. That’s why “she” keeps pushing him away. But he’s so drawn to her and in love with her because the other part of his mind created this perfect being for him to love, something amazing for someone who had nothing and was going crazy with isolation.

The second option involves it being a part of a book universe that I have planned in my head, involving psychopaths that all have their individual stories, but eventually meet in later books. For this option, my idea is to keep it in person instead of online (and obviously she has to be real if she’s gonna eventually meet other psychopaths) but instead of making the main character a lonely guy, make him confident and well adjusted. He meets this amazing girl and builds a great friendship with her. Over time it becomes more and more special and romantic, things heat up. But...something is off about her. Her ugly side starts to come out. Some scenes play out like The Notebook where it’s perfect love, some scenes play out like Misery just without the threats and violence. She just...changes sometimes. As the book goes on these two tones become one and it descends into complete emotional, sexual and psychological madness. But the reader has already sympathized with who she is and what her life is like so much for the first act, that when this stuff starts happening the automatic reaction is to think “there must be some explanation”. And the explanations she does give make you feel relieved...until it happens again...and again...and again. This will be the toxic cycle of most of the entire book. At some points you’re gonna be like “she’s a total psycho” then “...wait...is she? I don’t know...”. I want the reader to always be on the fence about her intentions. I want her as a character, her motivations etc, to be shrouded in mystery. Like you feel like you can ALMOST pinpoint her...but you can’t. Something’s off. Just when you think you’ve got her figured out she pulls the rug out from underneath you. At the end of the novel she brutally kills the main character with a knife, stabs him many times, like a gut punch to the reader. No buildup, just maybe a quick page or two of tension (which the whole book was filled with anyway as you wonder what the hell shes gonna do or say next) then instead of the usual manipulation, she just brutally kills him. So it went from like a level 5 crazy to a level 10 crazy. Then you wanna read the book again and look for all the signs and red flags from day 1 (I won’t present the book as a psychopath story but a romance one, so that you’re not expecting it to take a dark turn).

Also for that option I will be making a sequel which i already have in my mind. At the beginning you find out that she was forced at gunpoint to brutally stab the main character in the first one (at the end you find out it was all a carefully crafted lie, even fooling the police) and throughout the story you start believing her (the book will never be from her POV so as not to show her true intentions, it will always be from another character’s POV so that her charm and manipulation works on the reader through the POV character). She even admits “I know I was emotionally abusive to him, I know I wasn’t good to him, but I never wanted him to die”. Even as she gets into a new relationship, tries to improve herself and focuses on “bettering herself” because the guilt of killing the other guy haunts her so much, you want to believe her struggles and her journey and that she’s finally changing for the better through this other guy she meets. The ending to this one has a shocking scene that makes the one in the first one look like a joke, but I don’t wanna say it as it’s pretty brutal and disturbing and I don’t wanna get banned for describing it. But it’s horrifying the way he finds his family. By this point I want the reader to know for 100% that she is beyond evil and she’s been that way the whole time, everything she did and said was perfectly calculated. I want her to basically be pure evil as a human being. Think almost like a female Michael Myers, except she obviously speaks and manipulates in very intelligent ways. That level of evil, and she never misses a beat, she's cool as ice, she always wins, and the way she kills...man, its disturbing as all hell. Just vile, cruel, utterly violating, completely crossing the line (as far as killing goes lol) and without mercy.

Eventually after book 2, the next book she’s in will have her meet the other psychos from my other books in a story that naturally brings them all together (this would be the plan at least). Some will align, some will be against each other, some will betray, and maybe one of them is manipulating all the rest...or maybe that person is the only one being manipulated by all the others. Btw if I don’t decide to go with this option with my story, I still wanna write a shared universe about psychopaths. It just won’t have her in it if I decide to use her elsewhere.

The third option is the exact same story as option 2, except there’s a misdirect with the reader being led to believe that HE’S the crazy/toxic one as the book goes on. Her signs and red flags and toxicity will still be there, but the book will be from the perspective of his crazy mind (instead of the healthy well adjusted mind from option 2), so the reader will already know that he’s not all there in the head, and they will be led to believe that the book is pushing them towards a psychotic break for him. Even the book will start out with him doing something illegal like robbery or assault or having disturbing thoughts about something. So when he gets killed by her at the end it’s still shocking, but in a different way. Like you knew she was toxic, but you expected HIM to be a psychopath. But the end result is still the same as option 2, this one just feeds a character misdirect at the reader instead of a story/genre misdirect.

