A writing critic reviews the construction of Charles Chesnutt’s stories and how to write surfiction.

A young couple obsessed with syntax sets off to meet their favorite author.

Following a messy breakup, an MIT graduate and a PhD student at Indiana University separately talk about the problems in their former relationship in two spliced-together conversations, exploring conflicts surrounding language, intimacy, commitment, and intellectualism.

When a serial writer decides that he can’t take more of his monotonous life, he destroys his copywriter and leaves his domestic prison to protest the rise of the machines.

A writer grapples with the suicide of her longtime friend and mentor.

In a realistic sci-fi world, a mystery writer nurtures his robot servant's interest in becoming a writer as well, paying for a series of expensive upgrades such that the robot can understand spelling, grammar, plot, human behavior, and humor. However, when the robot's talent threatens to surpass his own, the egotistical writer demands the robot's mind be restored to its original state.

A twenty-two-year-old male tutor gives various women feedback on their writing in letter form. When he quits his job, he visits one of his former correspondents for lunch at her apartment.

In California, a young woman reflects on her relationship to her father while working on a novel. Through reading her father’s novel, she understands their relationship through his eyes.

A man wholeheartedly agrees with a columnist in a recent paper about creating an amendment to abolish same-sex marriage, however, he takes it one step further: he suggest they also abolish "samish-sex" relationships, wherein overly feminine men date overly masculine women.

In New York, a young woman goes to a dinner party with her boss’s friend. After a tense game of charades, too many drinks and a decision to spend the night, she wonders why people make the choices they do and if anyone else will remember them.