How to Write Licensed IP: A Technical Breakdown of Character, Subtext, and Constraint
Analyzing my Burnt fanfiction to demonstrate constraint-based narrative design, character fidelity—or: how to make two chefs having a conversation feel like the most erotic thing you’ve read all year
Note: This essay analyzes my fanfiction “study in acidity“ written for the 2015 film Burnt. All analysis is focused on craft technique, character psychology, and transferable narrative skills.
Why Fanfiction is a Masterclass in Constraint-Based Writing
Let’s be direct about something the industry pretends not to know: fanfiction is one of the best training grounds for professional narrative work.
When you write original fiction, you can shape every variable. The characters are yours. The world bends to your will. There’s freedom in that, but also the luxury of adjusting elements when they don’t work.
Fanfiction removes that safety net.
You’re working within established constraints: character voices that aren’t yours, dynamics you didn’t create, a world with rules you must honor, and an audience that will immediately notice if you get the characterization wrong. The challenge becomes: can you execute something that feels inevitable within those constraints while bringing fresh technical precision?
This is exactly the skillset required for licensed IP work—games, tie-in novels, narrative design for established franchises. You need to demonstrate you can honor what exists while adding value that wasn’t there before.
So when I wanted to write about the specific psychological dynamic that’s always fascinated me—the intense, almost violent intimacy that can exist between two rivals who are the only true equals in their world—I chose Burnt specifically because Adam and Reece’s relationship already contained that architecture. My job wasn’t to invent it. My job was to complete it.
Let me show you how.
The Foundation: Understanding What You’re Building On
Before you can execute within an IP, you need to understand its existing architecture at a molecular level.
Adam Jones: A self-destructive genius chef who burned out spectacularly, destroyed his career and relationships through addiction and ego, and spent the film clawing his way back to a third Michelin star while battling every demon that made him fail the first time. He’s arrogant, charismatic, and profoundly damaged. His primary pathology: he cannot accept imperfection, especially in himself.
Reece: His former rival and current three-star chef running an immaculate, precise kitchen that’s everything Adam’s chaos is not. Cold, controlled, contained. A scientist who approaches cooking as alchemy—precise measurements, perfect technique, no margin for error. His primary pathology: he processes emotions like data and refuses intimacy that might compromise his carefully constructed order.
The dynamic the film gives us: Two masters who understand each other better than anyone else possibly could, locked in a rivalry that’s really just mutual recognition wearing the mask of competition. They’re the only two people in their world who operate at this level. That isolation creates a specific kind of intimacy—the loneliness of excellence that can only be understood by someone else who’s survived the same altitude.
The film ends with them achieving a professional détente, but it never gives them the conversation. The moment where they actually speak the unspoken things. Where they acknowledge what they are to each other.
That’s what “study in acidity” does.
Section 1: Environment as Character - Building the Cathedral of Silence
Every scene has architecture. Before characters speak, before action happens, you’re establishing the space in which meaning will be created.
Here’s my opening:
The kitchen was a cathedral of silence. Reece’s three-star temple, an hour after the last service, was a world away from the chaotic, screaming forge of Adam’s kitchen. Here, every surface of brushed steel and blinding ceramic was immaculate. The only sound was the low, contented hum of the coolers and the soft, rhythmic shing of Reece’s own knife, a whisper of steel on wood as he meticulously broke down a beautiful, silver-skinned sea bass. It was a meditative act, a quiet conversation between a master and his medium.
What this does:
Establishes Baseline Through Contrast
I’m opening with Reece’s space because Adam is about to invade it. But to feel that invasion, we need to understand what’s being disturbed. “Cathedral of silence” immediately tells you this is sacred space. The comparison to Adam’s “chaotic, screaming forge” establishes their opposition without having to explain it.
Uses Sensory Detail as Psychological Portrait
The “low, contented hum of the coolers” and “soft, rhythmic shing” of the knife aren’t just description—they’re Reece’s internal state made audible. This is a man at peace with his craft. The environment is the character.
Sets the Metaphorical Framework
“A quiet conversation between a master and his medium” establishes that in this world, craft itself is a language. This isn’t decorative—it’s structural. Everything that follows will use cooking as the vocabulary for emotional intimacy.
