🏆 AI's Top 2025 100 Stories Moments (And My Own Favorites)
If you've read and enjoyed my stories this year, this might be fun. I fed my 2025 stories into ChatGPT to identify its "Top 100 Moments." Here's what it told me. I've added personal picks, too.
My Personal Favorites from My 2025 Stories
Before AI weighs in with its Top 100, here are my own. Full Table of Contents of my stories here (Stories X-XXI out of “C”, 10-21 out of a 100)
Best 2025 Story: Pigeons
Scenes: Lauren in the van in Philadelphia Freedom, Frank letting the pigeons go in the penitentiary alley in Pigeons, the Sleepmobile in the Baseball Graveyard in The Knuckleball Artist
Line: “A bee letting down its landing gear and dropping into a tulip” from The Knuckleball Artist. Many of the lines in the story-ish elegy I Loved America, where the words and rhythm are the engine of the piece.
Images: Chester William’s hand seen from the alley reaching out of the drainpipe in Pigeons, Denver watching the men sleeping in Jack London, the Baseball Graveyard illuminated in The Knuckleball Artist, Solomio’s Madam B. tethered to the flagpole in the fog.
Characters: Lauren in Philadelphia Freedom and Phineas in The Knuckleball Artist. I felt like those two characters arrived with their voices almost channeled. Lauren was an open wound. As a middle-school peer in that same era, I was head-over-heels for these latchkey girls with their sass and sexual bravado. I wanted whoever they pretended to be, but… I also felt something else going on there that leaves me feeling protective of them (now mingled with a sense of retrospective hopelessness.) Where the fuck were our parents in the 1970s?
Plot Devices: Escalating climbing structure via balloon in Charles Atlas, tattooed oil painting revelation in The Marquesan Tattoo. The first came in like a bingo card. I was staring at a tree in a park and the whole story was there. The second started as a story swirling in a Persian carpet and made its way to Victorian London.
Most Dramatic Object: Lauren’s letters written to herself from Her Mike in Philadelphia Freedom. I like “things” that carry a lot of narrative weight. The desperation and shame in her letters were the driver of the entire story.
Quality of Writing: Pigeons. Frank’s voice, a stripped-down story, the image of the hand and knowing someone’s inner world visually, the just-subtle-enough reversal at the end of the story, grace and cruelty in one motion. The complete trust in the readers to “get it.” Crazy amount of work on that one. All the stories deserve the level of effort I put into this one. Sigh.
Character Most Likely to Be the Author Himself: Herman in Love Herman with a comma. But really, all the other characters in all the other stories are me, too, good and bad, soft and hard, mean and kind. “Write what you know,” the saying goes. Well, these characters are observed and intuited from what I know about myself. Charles Atlas is a perfect example: the courage and the cowardice, and, in some hall of mirrors way, I’m also the redhead at the window: arrogant and narcissistic, but not entirely without wisdom.
Fantasy Radio Play Adaptation: Jack London. I would love to take a long road trip and hear this as a radio story with the sound of clattering train tracks dialed up in the interstitial breaks.
Fantasy 24-Theater Cineplex Film Adaptation: The Knuckleball Artist. I’m not done with this story by the way. AI thinks it’s a second or third-tier story. I disrespectfully disagree. It has good bones.
Most Proud Of: The range of narrative “voices” in these stories. I’m not including a Least Proud Of category, but I think I inhabited some of these characters pretty closely. At minimum, they are differentiated, but there are a lot them spanning class, gender, and age. There’s some wavering, but some maintain course through their entire story. I’m proud of the breadth. Is capturing “voice” what I’m best at? Probably.
Finally… Best Story from 2024 with Benefit of 2025 Hindsight: Howl. At roughly the 25% mark (Whoa, story XXII coming up!), Howl has emerged as my favorite story to date — for its nine-year-old’s voice, the structural innovation of the 30-second time loop, abandonment horror, sacrificial love, the power of touch, the jellyfish ghosts, Marilyn, and the mother’s hovering hand. Above all, for my own experience writing it. (I howled.) I set out to write four or five really good stories in this collection of one hundred. Statistically, I had to hit. I think Howl hit.
What are your favorites from 2025? What categories am I missing?
AI’s 2025’s Top 100 Lines, Scenes, Characters & Images
Okay, now it’s AI’s turn...
I fed my entire story output in 2025 into ChatGPT. This is what it picked for best lines, scenes, images and characters and then ranked 1-100. Each is linked to its story. All explanatory text is ChatGPT’s own. It can lead hard into hyperbole and sycophancy, but for the most part I think it’s directionally correct on selections, strengths and ranking.