A final, fourth option would be to just make it a heartbreaking story where two people meet, become super close in an amazing friendship, then eventually they get together, start to fall in love and their ugly sides come out and the entire relationship becomes so toxic. Everything that was special, innocent and incredible became so empty and tainted, a mere shell of its former self. They try so many times to save their connection and bond, they cry together over what they once were and how they’re losing that, but they’re too deep in, and it just gets worse and worse. Neither person would be painted as the bad one here, just two people that are emotionally immature and toxic. At the end they hate each other and go their separate ways, the best memories barely even surfacing anymore. What was once incredible and blissful has been violated and torn apart. They both cried so much over losing each other, they never wanted to be apart, now they just feel empty and turned off. The theme for this one would be that in real life people change, or they weren’t who you thought they were, and things happen that ruins something great. All good things must come to an end, and that’s a hard reality to face for a lot of people. But it’s a hard truth of life. This one is pretty close to how it actually happened for me, I’m just gonna remove the really toxic stuff like the more...psychopath moments. The actual her in real life would be completely non sympathetic, so I can’t write her exactly how she was and still make the reader care about her the entire time. This would be a much more straightforward, sad story to pull at the heart rather than anything psychological thriller/shocking.

So yeah, which version would you prefer to read, from a reader’s point of view? Btw I don’t hate the real life girl that I’m talking about at all lol. She’s not a killer or even this crazy. She’s just a toxic narcissistic person who doesn’t self reflect or have much empathy. But the way she was at times was nightmare fuel, some of the looks she would give me would unsettle me so much that it brought my mind to this kind of place. And hey...she gave me so many awesome story ideas.

 

It sounds like you've already got a lot of different ideas swimming around in your head. There's no reason why you can't try your hand at writing all of them, and see which one feels more natural to you. Stories change and develop so much as you put pen to paper (or....finger to keyboard?), so any one of these plotlines you've summarized will probably take on a life of it's own as you're writing it down.

Since this is a subject that's very personal to you, and it sounds like the wounds are still fresh, I'd recommend just diving in. Whether that be writing a fictionalized version of your experience, or a sort of personal essay or journal, writing it down could be very therapeutic for you. Getting all the words out will help you look at the situation a little more objectively, and hopefully help with processing this event you've gone through. It'll also help as a rough draft for whatever fiction you intend to make out of the experience, because it'll give you a healthy distance to look at it from a storyteller's point of view.

This sounds like one of those stories one needs to tell, for a very personal reason. And because of that, I'd suggest not worrying about potential readers right away. There are lots of people who will be able to empathize with a story about a toxic relationship, so don't worry about the whole concept being uninteresting or unreadable. Right now, what matters is saying everything you want to say.

 

There's another option which might be the most interesting of all. Write the story of your relationship from HER point of view! (She can be an 'unreliable narrator.') She probably feels very justified in behaving the way she does. (My mother was a narcissist, and she thought everybody else was always wrong, etc.) See if you can get into her perspective. What is it like, inside the head of a narcissist? How would she see somebody like you?

A narcissist often lives in a rosy world, where they believe what they want to believe, assume their wishes will be granted, that people will love them without question, and when things don't measure up...well, it's somebody else's fault. They are always being 'let down' by others. And nothing really important ever happens to anybody else.

Just another way of looking at writing the story. I'm a big fan of turning real life on its head. That way it's less easy to get bogged down in re-living thinly-disguised grievances, and more interesting to play 'what if.'

 

The problem I have with your approach is that while it’s an interesting perspective, I have no idea what was going on in her head the whole time. That’s what makes the story so interesting imo. Trust me, she’s a special case, even for a narcissist. Pretty sure she could have been a sociopath as well, or borderline personality. She would have emotional breakdowns, but I don’t know if they were real emotions from a crazy person, or if they were all calculated. That’s the thing with her, I never knew her motive or intentions for anything. The time she said “I love you...I mean I love that you're doing this for me”. Was that intentional just to mess with my head? Or an actual mistake? What about the time she cried to me and said “I don’t wanna hurt you, please don’t let me hurt you, I never wanna hurt you. I know I have and I don’t want to ever hurt you, please”. Was that real, or fake? What about when she told me that she thinks her family are sociopaths and she doesn’t wanna be like them, but she’s afraid she is (and cried)? What about the time she told me randomly “I can’t see any other girls liking you”? Then when I asked her why she would say something like that to me, she said “I’m not being mean, just being honest”. Was that just to mess with my head? What about when she told me she wanted kids and a family with me? Painted a beautiful perfect picture of it all. Was that part of her game? Or was that how she really felt? When she told me I was fragile like a newborn baby and she could crush my heart if she wanted to, was that a threat, a warning, or simply an observation, because honestly she was right? (and she would say it in such an innocent playful way, that’s what made it so confusing). When she would threaten to cut me out of her life, was that to make me submit to her, or did she really want to move on like she said she did so many times? Like...I have absolutely no idea if it was all a game to her, or if she was actually genuine in our relationship, maybe just misunderstood or emotionally immature. She’s a Scorpio and they’re supposed to be the most misunderstood sign, often accused of being narcissistic or selfish, and she’s also an INTJ, but...I feel like the way she was was simply too much. Like...it couldn’t have come from a good place...could it have?

