Step 1: Core Structure Check

You’ve outlined three scenes, each with very different tones, settings, and characters. Let’s validate that they:

• Connect thematically

• Build narrative momentum

• Serve the arc of The Collapse

Here’s a quick structural breakdown of what you have:

Scene 1: The Diner in Wyoming

• Tone: Satirical realism, Americana political commentary.

• Function: Ground the story in the “real world,” show how average citizens interpret collapse.

• Key conflict: Cultural/political rot masked by patriotic fervor.

• Subtext: Hypocrisy, fear, misplaced pride.

• Dark turn: ICE call leading to girls’ assault—this sharply escalates stakes.

Scene 2: Jeb and Celeste in Bed

• Tone: Poetic, intimate, philosophical.

• Function: Youth’s inner world + Jehovah’s mythic plans.

• Key conflict: Existential dread meets teenage longing.

• Subtext: End of innocence, godhood watching humanity fail.

• Big idea: Universe reset—spiritual/metaphysical layer of collapse.

Scene 3: College Roundtable

• Tone: Political theater, media satire, geopolitical tension.

• Function: Public debate about collapse, ideas clashing in real time.

• Key conflict: Truth vs spin, imperial ambition vs diplomacy.

• Subtext: Collapse on global scale; elite detachment.

• Twist: Presidents are maneuvering while pretending diplomacy.

Step 2: Key Themes

Do these align with your vision? You seem to be working with:

• Collapse of systems: politics, morality, media, even metaphysical order

• Satire: exaggeration of modern events/personalities (Trampovshka, ICE, etc.)

• Despair vs delusion: some characters accept doom, others are lost in nationalism, bureaucracy, or denial

• Spiritual implications: Jehovah’s choice to reboot the universe

• Youth as pivot: Jeb and Celeste represent raw, unfiltered reaction to this world

Does that feel like what you’re aiming for? Or would you want to shift tone, re-balance weight across scenes, or clarify character arcs?

Next, we can:

1. Map scene transitions and overall pacing.

2. Nail down a consistent internal logic (e.g. how divine and political threads coexist).

3. Refine or rewrite one scene at a time once structure is locked.