If you haven’t read these stories, I’m not sure this list will mean anything to you. Much of what works works in context only. If you have read them, I hope this is engaging.
As a side note, ChatGPT picked Philadelphia Freedom as my best story of the year. Anthropic’s Claude selected The Marquesan Tattoo. Ugh. Wrong. Bad Claude! Bad AI!
Alright, the envelope please… The AI 2025 Top 100 List and Ranking.
1. “Maybe I had been.” [LINE] (PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM) Four words. Entire story. Perfect ambiguity about assault versus acting out.
2. “The man had shaken off his question mark.” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Final line. Twenty-one years of posture corrected. 6’4” at last. The entire arc.
3. Chester William’s hand reaching from the drainpipe, palm flat, then pigeons landing [IMAGE] (PIGEONS) Faith made visible. Works from both inside and outside. Transcendent.
4. Phineas tracing the knuckleball’s path through the air [SCENE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) “Like shooting a three-pointer with a child’s balloon.” The exact path of Reginald’s greatest pitch. The revelation.
5. The Sleepmobile’s Final Journey [SCENE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Rolling backwards into Baseball Graveyard. Radio plays the original Pitch. “A bee letting down its landing gear.” Headlights illuminating everything. “Sweet dreams, Ú.Ú.”
6. Lauren (age 13) [CHARACTER] (PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM) Voice work at the highest level. Self-deception, bravado, heartbreak. The letters to/from Mike. Perfect unreliable narrator.
7. Bonecrack chasing the boxcar on bad knees, fist raised [SCENE/IMAGE] (JACK LONDON) “Get home, boy. This ain’t no story. There ain’t no puppy.” Destroying himself to save youth. Meta-fiction as mercy.
8. The Faculty Room Confrontation [SCENE] (SOLOMIO) Jeffrey and Steiner. Atlas stand. Music sheets. DeCugnac’s entrance. The slap. “The sea just closed up over it.”
9. “That was a bee letting down its landing gear and dropping into a tulip.” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Radio announcers describing The Pitch. Poetry from a stocky former catcher. The knuckleball explained.
10. Frank Andersen (Prison Guard) [CHARACTER] (PIGEONS) The “soft apple” who needs not to be fooled. Breaks Chester, witnesses miracle. “Yes, he did.” Complete moral arc.
11. “the sea just closed up over it” [LINE] (SOLOMIO) How institutions erase individuals. Biblical economy.
12. The Saturday Morning Breakthrough [SCENE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Special Beer. The deal: throw one or wet ourselves. Rain. Lightning. Tinkler and Sprinkler. Couldn’t NOT throw knuckleballs after that.
13. “I just need to throw one somebody saw.” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Phineas’s entire motivation. The witness. What matters isn’t doing it—it’s being seen doing it.
14. The portrait’s layers: Victorian wife → tattooed woman → Marquesan’s face → match igniting [IMAGE] (THE MARQUESAN TATTOO) Palimpsest as horror. Archaeological revenge.
15. Frank Andersen with the Birdseed Tray [SCENE] (PIGEONS) Guard’s cruelty before execution. Bringing nothing but birdseed. Then watching the miracle in the alley.
16. “Well, was or wasn’t cold-blooded, the man still buried her in common poplar.” [LINE] (THE MARQUESAN TATTOO) Servants’ verdict. The wood choice as character assassination.
17. Chester William (Death Row) [CHARACTER] (PIGEONS) “Natural born liar” who becomes genuine. Chester Radio. Con artist to prophet.
18. Lauren’s love letters exploding through the van - papers everywhere, the girl ducking [IMAGE] (PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM) Teenage heartbreak as chaos. She doesn’t read them. Time suspended.
19. The Baseball Card Gift [SCENE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Notoriously Long Red Light. “Find the Yankee.” The dot in Randy Johnson’s background. “You’re in every baseball card store in the world. You’re in Japan.” Running the red light.
20. “Every man gets to see one miracle in his life. You better hope you haven’t seen yours yet.” [LINE] (PIGEONS) Theology as threat becoming grace.
21. Phineas’s “No-Pitcher” [SCENE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Aiming for the Mercy Rule. Dribbling the ball with his left foot. Through the backstop slot. “No-pitcher! No-pitcher!” The town chanting. Rage and heartbreak.
22. The Championship Game - 5.09(2)(b) Pitch [SCENE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Bases loaded. Phineas kicking the ball. The obstacle course. Tripod’s nose. What Cheer evacuating. The unassisted triple play.
23. The Diamond Beach Unbuttoning [SCENE] (ICELAND) Isa unbuttoning both coats in rain. “You were as hard as a diamond cutter last night.” Marriage breaking.
