Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
(Here is the third set of details of how I set about creating absurd fiction using photo-based storytelling techniques, like this one: “The Velocity Cult of 1896: How a Bicycle, a Chicken, and Terrifying Mascots Nearly Broke the Space-Time Continuum.“)
The Pressure of Endings (And Why I’m Bad at Them)
Welcome to Essay 3, where I attempt to resolve a narrative that probably should never have started in the first place. We’ve spent two essays building an increasingly elaborate mythology around bicycles, land speed racing, and dimensional portals, and now I have to actually end this thing in a way that feels satisfying rather than “I got tired and just stopped writing.”
This is the hardest part of photo-based storytelling techniques: making your conclusion feel earned when your entire premise was “what if this random old photo represented something cosmically absurd?” You can’t just say “and then everything went back to normal” because normal was never an option. You committed to weirdness, and now you have to stick the landing.
Spoiler: I’m going to stick it the way a drunk gymnast sticks a landing, technically successful but concerning to watch.
The Chicken Solution (Because Of Course)
Remember Duchess II, the chicken I introduced way back in Essay 1? The one who’s the granddaughter of the prophecy chicken? Well, she’s about to save reality, which is a sentence I never thought I’d write but here we are.
The key to good photo-based storytelling techniques is making your setup pay off. If you introduced a psychic chicken lineage in act one, that chicken better save the day in act three. This is called “Chekhov’s Chicken.” If you show a chicken in act one, it must prevent dimensional collapse by act three. I think that’s how the saying goes.
Bill Rishel’s great-great nephew (also named Bill because this family has the imagination of a concrete block) arrives with Duchess II, who possesses the supernatural power of not giving a shit about anything. This cosmic indifference makes her immune to paradoxes, quantum uncertainty, and the fundamental weirdness of having people from 1939 appear in 1937.
Is this good science? No. Is it good writing craft? Debatable. Does it resolve the plot I backed myself into? Absolutely, and that’s all that matters.
The Temporal Anchor Concept (Nonsense with Purpose)
Here’s where I deploy photo-based storytelling techniques to explain the unexplainable: I invent the concept of a “reality anchor point.” Duchess II pecks at the ground near Jolly Pete’s temporally-displaced feet, and her complete indifference to the paradox creates a fixed location around which reality can reorganize itself.
Why does this work? Because I said so. That’s literally the only reason. I’m the author, I made up all of this, and if I say chickens can anchor reality through the power of not caring, then that’s what happens.
This is the ultimate freedom of photo-based storytelling techniques: you created this universe from photographs, which means you make the rules. Physics? Optional. Logic? A suggestion. Chickens with quantum immunity? Absolutely canon, shut up.
Making the Weird Pay Off (Callbacks and Consequences)
The dimensional refugees—Mister Building and Jolly Pete—get sent back to their own timeline, but not before they contaminate our reality with the concept of mascot culture. This is critical for photo-based storytelling techniques: your resolution should explain why the weird photos exist in your narrative while also connecting to something recognizable in the real world.
Those terrifying vintage mascot photos? In my story, they’re evidence of dimensional contamination. In reality, they’re just people making poor costume decisions. But by tying them to my absurd plot, I’ve given them narrative weight they wouldn’t otherwise have.
This is the magic trick: take something mundane (old promotional photos) and make your fiction recontextualize them as something significant (interdimensional breach evidence). Does this actually change what the photos are? No. Does it make looking at them more fun? Absolutely.
The Long Tail of Consequences (Your Nonsense Must Echo)
A weak ending would be: “The chicken fixed everything, the end.” A slightly better ending is: “The chicken fixed everything, but the consequences echo through history.” This is what separates adequate photo-based storytelling techniques from actually engaging ones.
I claim that within months of the 1937 incident, sports teams started using mascots. Within years, Disneyland opened. By 1977, Chuck E. Cheese appeared, and I position him as an actual interdimensional spy sent to gather intelligence on human children’s birthday parties.
Is any of this true? Obviously not. But it creates a throughline from my fictional event to real historical developments, making the absurdity feel somehow connected to our actual timeline. This is what I call “retrofitting nonsense onto reality”—taking your made-up story and finding ways it “explains” real things.
It’s intellectually dishonest but narratively satisfying, which is basically the motto of all fiction writing.
The Unresolved Resolution (Leaving Room for Mystery)
Here’s a secret about photo-based storytelling techniques: you don’t actually have to resolve everything. In fact, leaving some threads dangling makes your world feel bigger than the story you told.
Bill Rishel’s bicycle still exists as scattered atoms that occasionally rematerialize? Great, that’s weird and unresolved. The chickens maintain an ongoing vigil against mascot dimension incursions? Perfect, that suggests the story continues beyond what I wrote. Chuck E. Cheese is planning something sinister? Excellent, now readers will never look at children’s pizza restaurants the same way.
The key is making your unresolved elements feel intentionally unresolved rather than “I forgot to tie up that plot thread.” Confidence, people. Act like everything was planned, even when you were clearly making it up as you went.
The Meta Layer (Breaking the Fourth Wall of Absurdity)
Notice how I occasionally remind you that all of this is made up? “Did this happen? Absolutely not.” “Is this good science? No.” This is deliberate photo-based storytelling technique: acknowledging the absurdity actually makes it more enjoyable because you’re not trying to trick readers into believing impossible things.
You’re inviting them to collaborate in the lie. “We both know chickens don’t anchor reality, but isn’t it fun to pretend they do?” This creates a different kind of engagement, not suspension of disbelief but enthusiastic participation in shared nonsense.
When you’re building fiction from random vintage photos, this meta approach works because everyone knows you’re making shit up. The photos are real, but your interpretation is baffling. Acknowledging this doesn’t break the spell; it strengthens it by making readers feel like they’re in on the joke.