The technical choice: Establish environment first, let character emerge through interaction with that environment. Don’t describe what people look like—describe how they exist in space.
Why this matters for IP work: In games, film, licensed fiction, you’re often writing characters in established locations. Your job is to make those spaces feel lived in through specific sensory detail that reveals psychology. This is environmental storytelling—a core skill for narrative designers.
Section 2: Subtext as Primary Text - What They Don’t Say
The entire emotional architecture of this piece rests on a principle called radical compression: distilling narrative structure to its core essentials. Traditionally applied to overarching plot, but it scales down beautifully. You can compress a scene, an interaction, a single beat of dialogue until every word on the page is the tip of an enormous psychological iceberg.
This is the keystone of my favorite thing: subtext. Meaning lives in what’s not said.
Watch how Adam enters:
“You’re overworking the fillet.”
The voice was a low, rough thing, stripped of its usual performative bombast, but the words were still a gauntlet, thrown with a quiet, challenging weight. Reece did not look up. He simply finished the cut, a single, perfect, flowing motion, and set his knife down with a soft, precise tap.
What’s happening under the surface:
Adam opens with criticism—his default language. But it’s “stripped of its usual performative bombast.” He’s not here to play their usual game. Reece’s response is to finish what he’s doing before acknowledging Adam’s presence. That’s not rudeness. That’s establishing who controls the pace of this interaction.
Then watch the next beat:
“If you’ve come to poach my staff, Adam,” Reece said, his voice a cool, level instrument, “the answer is no. If you’ve come for a loan, the answer is also no.”
Reece is offering Adam every easy excuse to leave. He’s giving him off-ramps. Because what’s about to happen—Adam asking for an opinion—is so profoundly vulnerable that Reece’s first instinct is to prevent it.
The technical choice: Characters rarely say what they mean. They say what protects them. Your job as the writer is to make sure the reader understands both layers simultaneously.
Why this matters for IP work: Games like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous or Baldur’s Gate 3 thrive on companions who communicate in subtext. Players need to feel like they’re piecing together psychology through observation, not having it explained. This is the skill.
Section 3: Objects as Emotional Architecture
Now we get to the scallop.
Adam’s brought a single dish in a vacuum-sealed bag. One perfect scallop in pale-green liquid. He’s not asking Reece to collaborate. He’s asking for judgment. For validation that his new work—clean, simple, vulnerable—isn’t a catastrophe.
Watch what Reece does:
Reece was silent for a long moment. He picked up the bag, his movements precise, almost reverent. He cut it open and, using a small pair of tweezers, lifted the scallop and placed it on a clean, cool porcelain plate. He did not taste it immediately. He looked at it. He smelled it. He was not just looking at a piece of food; he was reading a page from his rival’s soul.
This is the eroticism of competence.
Reece doesn’t just eat it. He assesses it with the full arsenal of his expertise. The tweezers. The porcelain plate. The time taken. Every gesture communicates: I am taking this seriously because I take you seriously.
Then:
Finally, he took a small, silver spoon and tasted the sauce. He closed his eyes. The world fell away. There was only the initial burst of bright, clean acid, the sweetness of the scallop, the faint, funky undertone of the fermentation. It was a story. A story of a man who had been to hell and was now, tentatively, exploring the idea of a quiet, sunlit morning.
What this does:
The Object Becomes Metaphor
The scallop isn’t food. It’s Adam’s post-recovery psychology made edible. “Clean. Simple. But there’s a new acid component”—that’s not just flavor description. That’s character arc. He’s rebuilding himself with new elements (the fermented gooseberry vinegar = therapy, new coping mechanisms) but he doesn’t know if it works.
Competence as Intimacy
Reece understands what this dish means before Adam has to explain it. That’s the intimacy. The act of perfect assessment is more intimate than touch would be, because it requires truly seeing someone.
The Verdict as Permission
“The balance is a hair’s breadth from genius,” he stated, the words a simple, clinical fact. “But your finish is apologetic. You’re afraid of the funk. You pull back at the last moment.” He met Adam’s gaze, his own head tilting again, the scientist now asking the profound question. “Don’t be.”
“Don’t be” is two words. But it’s functioning as both craft advice and emotional permission. Don’t be afraid of the thing that makes you different. Don’t apologize for your intensity. Trust your instincts.
