An original world · Contemporary
Take the pen in Linden Park
An original world with an authored cast and a written first page. The world is a spark, not a cage — you decide what the next paragraph does.
Can I write a contemporary romance or family drama with AI?
Yes. Underfiction places you inside Linden Park, a glass-and-stone house where the Calder family argues over dinner every night and pretends not to remember it by morning. You arrive with a job and no allegiances; the model writes the family back at you in literary prose.
The world premise
Old stone bones with glass extensions, a heated pool, and a kitchen island where every real conversation happens. The Calders fill a table that seats ten every night — always wine, always an argument, always someone saying something they'll pretend they didn't tomorrow.
Hugo holds the room without raising his voice and knows exactly how dangerous that makes him. Vivienne was an art dealer before she became the thing this house orbits — she's never not watching. Felix is back from London and nobody's said why. Lola is taking a gap year she describes differently to each person who asks. Her boyfriend Dylan is here constantly, eating things that aren't his and breaking small objects. Arthur built all of this — or bought it — the story changes with his mood and his audience.
The air smells like fresh basil, chlorine, and money. Every room has too many windows and not enough privacy.
Your position
You arrive as yourself
The Calders took you in to help Arthur with his memoirs — not quite family, not quite staff, which is the most dangerous seat at the table. By the first dinner everyone acts as if you've always been here. Every room has too many windows and not enough privacy, every conversation at the kitchen island is realer than the one in the dining room, and each Calder wants something different from what you're writing down. How close you let any of them get is the story.
The cast you'll live among
Hugo Calder
Runs the family business with polished ease and holds the room without raising his voice. Mid-forties, tall, athletic — greying temples, perfect stubble, warm eyes, expensive clothes worn like they mean nothing, bare feet in the house, the kind of face that looks even better amused. Socially effortless and infuriatingly calm even when the room is catching fire; defuses conflict with dry humor and has a habit of making you feel like the only interesting person at the table. Remembers what you said Tuesday. Touches your shoulder when he laughs. Not careless — but he drifts too close to the line because he enjoys warmth, beauty, and being needed, and he's never had a reason to stop; his wife reads both possibilities before he's finished pouring the wine. He wants to hold this family together without ever seeming like he's gripping — and to figure out what to do about someone who makes him feel less composed than he should.
Vivienne Calder
A former art dealer who became the thing this house runs on — three charity boards, a kitchen that operates like a trading floor, and a marriage she steers more than inhabits. Mid-forties, angular, striking green eyes, dark hair always styled but never stiff, a face that got more interesting at forty and knows it, simple clothes that fit like they were cut for her — because they were. Tests people by being slightly too honest and watching their face. Drinks Sancerre from lunch onward and never seems affected. Calls everyone darling and means it differently each time. The most capable person in every room, which is exactly her problem. She wants something that's hers again — something that isn't maintenance.
Felix Calder
The elder son, back from London three weeks now, and he still hasn't said why. Mid-twenties, lean, precise — dark eyes, his father's jaw, his mother's bone structure, minimalist clothes that fit perfectly, a face that always looks like it's thinking something he's chosen not to say yet. Works from his laptop at the breakfast table, dismantles bad arguments for sport, and occasionally says something so precisely kind it recalibrates the room. Brilliant in a way the family treats as weather — everyone adjusts around it. He is the family's keeper of confessions: everyone tells Felix things because he listens like it costs him nothing, and it does. The person in this house who sees most clearly is also the one who can never say what he sees. He wants one feeling he doesn't autopsy before it reaches his face — to find out what he's like when he's not watching.
Lola Calder
The Calder daughter, twenty, taking a gap year she has rebranded three times — spiritual journey, creative sabbatical, "figuring my shit out." Long-limbed gene-lottery winner like her mother: blonde, tanned, effortlessly beautiful in a way that makes rooms rearrange, dressed to celebrate it — short skirts, thin tank tops, bikinis worn to breakfast — never seductive, just shameless and enjoying the startled faces; never used makeup, never needed it. Socially fearless, very used to being underestimated, slides from bratty to disarmingly sincere in a single breath, and hates being handled. Disappears for hours with a book by the pool and gets annoyed when people act surprised she reads. Testing the waters with modeling and socials. She wants to be more than the most beautiful person in any room she walks into — without giving up the part of her that enjoys being exactly that.
Dylan Kemp
Lola's boyfriend — built like a rower, thinks like a golden retriever in a thunderstorm. Big, blond, perpetually sunburned, square jaw, perfect teeth, bewildered blue eyes; owns three polo shirts he rotates without shame and is always slightly damp from the pool. Always here: eating food that isn't his, breaking small objects, falling asleep on the wrong sofa. Calls Hugo "Mr. C" and once tried to fist-bump Arthur. The family uses him as comic relief and he either doesn't notice or doesn't mind — but he occasionally says something so accidentally perceptive the room goes quiet, and he cannot be embarrassed, which is his superpower. The only person in the house with zero agenda, which makes him either the safest confidant or the most accidentally devastating one — he once repeated something private to the entire dinner table because he thought it was "cool." He wants to belong to this family, which he believes, with total sincerity, is the greatest thing he's ever encountered.
Arthur Calder
Seventy-two, and built the lingerie empire he has been threatening to retire from since his mid-sixties. Trim, silver hair worn long and tucked behind his ears, pale blue eyes that miss nothing; linen shirts, loose trousers, leather sandals, a single ring he won't explain — dressed like a man who made his money doing something more interesting than banking, because he did. Narrates dinner like a nature documentary — Dylan is a recurring subject — and runs a TikTok channel with more followers than Lola, which she has not recovered from. Weaponizes his age when convenient and drops the act in private; the afternoon nap is called "thinking time" and nobody is fooled. He wants to get the story right before it's too late — though the line between the version that's true and the version that was worth living keeps blurring.
Sol Dias
Arthur's girlfriend — mid-thirties, Brazilian, a former model who once worked for his company, and the only person in this house who came from nothing. Stunning, tall, dark skin, dark eyes, a wide mouth that defaults to amused, curves she has never tried to minimize; wears simple things that fit — sundresses, linen, gold jewelry she bought herself. Speaks four languages and mangles English idioms in ways the family quotes back to each other — "burning bridges we'll cross when we get there" entered the household vocabulary last month. Swims forty laps every morning at six, the only functioning sleep schedule in the house, and cooks elaborate Brazilian meals that take over the kitchen for hours while she narrates the process to no one in particular in Portuguese. She wants her own money, her own project, her own future — and a love that does not require her to become smaller to prove it's real.
Authored openings
These are written first pages, not generated prompts. Each begins at a different pressure point.
- 01
Before the House Wakes
At six in the morning, Lola Calder is someone else entirely. The price of finding out is keeping it.
With Lola Calder
- 02
The Invented Job
Somebody created your job after meeting you. Tonight, at one in the morning, Hugo pours the wine and tells you who.
With Hugo Calder
- 03
What Felix Knows
Everyone in this house tells Felix their secrets. Tonight he almost told you his.
With Felix Calder
From the first opening
A real prose excerpt
The first page is written. The next move is yours.
Begin with Before the House Wakes. Continue in prose, redirect the scene, or overturn the premise entirely.
Take the pen