# Chapter 3: Building Blocks
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One week of McDonald's was enough to make Michael question every life choice that had led him here.
His feet ached. His back ached. He smelled perpetually of fryer grease no matter how many showers he took. The customers treated him like he was invisible, and his manager Ray had the personality of a particularly aggressive potato.
But the first paycheck—$287.50 after taxes, plus $43 in tips from the rare decent human beings who tipped at fast food—felt like winning the lottery.
Michael stood in the McDonald's bathroom during his break, staring at the check in his hands like it was made of gold. This was it. This was survival. This was the foundation.
Jake poked his head in. "You good, man? You've been staring at that check for like five minutes."
"Yeah." Michael folded it carefully and tucked it into his wallet. "Yeah, I'm good. Hey, you know any cheap places to rent around here?"
---
Two days later, Michael signed a month-to-month lease for a room in a house in Reseda.
Calling it a "room" was generous. It was more like a converted garage with drywall hastily thrown up to create the illusion of a bedroom. No closet. No private bathroom—he'd be sharing with three other tenants. A single window that looked out onto an alley. The carpet was stained, the paint was peeling, and the whole place smelled faintly of mildew.
The landlord, a tired-looking woman named Rosa, quoted him $400 a month plus a $400 deposit.
Michael did the math in his head. With his McDonald's income, he could barely afford it. He'd be eating ramen and rice for the foreseeable future.
"I'll take it," he said.
Rosa looked surprised, like she'd expected him to negotiate. "Rent's due first of every month. You're late, you're out. No drugs, no loud music after ten, no guests staying overnight. Clear?"
"Crystal."
She handed him a key. "Welcome home."
---
"Home" was a strong word for what amounted to a box with a bed, but Michael didn't care.
He moved his garbage bags from the Honda to the room, set up his chunky laptop on the small desk that came with the space, and sat on the creaky bed, looking around.
This was his. Not much, but his.
For the first time in a week, he let himself exhale.
Then he let himself think.
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Okay. He had shelter. He had income—barely. He had two months before his next rent payment would be due, and if he was careful with his McDonald's money, he could probably afford to eat and keep the lights on.
But that wasn't the goal. The goal wasn't survival.
The goal was success.
Michael pulled out a notebook he'd bought at the dollar store—50 cents, college-ruled, nothing fancy—and opened it to the first page.
At the top, he wrote: **PLAN**
Then he stared at the blank page for a long moment.
Where did he even start?
He had twenty years of entertainment knowledge locked in his head. Movies, TV shows, songs, scripts. But knowing them wasn't the same as creating them. In his original timeline, he'd been a performer, not a creator. He could play piano, he could act, he could sing. But writing? Producing? That was different territory.
Still. He had one massive advantage: he knew what worked.
He knew which stories resonated with audiences. Which scripts sold. Which concepts became cultural phenomena.
He just needed to figure out how to translate memory into reality.
Michael tapped the pen against the notebook, thinking.
Two paths forward, he decided. Two simultaneous projects that could establish him in different corners of the industry.
**Path One: Film**
He needed a screenplay. Something commercial but respectable. Something that could sell to a studio and get his name out there as a writer. Something that wasn't so high-concept that a nobody eighteen-year-old pitching it would get laughed out of the room.
He thought through the films he remembered. The mid-budget successes, the surprise hits, the scripts that had launched careers.
One kept coming back to him: *17 Again*.
In his original timeline, it had come out in 2009. A body-swap comedy—forty-something guy gets transformed back into his seventeen-year-old self, goes back to high school, reconnects with his family. Starring Zac Efron at the height of his post-*High School Musical* fame.
It wasn't groundbreaking cinema. But it had been charming, heartfelt, and profitable. $136 million worldwide on a $20 million budget. The kind of script that studios loved: high concept, broad appeal, emotionally satisfying.
And Michael remembered it scene by scene.
