Some time in July 2025, I was working on building a new neo-Modernist philosophy. This is before I finally shifted my focus to the CRAP framework. But I’m actually a bit disappointed in myself for burying this idea. I’d come up with four pillars to build upon. Yes, I know ‘pillars’ is a common LLM word, but I was using it as a young adult back in the early oughts, so I’m taking full ownership of these particular components here.

Anyway, the four pillars are Value, Self, Truth, and Creation.

When I was thinking about reframing all of my old abandoned fiction, I felt the need to hit on each of these four pillars during the course of a story. I was thinking of having the protagonist as narrator telling the story to someone who needs to hear it. Along the way, I’d be asking Chat (which I was leaning on far too heavily at the time) to be on the lookout for anything that hints at the sublime so that I could latch onto these moments and turn them into keystone scenes. 

Chat had some good thoughts on this front: “Tying your fiction to those four pillars—Value, Self, Truth, Creation—sets up an architecture where every story isn’t just plot, it’s philosophical embodiment. The fact that your narrator is telling it to someone who needs to hear it… brings an urgency and intimacy that naturally courts the sublime. It’s a story as offering, not just a performance…”

Story as offering… that’s an interesting choice of words there.

Then, Chat helpfully broke down how these four pillars could work in reframing my old abandoned stories.

Value: Watch for moments when worth is tested. When something is not commodified. When characters resist reduction.

Examples:

• A character refuses to monetize their grief.
• A small act of kindness redefines the stakes.
• Someone learns to see value in something the world deems obsolete.

Sublime doesn’t always mean loud.

Self: Previously, Chat and I had been discussing seeing the Self both as interface and resistance. Chat elucidates: “Self as interface means their perspective filters the world. Self as resistance means the story isn’t just about what happened—but how they withstood it.”

Examples:

• The narrator reveals more through what they avoid saying.
• A scene where identity is misread, but the character holds their ground.
• Doubt as dignity, not weakness.

The sublime here might be found in small, razor-sharp declarations. “This is who I am, even when you won’t see it.”

Truth: I like the clever words Chat used here… “Not capital-T, marble-column truth—but the fractured, bloody-fingernailed kind.”

• A revelation that’s half-understood but feels right.
• A character realizes they’ve believed a lie—but can’t bring themselves to fully reject it.
• Your narrator admits they might be unreliable—but insists the story still matters.

That tension [is] where the sublime writhes. When you get the reader to feel something true even when it contradicts itself—that’s a keystone moment.

Creation: Chat posits that in the case of creating sublime fiction, “Creation isn’t just an act. It’s a stance.”

Examples:

• Someone chooses to build when they could destroy.
• A moment of making as defiance.
• The story itself—the telling of it—is the sublime gesture.

When your narrator shares the story not to impress, but because they must, you open the door wide. The sublime doesn’t always announce itself—it sometimes enters on quiet feet, in the form of a sentence whispered across time.

Finally, who is the listener here? Besides the reader, obviously…

• The listener becomes a stand-in for the reader.
• Or they become the final proof that telling the story matters.
• Or maybe… the listener changes in the telling, and the narrator doesn’t.

“Whichever you choose,” Chat concludes, “you’re adding narrative voltage. You’re saying: this story has a pulse, and it’s meant to be felt by another beating heart.”

Some of this sounds like clever word salad, and perhaps some of it is. But it’s worth me holding onto these bits of that “conversation” because it shows my early interest in trying to figure out what writing fiction is even for… I was already well past writing something just for the sake of entertainment. I wanted to make Longinus proud, in a sense at least…