That’s why Adam has this response:
Adam let out a slow, shuddering breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The relief on his face was a luminous and unguarded thing.
He came here for judgment. He got permission.
The technical choice: Find what matters to your characters and let that be the vehicle for intimacy. For chefs, it’s a dish. For soldiers, it might be a weapon. For scholars, a book. The object carries emotional weight because of what it represents, not what it is.
Why this matters for IP work: Games excel at this. Think of every meaningful object exchange in Disco Elysium, every companion gift in Dragon Age. Objects are emotional shorthand. Master this and you can write scenes that feel intimate without ever being explicit.
Section 4: The Memory Gap - Vulnerability as Data Request
The scallop scene was foreplay. This is the actual vulnerability.
“There’s a… gap,” Adam began, his voice a low, rough murmur, the words a quiet, almost shameful, confession. “From that night. Here. I remember the pass… the mistake. The noise in my head. And then… nothing. Just a blank space on the tape.”
Adam has a blackout from his public breakdown at Reece’s restaurant. And he’s asking Reece—the only person who witnessed it—to fill in the missing data. Note “blank space on the tape“—an analog metaphor for an analog thinker. Adam processes memory like he processes cooking: as recorded data with gaps that need filling. Even vulnerability gets framed in the language of his craft.
But watch how Reece processes this:
Reece’s mind, a machine of pure, cold logic, raced. Hypothesis one: a new form of attack. A feint of vulnerability designed to disarm. He ran the calculation, and the result was an immediate, resounding error. The data was too clean. The signal was too strong. The terror in Adam’s eyes was not a performance; it was the quiet, academic horror of a man who has lost a piece of his own mind and is desperate to find it.
This is character psychology doing heavy lifting:
It’s True to Reece’s Pathology
He literally cannot process vulnerability as vulnerability at first. He has to run it as a hypothesis, test it against data, prove to himself that it’s real. Even in moments of profound human connection, he’s a scientist first.
It Shows the Cost of His Defense Mechanisms
That analytical processing isn’t cold—it’s protective. He’s so terrified of being manipulated that he has to verify emotional reality before he can respond to it.
It Creates the Pause
That internal calculation gives us the beat of silence before Reece responds. And in that silence, we feel the weight of the decision he’s about to make: whether to be the keeper of his rival’s most profound moment of failure.
Then watch what he does:
He turned away, the movement a sharp, violent flinch, a physical retreat from a vulnerability that felt more dangerous than any improperly handled blade.
He flinches. Reece—controlled, precise Reece—has a physical trauma response to being asked to be intimate. That tells you everything about how much this costs him.
But he does it anyway:
“I didn’t see you, Adam,” Reece began, his voice a quiet, almost confessional rasp. “Not at first. I saw the look. The posture. I saw the look of a man who has just realized that ‘perfect’ is not good enough. The look of a man who is being murdered by his own standards.”
He finally met Adam’s gaze, and for the first time, his own held no shield, no armor, only the banked, quiet fire of a shared, terrible pathology.
“Because you are one of the few people on this planet who knows what it is to be haunted by the ghost of a perfect dish.”
This is the kill shot.
Reece doesn’t just tell Adam what happened. He identifies the why. He names the pathology they share: the standards so high they become self-destructive. The perfectionism that reads as madness to anyone who doesn’t operate at that level.
And by doing so, he’s saying: I see you. I understand you. You are not alone in this particular form of suffering.
That’s intimacy. Not through sentiment, but through recognition.
The technical choice: Character pathology should be consistent even—especially—in moments of connection. Reece processes vulnerability as data because that’s who he is. The growth isn’t that he stops being analytical; it’s that he chooses to respond despite his terror.
Why this matters for IP work: Companions in CRPGs need distinct psychological frameworks that remain consistent across all interactions. A character who processes everything analytically doesn’t suddenly become emotive in act 3—they learn to express care through their established patterns. This is advanced character work.
Section 5: The Knife - Trust as Object
I could have ended with words. With an acknowledgment of connection. But that would have been too easy, too sentimental, too unlike these men.
So I ended with a knife:
He turned, walked to the lowboy cooler, and pulled out the sea bass he had been filleting. He placed it on the clean steel counter in front of Adam. He then picked up his own personal chef’s knife—a beautiful, well-worn, and deeply personal tool—and slid it across the counter, offering the handle to Adam.