Thematic Resonance (Pretending This Meant Something)
Every good story needs a theme, even if you discover that theme accidentally while writing the conclusion. For this narrative, I retroactively decided the theme is: “Speed isn’t the goal. Not opening portals to dimensions with terrible mascots is the goal. Speed is just how we got into this mess.”
This is classic photo-based storytelling techniques; finding accidental meaning in your deliberate nonsense. I didn’t start with this theme. I started with “what if bicycle guy was trying to teleport?” But by the end, the theme emerged: humans’ obsession with going fast has unintended consequences (like Chuck E. Cheese).
Is this deep? No. Does it sound like I planned it? Kind of. Is that good enough? For my purposes, absolutely.
The Instructional Wrapper (What Did We Learn?)
So after three essays of absolute chaos, what have we actually learned about photo-based storytelling techniques? Let’s pretend this was educational:
Essay 1 taught us: Find the weird detail in photos and deliberately misinterpret it. Build character motivation around cosmically ignorant goals. Make your characters fail in interesting ways.
Essay 2 taught us: Escalate by adding more photos and time periods. Connect disparate images with invented organizations or lineages. Use scientific-sounding nonsense to add false credibility. Make your absurdity explain real things.
Essay 3 taught us: Pay off your setups (Chekhov’s Chicken). Leave some mysteries unresolved. Add consequences that echo through time. Acknowledge the absurdity while committing to it completely.
Or, more accurately: Take weird old photos, make up elaborate lies about them, connect those lies with increasingly tenuous logic, and pretend you knew what you were doing all along.
The Honest Writing Advice (Finally)
Here’s the real photo-based storytelling technique that actually matters: give yourself permission to be weird. Those vintage photos are bizarre; kids with chickens and candy cigarettes, people in nightmare mascot heads, solemn gentlemen with bicycles. They’re already weird. Your job isn’t to explain them normalcy; it’s to celebrate their weirdness by making up stories that match their energy.
Don’t ask “what really happened here?” Ask “what’s the most interesting thing that could have happened here?” Then write that, commit to it completely, and act like it’s legitimate historical analysis.
The photos can’t contradict you because they’re photos. They just sit there, existing, while you spin whatever elaborate mythology you want around them. This is power. Use it irresponsibly.
The Takeaway (Such As It Is)
If you’ve read all three essays expecting to learn legitimate writing techniques, I’m sorry. What you’ve actually learned is that I can look at vintage photographs and invent elaborate nonsense about temporal mechanics and psychic poultry.
But here’s the thing: that is a legitimate technique. Photo-based storytelling techniques aren’t really about following rules or structures. They’re about finding inspiration in unexpected places and having the confidence (or delusion) to build entire universes around small details.
You don’t need photos of exciting things to write exciting stories. You need the ability to look at mundane historical images and ask “but what if it wasn’t mundane at all?”
Then you need the follow-through to actually write the ridiculous thing you imagined instead of second-guessing yourself into writing something boring and safe.
The Final Word (And Thank God)
Somewhere in Virginia, there’s a real chicken, let’s call her Bluebell (because apparently that’s an actual name of a chicken we once had) who has no idea she’s spiritually connected to a century-long tradition of reality-anchoring poultry. She’s just pecking at things and being a chicken, blissfully unaware that I’ve drafted her into my weird photo mythology.
This is the ultimate goal of photo-based storytelling techniques: take real things (photos, chickens, vintage racing) and fictional things (dimensional portals, psychic poultry, the Velocity Cult) and blend them so thoroughly that readers start wondering if maybe, just maybe, there’s a kernel of truth buried in all the nonsense.
There isn’t. It’s all lies. But they’re fun lies, and sometimes that’s more valuable than truth.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go stare at more weird vintage photos and invent increasingly elaborate backstories for them. The salt flats are calling. The chickens are waiting. And somewhere, in the Big Head Dimension, Mister Building is planning a party.
The Velocity Cult endures.
End of Essay 3
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. You now know exactly as much about writing as I do, which is to say: not nearly enough, but we’re doing it anyway. The chickens would be proud. Probably. If they cared. Which they don’t.
Key Takeaways
- Creating absurd fiction using photo-based storytelling techniques involves embracing weirdness and finding inspiration in vintage photos.
- A successful conclusion ties back to earlier setups, ensuring that elements like Chekhov’s Chicken have a payoff in the narrative.
- Leaving some plot threads unresolved enhances the sense of a larger world in photo-based storytelling techniques.
- Acknowledging the absurdity in stories makes them more engaging, inviting readers to participate in the fun of imagining wild scenarios.
- Ultimately, photo-based storytelling techniques celebrate the bizarre by inventing elaborate stories around mundane images.
Related Links
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His first manuscript was composed entirely of punctuation marks and confused sketches. He's since published "Not Bukowski" (poems that don't rhyme) and "Slop and Swell from a Festering Mind" (essays so concerning that bookstores check on his wellbeing). He once spent three hours photographing a rare bird that turned out to be a plastic bag, and he's the only person banned from church bake sales for "weaponized brownies." Inheriting absurdism from Vonnegut and Adams, sprawling narratives from Irving, and weaponized failure from Moore, he writes about conflicted everymen struggling through supernatural chaos. He remains unconvinced that birds aren't surveillance drones.
More biographic lies...err...info.
- When God Closes a Door, He Needs to Go Get Some Paprika - March 5, 2026
- Monkey Testicles, Missing Documents, and the Eternal Quest to Stay on Top - March 3, 2026
- Under the Blood Worm Moon, Nobody Has to Learn Anything - March 3, 2026
