ChatGPT Writes a Story "In the Style of Adam Nathan"

A 3-part series. I fed my 2025 monthly stories into ChatGPT to identify the "Top 100 Moments," "Literary Twins," and "Create a Story in the Style of Adam Nathan." Here is its "Adam Nathan Story."

---

Part 1 of 3:

This has been the year of the backlash against AI. There has been enormous anxiety generated around its threat to human creative output, its overall utility, and its knock-on effects on the economy, children, cognition...

I’m taking three days to share AI’s take on my 2025 stories.

1. A Story in the “Style of Adam Nathan”

2. Literary Twins (Closest Matches for Each Story to Known Works)

3. The Top 100 Stories Moments of 2025

If you are not familiar with AI, you should know that it has a strong tendency towards sycophancy. Take its flattery with a grain of salt and then some.

Know that I do.

---

AI’s Story “In the Style of Adam Nathan”

ChatGPT’s understanding of the prompt and my 12 2025 stories:

“Based on the writing above [the stories], create an “Adam Nathan story.” 1500 words. Based on the stories I’ve read, I can identify Adam Nathan’s key stylistic and thematic elements:

Voice & Style:

Distinctive first-person narrators with authentic, specific voices
Often working-class or marginalized perspectives
Precise, economical prose
Strategic use of repetition
Understated emotion that builds to devastating moments
Strong sense of place and cultural specificity
Often elegiac or nostalgic tone
Excellent dialogue and dialect

Themes:

Masculinity and its failures/costs
Class consciousness
Institutional power and erasure of individuals
Moments of grace or transcendence in ordinary lives
Loss of innocence
The gap between romantic ideals and reality
Small acts of dignity or courage
Memory and regret
Attention as a form of love/respect

Structure:

Often builds to a single revelatory moment
Uses framing devices effectively
Story-within-story
Circular structure (ending echoing beginning)
Restraint - withholding key information
Perfect final lines

Settings:

Working-class America
Specific time periods (often 60s-80s)
Institutions (prisons, schools, etc.)
Places that reveal class/culture

Let me create something original that captures his style without copying any specific story. I’ll aim for:

A working-class narrator
A moment of recognition or grace
Specific cultural detail
Understated emotion
A perfect ending
Around 1500 words

I’ll set it in a different context from the existing stories to ensure originality - maybe something about service work, attention as love, small dignities, a moment of recognition between two people.

THE FIVE-FIFTEEN

In the Style of “Adam Nathan”

I was the usher for the five-fifteen showing at the Avalon Cinema from 1976 to 1989. Thirteen years of the same movie starting at the same time. Different movie every week, same time, same theater—Screen Two, the small one, 147 seats.

They called me Flashlight because that’s what I carried. My real name is David Reese, but nobody at the Avalon used real names. The projectionist was Splice. The concession girl was Butter. The manager was Suit, even though he wore the same burgundy blazer every single day for eleven years.

Suit told me the rule on my first day: “You stand in the back. You watch the movie. If someone talks, you walk down with your flashlight and you stand next to them. You don’t say anything. You just stand there. They’ll stop.”

“What if they don’t stop?”

“They always stop. Nobody wants to be the person Flashlight is standing next to.”

He was right. I stood next to a lot of people. They always stopped.

---

The five-fifteen was mostly regulars. Office workers who left early. Retired people. The unemployed. People killing time before dinner. You get to know them without ever speaking to them.

There was the woman who always sat in J-7, right side aisle, who brought her own tissues and cried at everything. She cried at Rocky. She cried at Star Wars. She cried at Smokey and the Bandit. Suit called her Fountain.

There was the man who sat in A-1, front row far left, who watched every movie with his arms crossed like he was daring it to entertain him. He never smiled once in thirteen years. Not at Airplane!, not at Caddyshack, not at Beverly Hills Cop. We called him Governor because he looked like he was vetoing every joke.

And there was the couple in M-12 and M-13, middle of the theater, perfect seats. They came every Thursday for nine years straight. We called them The Appointment.

---

The Appointment started coming in February 1978. I remember because it was Close Encounters, which was in its second run at the Avalon.

They were both maybe forty. He wore a tie. She wore a coat even inside the theater. They sat exactly in the middle, never touched during the movie, and left before the credits finished.

After a month, I asked Butter if she knew anything about them.

“They buy one medium popcorn, no butter, and split it,” she said. “They never buy drinks.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. They’re boring. He pays. She says thank you. They don’t talk.”

But they came every Thursday at five-fifteen for nine years. Same seats. Same routine.