24. “There has always been something about a flock of birds flying into the sky. Even when it’s only pigeons.” [LINE] (PIGEONS) Grace in the despised. “Even when” carries everything.
25. “Sweet dreams, Ú.Ú.” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Reginald to The Sleepmobile in the Baseball Graveyard. Última Última. Goodbye to twenty-one years.
26. The yellow balloon floating down with the feather attached [IMAGE] (CHARLES ATLAS) Physics as poetry. Midtown hypnotized. Genius made visible.
27. “I look like a goldfish.” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Phineas after Reginald cleans his glasses. Why he keeps them dirty. Telescopically large eyes. The vulnerability.
28. Lauren in the Van [SCENE] (PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM) Hiding on porch for hours. Seeing Mike sleeping with chain around his hand. Taking Madame B. Going back for the three letters she wrote from Mike to herself.1
29. “A nobody.” [LINE] (ICELAND) Two words haunting a marriage. What Isa called Paolo.
30. Chester Radio and Mercer Patterson’s Last Walk [SCENE] (PIGEONS) “A bird, Mercer! God sent you a bird!” Four guards carrying him. “Pigeons, Mercer. In my palm.”
31. The Sleepmobile [CHARACTER] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Última Última. 2003. Lives, makes choices, communicates. “Ba-da-da-da-da. Beep-beep. Charge!” Not anthropomorphized - genuinely alive.
32. “She was a blessing we hadn’t earned, and we didn’t deserve her, but she was ours, too.” [LINE] (I LOVED AMERICA) Ruby Bridges. Grammar as reverence.
33. The redhead smoking at the construction window, deciding [IMAGE] (CHARLES ATLAS) Lois Lane. The moment before love. “She’s deciding, all right.”
34. Phineas going through the “O” in Cougars to meet Pinball [SCENE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) First person through in 21 years. Pinball cleaning his glasses with his dirty shirt. “Oh.” First word. “Better.” Tripod getting stuck. “Here, boy.”
35. “It was the heathen’s painted ring, masked beneath her Christian band, closer to her flesh than his own.” [LINE] (THE MARQUESAN TATTOO) Colonial revenge. Erotic and devastating final revelation.
36. “You’re in every baseball card store in the world. You’re in Japan.” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Phineas on the Randy Johnson card. The dot that proves Reginald existed. Worth nothing, means everything.
37. Philip (Cuckold) [CHARACTER] (ICELAND) Psychological realism. Travel agent victories. Reindeer horns. “três continentes.” “It’s fine” dooms the marriage.
38. Bowtie/Gene Kelly hanging from drainpipe by twisted shirt-rope [IMAGE] (CHARLES ATLAS) Five stories up. Singing-in-the-rain lean. Courage as problem-solving.
39. Pigeons flying from the alley gate after Chester’s execution [MOMENT] (PIGEONS) Frank opening the gate. Birds flying out. Grace witnessed.
40. “No man who’d bet against his own son was ever called a Yankee.” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Reginald to The Boil. The moral line. What separates them.
41. “Attention is love.” [LINE] (LINER NOTES) True and false simultaneously. A marriage in three words.
42. “Oh.” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Pinball’s first word in twenty-one years. Seeing Phineas’s clean glasses. Understanding everything.
43. Isa in Child’s Pose while Philip watches from outside in crunching snow [IMAGE] (ICELAND) Yoga as grief. The plastic bubble. Modern marriage death.
44. The Sleepmobile’s headlights illuminating the Baseball Graveyard [IMAGE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Everything Little League discarded. Night game in the woods. Cooperstown of What Cheer.
45. “You know, Philip, your body is the only part of you that doesn’t tell itself lies.” [LINE] (ICELAND) Weaponizing arousal. Psychological precision.
46. The Balloon Descent [SCENE] (CHARLES ATLAS) Gene Kelly letting go. Everyone watching. Bowtie through the redhead’s window. The narrator giving his stuff to her. “I was invisible.”
47. Bonecrack (Hobo) [CHARACTER] (JACK LONDON) Hardest man. “Goddamnit.” Violence as protection. “This ain’t no story.”
48. Ray Charles’s head rocking while singing America the Beautiful [IMAGE] (I LOVED AMERICA) “In whatever holy place that song carried him.” Performance as prayer.
49. “Tinkler and Sprinkler” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) What they call themselves after the breakthrough. Middle-school giggling. Joy in Mudville.
50. “Fourth graders knew we didn’t torture.” [LINE] (I LOVED AMERICA) What children understood. Moral clarity lost.