**Path Two: Publishing**
Books took longer to pay off, but they could be done independently. He didn't need a studio executive to greenlight a novel. He just needed to write it and find an agent.
And he knew exactly which book to write.
*The Martian*.
In his timeline, Andy Weir had self-published it in 2011, then got picked up by a traditional publisher in 2014. By 2015, it was a Ridley Scott film starring Matt Damon. A massive success, both critically and commercially.
The story was perfect: an astronaut stranded on Mars, surviving through science and sheer determination. Funny, smart, tense. It had everything.
And Michael remembered every beat. The potato farming. The Pathfinder. The rich purnell maneuver. Mark Watney's voice—sarcastic, irreverent, desperately hopeful.
He could write it. He *would* write it.
Michael wrote both titles in his notebook:
**1. Screenplay: 17 AGAIN**
**2. Novel: THE MARTIAN**
Then he underlined them both and stared at the words.
And felt his confidence waver.
Because here was the problem: he'd never written a screenplay before. He'd never written a novel. He'd read scripts for auditions, sure. He'd read plenty of books. But reading wasn't the same as writing.
He had the stories in his head, but he didn't have the *craft*.
Not yet.
---
The next morning, Michael walked into the Van Nuys branch of the Los Angeles Public Library with a mission.
The building was old but well-maintained, with that particular library smell of old books and industrial carpet. Michael approached the reference desk where a librarian with reading glasses on a chain looked up from her computer.
"Can I help you?"
"I need books on screenwriting," Michael said. "And novel writing. Everything you've got."
She raised an eyebrow but didn't question it. "Professional interest or personal?"
"Personal. I'm trying to learn."
Something in her expression softened. "Good for you. Let me show you what we have."
---
Michael left with a stack of books that barely fit in his arms:
- *Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting* by Syd Field
- *Save the Cat!* by Blake Snyder (would come out later, but there were other structure books)
- *The Screenwriter's Bible* by David Trottier
- *On Writing* by Stephen King
- *Bird by Bird* by Anne Lamott
- *The Elements of Style* by Strunk and White
He also had a library card and permission to use the computers for two hours a day.
Back in his tiny room, Michael stacked the books on his desk and stared at them.
This was going to take time. Real time. He couldn't just magically conjure a professional screenplay because he remembered watching the movie. Structure, format, pacing, dialogue—these were skills he needed to learn.
He opened *Screenplay* by Syd Field and started reading.
---
**Week One: Education**
Michael worked his shifts at McDonald's—usually closing shift, 4 PM to midnight—then came home and read until he couldn't keep his eyes open.
He learned about three-act structure. About inciting incidents and midpoint reversals and climactic sequences. About the difference between showing and telling. About how screenplay format worked—the specific spacing, the way action lines were written, how dialogue was formatted.
It was tedious. Technical. Nothing like the glamorous vision of being a writer.
But Michael absorbed it all like he was starving.
Because he *was* starving. Starving for purpose. For progress. For proof that this second chance meant something.
During his breaks at McDonald's, he'd sketch out scenes in his notebook. Practicing. Getting the format wrong, crossing it out, trying again.
Jake noticed. "You writing a movie or something?"
"Trying to," Michael said, not looking up.
"Huh. That's cool, man. Let me know if you need someone to read it."
Michael smiled but didn't answer. He couldn't let anyone read it. Not yet. Not until it was perfect.
---
**Week Three: First Draft Attempt**
Michael sat at his desk at 1 AM after a closing shift, laptop open, Syd Field's book propped next to him for reference.
He opened a blank document and typed:
**17 AGAIN**
**Written by Michael Carter**
Then he stopped.
The cursor blinked at him mockingly.
He knew the story. He could see it in his head, frame by frame. But translating that into proper screenplay format, into compelling words on a page...
His first attempt was terrible. Wooden dialogue. Clunky action lines. Scenes that dragged.
He deleted it all and started over.
Second attempt: better, but still wrong. The pacing was off. The voice wasn't right.