 

Easy. One and two(/three/four). These are wholly different stories, and they both have great potential. Do you have ideas about what's going on in the stories beyond the relationships? All you're missing from either is the characters, setting and plot line. That sounds like a lot, but all I mean is that you already have a relationship and the course of events lined up. As soon as you figure out a few of the basics (if you haven't already,) you're golden.

I'll give you a few examples of what I'm talking about: "A genius, murderous psychopath is ironically placed in the position of helping profile and track down another psychopath. The woman assigned to interview him is progressively drawn into his diseased thought process. In exchange for the guidance he provides, he manipulates her emotions and plays with her senses of self and safety like her brain is a Rubik's Cube." Great bones, but we need both of their histories plus the Wild Bill story so that Hannibal and Clarice don't exist in a bubble.

Another: "A burned out yuppie makes a new friend who opens his mind and frees him from the 'shackles' of his conformist, consumer lifestyle. Along the way, they both fall for the same woman, even though the yuppie sort of hates her. The new friend eventually becomes too reckless and almost gets them both killed before we find out he's actually a figment of the yuppie's imagination." Again, without the insomnia, the support groups, Fight Club and Project Mayhem, it's just an interesting psychological profile of one Tyler Durden.

It doesn't need to be so intense as my last two examples either. A much more tame and "realistic" example: "After a breakup from a toxic relationship, a twenty-something goes through a quarter-life crisis and tracks down all his old flames in the hopes of learning more about who was at fault and what he might be doing wrong. After a lot of self-torture, he ends up back in a slightly less toxic iteration of the same relationship that ended just before the story began." Throw in an obsession with "top five" lists, a record shop full of kooky characters and a failed DJ career, and you've got High Fidelity. Without those elements, you have a third of a book. It's probably the most important third, but it doesn't work on its own.

My point is, once you pick out who these people are and what's happening around them, the first two story lines you presented are far from mutually exclusive. There's absolutely no reason not to write them both. I'd probably start with example one, if only because a collection of novels with planned crossovers is a massive undertaking. Unless you already have a novel or two under your belt, you should definitely start with something more or less self-contained.

As to the differences between two, three and four, start with number two and keep your options open. See where the story takes you. You don't have to know the ending to get there. Personally, I'm more of an architect than a discovery writer, so this is not actually the advice I would follow myself. I work better when things are plotted out before I begin, but I still try to go with the flow within the process. After years of failing at completing vague plots built from great ideas, I'm now doing much better with a blueprint. If you're one of those writers who works better without a net though, keep all three possibilities running in the background until the plot unfolds organically.

 

It takes two to tango and there are three sides to every story "yours, hers and the truth". Cliched I know, but this is how it is.

As a reader I'd be interested to know the dynamics of this relationship. I wouldn't be interested to cast blame, but to see how the relationship evolved. You are saying the girl is crazy, okay, but what about the guy? He based his entire happiness on her, why? Is he insecure? What "crazy" in him led him towards the "crazy" in her? As a reader I would be interested to see how these two broken individuals found each other and then attempted to build something out their broken lives and then how it all fell apart. I think there would be a lot of lessons to learn from this and I'd be interested to see what kind of growth arc the MC went on as a result.

 

No, of course you'll never know. But that's the thing. Unless you're writing a memoir instead of fiction, you can attempt to imagine. And, trust me, this approach can really work, in terms of clearing your own head. You don't have to make her into a protagonist whom people will like. But just make an attempt to see it from her point of view.

She sounds as if 'inside her head' might be a really interesting place to be, from a writer's perspective. If you can put yourself in her shoes (as a fictional character) you can come up with the answers to her questions. "I can't see other girls liking you," is an interesting one. Okay, so why? And why does 'she' claim to like you when nobody else will? How is she seeing you when she says that? Is she trying to mess with your head? Or is she truly convinced that she's the only one who a) sees your worth, or b) is willing to put up with your terrible faults? So she sees herself as some sort of saint or martyr?

As a writer of fiction, you can use her POV to answer all of your questions about the relationship.

The thing is, you can make her into any kind of person you want. YOU are in total control of what you write. So answer those questions that puzzle you. Don't just re-create the experience by changing names and some circumstances, because, at the end of it, you will still end up in the same place you are now. Sad, angry, but none the wiser.

Once you cross the line from being the victim in what was, indeed, a horrible situation and become the writer who controls what the character is actually like, I can guarantee (from personal experience) you will emerge as a much more enlightened and more settled person. And it's a win-win, in that you'll end up with a MUCH more interesting story for others to read.

Bad life experiences can be story gold, if you're really willing to explore what caused them and how they got dealt with.