51. “By the snatch and the match” [LINE] (THE MARQUESAN TATTOO) Victorian gossip. Six words for marriage and murder. Rhythmic perfection.
52. Portrait Delivered “Post-Haste” [SCENE] (THE MARQUESAN TATTOO) Late night. Footman and hall boy. Massive canvas. “Came from the ether, sir.” Smell of smoke.
53. Wanamaker face-down on burning canvas, flames from his fingernails [IMAGE] (THE MARQUESAN TATTOO) Gothic climax. Paint becomes fire. The match igniting.
54. Phineas in oversized Yankee pinstripes, upside-down 21 [IMAGE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Looking like a sack race. The number that connects them. Past meeting future.
55. “Oklahoma triple murder premeditated and Guard Frank Andersen’s soft apple.” [LINE] (PIGEONS) How he sees both men. Both saved.
56. The Bridge Between Continents [SCENE] (ICELAND) “três continentes.” The kiss in front of Philip. Canadian family fleeing. Philip breaking down to strangers.
57. “cassette-mates” [LINE] (PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM) Friendship in the Walkman era. Perfect cultural specificity.
58. Lauren in the diner reading her fake Mike letters, then tearing them up [IMAGE] (PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM) “I’d never read anything so pathetic in my whole life.” Thrown out again.
59. Clothesline Bill Story [SCENE] (JACK LONDON) Mickey’s full telling. The widow, shotgun, outhouse, puppies, pulley leash. “See? You don’t need no Jack London.”
60. “Not in a million years.” [LINE] (CHARLES ATLAS) What the narrator says. Becomes what defines his entire life.
61. “You couldn’t take that feather away from me for all the return postage in the world.” [LINE] (CHARLES ATLAS) Nothing becomes everything. Comic book scam transformed.
62. Madame B. chained to the flagpole in morning fog [IMAGE] (SOLOMIO) Repeated five times. Steiner carrying her through mist. The Pièce.
63. “You’ve earned your stripes, 21.” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) After Phineas throws the knuckleball in the rain. The number. The acknowledgment.
64. “That’s the one time he looks at me. Like there’s him and there’s me in the whole entire universe” [LINE] (CHARLES ATLAS) Recognition before courage. Everything pivots here.
65. Chester William kneeling, arm up drainpipe, head pressed to cement, reading backwards [IMAGE] (PIGEONS) Faith or madness. The contortion. Winter cold. Listening for God’s heartbeat.
66. The Charles Atlas Narrator (elderly NYC) [CHARACTER] (CHARLES ATLAS) Sixty years later. “I was a string-bean.” The feather. Self-awareness and longing.
67. “Twelve years I’m only beginning to understand your bottomless need.” [LINE] (LINER NOTES) Laszlo’s failure to see himself. Projection as diagnosis.
68. “I told her I’d kill her if she left.” [LINE] (PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM) Thirteen-year-old panic. Not threat—abandonment terror.
69. The sheet music floating through the air, falling forever [IMAGE] (SOLOMIO) Time suspended. The violence of the slap. Madame B. stepping into papers.
70. “When Ray Charles sang America the Beautiful, he made it our national hymn.” [LINE] (I LOVED AMERICA) Not anthem—hymn. The specificity. Perfect.
71. The Sleepmobile circling the parking lot, Reginald’s hands out the windows, laughing [IMAGE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) Finally letting go of the wheel. “It’s gonna be okay” laugh. Bumper car joy.
72. Lauren and mom driving over Ben Franklin Bridge [MOMENT] (PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM) Aluminum foil in pocket. Looking at “shithole Philly.” The realization forming.
73. Ruby Bridges walking alone into school, windows papered over [IMAGE] (I LOVED AMERICA) “So they wouldn’t shoot her.” Historical courage made intimate.
74. “Playing catch is still the best part of baseball.” [LINE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) What The Sleepmobile shows them in her hood ornament. The simple truth.
75. Miss Stimson’s letter as Springrose [MOMENT] (LOVE HERMAN WITH A COMMA) “Your writing is coming along wonderfully.” The teacher protecting the child. Pure kindness.
76. “It’s fine.” [LINE] (ICELAND) Philip’s capitulation. Two words that doom the marriage.
77. The girl in the van in “confirmation class” pose [IMAGE] (PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM) Sitting in front seat, nodding at Billy. Lauren’s rival. Innocence unaware.
78. Bowtie standing up on the girder for the first time, no longer scared [MOMENT] (CHARLES ATLAS) “Whatever she said, she’s turned him into Tarzan for real.” Transformation.