Third attempt: closer. But it didn't *sing* the way the movie had.
Michael pushed back from the desk, frustrated.
This was harder than he'd thought. Way harder.
---
**Week Five: The Library Becomes His Second Home**
Between shifts, Michael lived at the library.
He used their computers to research. To look up formatting examples. To read sample scripts he found on screenwriting websites (the internet was slow and clunky in 2005, but it existed).
He checked out more books. Read interviews with screenwriters. Studied the craft like he was training for the Olympics.
The librarian—her name was Margaret—started recognizing him.
"Back again?"
"Can't afford my own internet," Michael admitted.
"Well, you're welcome here as long as you need. What are you working on?"
"A screenplay. And a novel."
Margaret whistled. "Ambitious."
"I don't really have a choice."
She studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Good luck, kid. Something tells me you're going to need it."
---
**Week Seven: Breakthrough**
It was 3 AM. Michael had been writing for six straight hours after his shift. His eyes burned. His fingers ached. He'd drunk so much gas station coffee that his hands were shaking.
But he'd finally cracked it.
The voice of *17 Again* was coming through. The structure was working. The dialogue felt natural. The emotional beats were landing.
Michael typed FADE OUT at the end of the first act and sat back, staring at the screen.
Forty pages. A third of the script. Rough, yes. Needing revision, definitely.
But real. It was real.
He saved the document—saved it twice, actually, paranoid about losing it—and closed the laptop.
For the first time in weeks, he let himself feel something other than exhaustion.
Pride. Just a little.
---
**Week Eight: The Book**
The screenplay was progressing, but Michael knew it would still be weeks before he had a complete first draft. So he turned his attention to the novel.
*The Martian* was different. Longer. More detailed. The voice needed to be perfect—Mark Watney's first-person logs were what made the book special.
Michael opened a new document and typed:
**THE MARTIAN**
**by Michael Carter**
He paused, fingers hovering over the keys.
Then he wrote the first line:
*I'm pretty much fucked.*
And smiled.
That was it. That was Mark Watney's voice. Irreverent. Darkly funny. Desperate but not defeated.
Michael kept typing.
---
**Month Two: Reality Check**
By the end of the second month, Michael had:
- A complete first draft of *17 Again* (120 pages, rough but coherent)
- Thirty thousand words of *The Martian* (about a quarter of the eventual book)
- Learned more about writing than he'd learned in his entire original timeline
- Lost ten pounds because he kept forgetting to eat
- Developed a caffeine dependency that would probably kill him by thirty
- Gained a new appreciation for how easy the internet would make everything in ten years
His room was a disaster. Notebooks everywhere. Library books stacked in precarious towers. Energy drink cans forming a small pyramid in the corner.
But he had pages. Real pages. Words that hadn't existed in this world before.
Michael sat on his bed, looking at the printed manuscript of *17 Again* (he'd used the library printer, five cents a page, a small fortune for 120 pages).
This was it. This was the foundation.
Now he just needed to figure out what to do with it.
He thought about his thirty-eight years of memories. About the years he'd wasted in his original timeline, waiting for someone to give him a chance.
Not this time.
This time, he was going to make his own chances.
Michael grabbed his notebook and wrote:
**NEXT STEPS:**
**1. Revise screenplay until it's perfect**
**2. Finish novel**
**3. Research agents/managers**
**4. Learn how to pitch**
**5. Don't fuck this up**
He stared at number five for a long moment.
Then he crossed it out and wrote instead:
**5. Make Dad proud**
Even if Dad would never know.
Even if no one would ever know the truth about where these stories came from.
Michael closed the notebook and looked around his tiny room with its peeling paint and stained carpet.
This wasn't much. But it was more than he'd had eight weeks ago.
And in eight more weeks, it would be even more.
He had work to do.
---
POWER STONES
POWER STONES
POWER STONES
POWER STONES
POWER STONES
POWER STONES
**END CHAPTER 3**