I started to notice things. They never held hands. They never whispered. During Superman, when everyone in the theater gasped at the flying scenes, they sat perfectly still. During E.T., when Fountain was sobbing so loud I had to stand next to her, The Appointment didn’t react at all.

In year three, I noticed she started arriving first. She’d sit in M-13 and wait. He’d show up right at 5:14, exactly one minute before the previews. He’d sit in M-12. They’d nod at each other.

In year five, there was a Thursday she came alone. She sat in M-13. She kept looking at the empty seat next to her. When the movie started—it was Witness, I remember because of the barn-raising scene—she put her hand on the armrest between M-12 and M-13.

She came alone the next Thursday too. And the next one.

I thought that was the end of The Appointment. People stop coming. It happens. The Avalon was dying anyway. The multiplex out by the mall had eight screens. We had three.

But on the fourth Thursday, he came back. He sat in M-12. She was already in M-13. They didn’t acknowledge each other at all that week.

But the week after that, during Back to the Future, I saw her hand move toward his on the armrest. She didn’t touch him. She just moved her hand close enough that they were almost touching.

They kept coming. Every Thursday.

---

In 1987, Suit called a meeting. The Avalon was closing. We had until December. The multiplex had won.

“It’s been an honor,” Suit said, which was the most emotional thing I ever heard him say.

I thought about telling The Appointment. I wanted to warn them somehow. But ushers don’t talk to customers. That’s the rule.

Their last movie at the Avalon was Fatal Attraction, November 1987. The theater was maybe thirty people. Even Governor had stopped coming.

The Appointment sat in M-12 and M-13.

During the scene where Glenn Close won’t be ignored, I watched them instead of the screen. They were holding hands.

I’d seen thousands of people hold hands in that theater. Teenagers, mostly. First dates. Sometimes older couples. But I’d never seen The Appointment do it.

They were holding hands like people who’d just learned how.

After the movie, they stayed through the credits. They were always the first ones out, but this time they stayed. They were still holding hands.

When the lights came up, she turned to him and said something. I couldn’t hear it from the back of the theater. He nodded. She stood up. He stood up.

They walked up the aisle toward me. As they passed, she looked directly at me—the first time in nine years—and said, “Thank you.”

I said, “You’re welcome,” even though I didn’t know what I was being thanked for.

That was their last five-fifteen.

---

The Avalon closed on December 18th, 1987. I got a job at the public library. Different building, same basic work—making sure people were quiet.

Two years later, I was shelving books in the biography section when someone said my name.

“David Reese?”

It was him. The man from M-12. He was older, grayer. He wasn’t wearing a tie.

“I don’t know if you remember me,” he said.

“The five-fifteen,” I said. “M-12 and M-13. You came every Thursday.”

He smiled. It was strange seeing him smile. I’d watched him for nine years and never seen it.

“I wanted to tell you something,” he said. “I don’t know if you knew, but my wife—the woman I came with—that wasn’t my wife.”

I didn’t say anything.

“My actual wife died in 1977. Car accident. I couldn’t—I didn’t know how to keep living. A woman from my office, she’d lost her husband the same year. Different accident. We were both just—we were drowning.”

He picked up a biography of FDR from the cart, looked at it, put it back.

“She suggested we see a movie. Just to have somewhere to be that wasn’t home. We picked Thursday because that was the day my wife died. Thursday at five-fifteen.”

“You came for nine years,” I said.

“We did. We had a rule: we’d see the movie, we wouldn’t talk about our grief, we wouldn’t talk about our spouses. We’d just sit there. Together. Silent.”

“You were holding hands,” I said. “The last time. Fatal Attraction.”

“That was the first time. Nine years, and that was the first time.” He paused. “We got married last month.”

“Congratulations.”

“I just wanted you to know. You were there for all of it. You were the only one who saw the whole thing. All those Thursdays.”

I thought about what Suit told me on my first day. About being the one who stands in the back and watches.

“I didn’t see anything,” I said.

He understood what I meant. “Thank you for not seeing it, then.”

After he left, I kept shelving books. But I thought about M-12 and M-13. About nine years of five-fifteen showings. About two people learning how to hold hands again.

About being the person in the back with the flashlight, watching people in the dark, bearing witness to things that shouldn’t be said out loud.

The library closes at eight. Different hours than the Avalon, but the same job, really.

You stand in the back. You watch. And when someone needs you, you’re there.

Even if they never know you were watching in the first place.

---

Did AI get it all wrong? Do you like it? Hate it? Am I going to lose my subscriber base anytime soon? Should I stop while I'm ahead? (Am I ahead?) Continue till I'm dead? Your thoughts appreciated as always. 

Here are the real Adam Nathan stories for 2025: 

100 Stories – The Table of Contents