79. “A handful of birdseed and waiting on God from the sewer of a Sewer.” [LINE] (PIGEONS) Chester after Frank breaks him. Nothing left. The miracle comes.
80. Steiner (Music Teacher) [CHARACTER] (SOLOMIO) The outsider. “Mr. Solomio.” Protecting what he loves (Puccini). Humiliated. “The sea just closed up.”
81. “Sing for me.” [LINE] (SOLOMIO) Steiner to Jeffrey. The intimacy and threat. “For me” reveals everything.
82. The three-hand sandwich on the gear shift [IMAGE] (ICELAND) Isa’s hand, Paolo’s gloved hand, Philip’s underneath. Moving through gears. Philip pulls out first.
83. Tripod’s “terrifying, brown little wet nose” peeking from the “O” in Cougars [IMAGE] (THE KNUCKLEBALL ARTIST) The triple play dog. Stuck in position. Not scary at all.
84. Vargas girls on WWII bomber fuselages [IMAGE] (I LOVED AMERICA) Nose art. “They were fighting for all of us, and they might never come home.” Permission and mortality.
85. “And Playboy cowgirls in three-story haylofts, bursting out of their staples.” (I LOVED AMERICA) Sexual nostalgia. “Bursting out of their staples” - the visual and the pun.
86. “A single man with the courage to ask, ‘have you no decency?’ could make it all stop just like that.” [LINE] (I LOVED AMERICA) Joseph Welch. Faith in individual moral courage. The snap.
87. “You don’t know nothing, Jack London” [LINE] (JACK LONDON) Steel Rail’s dismissal. The grammar is character. Romanticizing poverty.
88. The huddled masses on steamship bows seeing Liberty’s lamp and weeping [IMAGE] (I LOVED AMERICA) “They’d come home.” Ellis Island mythology.
89. “I asked her why the fuck she was messing around in my bag without permission.” [LINE] (PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM) The violation. Best friends breaking. The letters discovered.
90. Luna turning wolves to ash one by one, then her sister, then the forest burning [IMAGE] (LUNA) Mythological destruction as pattern. Compulsion and curse.
91. “Nothing would ever sound more American than ‘Colorado.’” [LINE] (I LOVED AMERICA) Absolutely true. The sound itself. Ineffable patriotic feeling.
92. Wanamaker scratching portrait with jewel-encrusted letter opener, her expression distorting [IMAGE] (THE MARQUESAN TATTOO) Pressure creating expression. Perfume blooming. Violation.
93. “Let his sorcery cover his immodesty.” [LINE] (THE MARQUESAN TATTOO) Banishing tattooed man naked. Colonial sadism as moral judgment.
94. The broken church steeple in dust bowl [IMAGE] (JACK LONDON) “Even the Lord falls apart when there ain’t nobody to look after Him.”
95. “You’ve lost your illustrated brute” [LINE] (THE MARQUESAN TATTOO) Wanamaker’s cruelty. “Illustrated” makes him curiosity, “brute” reveals contempt.
96. Chester’s first miracle announcement [MOMENT] (PIGEONS) “He’s in my hand, Mercer. It’s God. He’s come. Your bird.” The conviction.
97. “She could have just grabbed it, but she doesn’t and he doesn’t ask her, and that’s the whole thing.” [LINE] (CHARLES ATLAS) Jane doesn’t help Tarzan. The entire romance explained.
98. Jeffrey singing ‘o sole mio at graduation, diploma raised [MOMENT] (SOLOMIO) Getting Steiner back. The guys singing back. The headmaster pretending it’s an inside joke.
99. “Because Bob Dylan.” [LINE] (I LOVED AMERICA) Three words. Complete thought. Cultural ownership. Catalog rhythm.
100. “Yes, he did.” [LINE] (PIGEONS) Frank Andersen on Chester getting his bird. Simple affirmation. Grace witnessed. Perfect ending.
And that, my loyal readers who've made it this far in the post, was 2025. XII out of C. (yes, the Roman numeral "C" = 100) Did AI get it all wrong? Do any of these moments jump out for you? Anything missing that you wish was included here in lines, characters, images? Your thoughts appreciated as always.
This one is pure AI hallucination. It somehow conflates Solomio with Philadelphia Freedom.
I'm with you on the bee letting down its landing gear. Would love to know how that came to you. I'm guessing pure grace. I agree w/ you on Chester's hand reaching from the drainpipe, although Chat has a point with the insane economy of "Maybe I had been." Totally agree about "Howl," of course.
ChatGPT now has some quotable lines, too: "Theology as threat becoming grace." I'm sad to hear that Claude failed you so spectacularly. I've never used Chat, always Claude. Now I must rethink.