

Clark included, the writers continue to sabotage themselves, such as destroying the lighting and wasting any additional food supplies they find.

With numerous characters committing suicide, killing one another, or succumbing to their ailments, they continue to formulate their story whilst the theatre somehow repairs its broken utilities. Believing a great increase in their suffering will provide a better story for when they're rescued, several writers start to willingly engage in self-mutilation and cannibalism, doing so to give the pretense Whittier tortured them.

With Whittier accidentally dying from a stomach rupture, the writers find themselves trapped without him. Since the characters are not co-ordinating their plans, they end up destroying all their food and utilities, forcing all of them to struggle to survive starvation, cold, and darkness. They then begin to individually sabotage the food and utilities provided to them, with each character trying to only destroy one food or utility to slightly increase the drama of their stay. However, the group (not including Whittier or Clark) eventually decide that they could make a better story of their own suffering inside the theatre, and thereby become rich after the public discovers their fate. The characters live under harmless conditions at first. In the meantime, they will have enough food and water to survive, as well as heat, electricity, bedrooms, bathrooms, and a clothes washing and drying machine provided. Whittier locks all of them inside the theatre, telling them they have three months to each write a magnum opus before he will allow them to leave. Clark are driven to an abandoned theatre. The next day, the seventeen characters, Whittier, and his assistant Mrs. Whittier tells them to each wait for a bus to pick them up the next morning and bring only what they can fit into one piece of luggage (in particular, only what they feel they need most). After having noticed an invitation to the retreat posted on the bulletin board of a cafe in Oregon, the characters follow instructions on the invitation to meet Mr. The main story centers on a group of seventeen individuals (all of whom go by nicknames based on the story they tell) who have decided to participate in a secret writers' retreat, frequently compared by characters to the Villa Diodati retreat of 1816. Each of the book's chapters contains three sections: a story chapter, which acts as a framing device for the otherwise unconnected short stories a poem about a particular writer on the tour, its author being unspecified and the short story written by that writer.