“Show me,” Reece said, his voice a quiet, absolute challenge, “how you would have done it.”
Why this works:
The Knife is Personal
“His own personal chef’s knife—a beautiful, well-worn, and deeply personal tool”—I’m making sure you understand this isn’t just any knife. For a chef, your personal knife is sacred. It’s fitted to your hand, balanced to your style, an extension of yourself.
Offering it to someone else is an act of profound trust.
The Invitation is Multilayered
“Show me how you would have done it” operates on multiple levels:
Literally: demonstrate your technique
Metaphorically: show me how you think, how you approach problems
Emotionally: let me learn from you, let me see your mastery
It’s Framed as Challenge
“A quiet, absolute challenge”—because these men can only accept care if it’s wrapped in competition. Reece can’t say “I want to understand you.” He has to say “prove you’re worth my attention.”
But the underlying message is the same: I respect you enough to learn from you.
It Returns to Craft
The entire emotional conversation happens through cooking. The scallop established that pattern. The knife completes it. Their intimacy exists in the only language that’s ever truly mattered between them.
The technical choice: Your ending should feel inevitable, not surprising. Every element has been building to this—the kitchen as sacred space, the dish as vulnerability, the recognition of shared pathology. The knife is the culmination of all of it.
Why this matters for IP work: Resolution mechanics in games need to feel earned. If a relationship shift happens, it should feel like the natural endpoint of everything that came before. No deus ex machina. Just inevitability.
The Psychology: High-Achievement as Pathology
Now let’s talk about what this piece is actually about under the craft demonstration.
Both Adam and Reece are high-achievers whose excellence is inseparable from their dysfunction. Their obsessive standards, their inability to accept “good enough,” their isolation from normal human connection—these aren’t bugs in their psychology, they’re the features that make them brilliant.
This is the “eroticism of competence” concept: watching someone operate at the absolute peak of their ability is fundamentally compelling. But when you dig into the psychology of people who achieve that level of mastery, you almost always find:
Perfectionism as Violence
“I saw the look of a man who is being murdered by his own standards.”
The standards that drive excellence are the same ones that destroy you. Adam’s breakdown wasn’t despite his genius—it was because of it. The voice in his head that says “perfect or worthless” is the same voice that made him a three-star chef.
Isolation as Necessary Condition
When you operate at that level, you’re functionally alone. No one else understands what you’re chasing or why you can’t just settle for “good.” That isolation creates a specific hunger: for someone who gets it. Who doesn’t need it explained.
That’s why Adam and Reece need each other, even though they’re ostensibly rivals. They’re the only two people in their world who speak this particular dialect of obsession.
Vulnerability as Structural Weakness
High-achievers often develop defense mechanisms that preclude intimacy. Adam uses charm and performance. Reece uses analytical distance. Both are brilliant strategies for avoiding the terror of being truly seen—because being seen means being judged, and their internal judges are already so brutal that external judgment feels existential.
The moment Adam asks for Reece’s opinion on his scallop, he’s breaching his own defenses. The moment Reece offers his personal knife, he’s breaching his.
That’s growth. Not healing, not fixing, not becoming less obsessive—just learning that maybe, maybe, you can let one person past the walls without it destroying you.
The Pathology as Bond
The piece ends without them “fixing” each other. Adam’s still going to chase perfection until it kills him. Reece is still going to process emotions like lab results. But they’ve acknowledged that they’re afflicted with the same condition.
And sometimes, recognition is enough.
Why this matters for IP work: Characters in games like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous or Disco Elysium aren’t therapy arcs where people heal and become well-adjusted. They’re explorations of how broken people learn to function alongside each other while remaining fundamentally broken. That’s more interesting, more honest, and requires more sophisticated character work.
This is why CRPG romances work when they’re done well: not romance-as-rescue (tired, reductive), but romance-as-recognition. Two broken people who choose each other because they understand the specific shape of each other’s damage. That’s Astarion, that’s Daeran, that’s Lae’zel—companions who don’t get fixed by love, they just get seen. And being seen by someone who gets it is enough.
What This Demonstrates: Transferable Skills
Writing “study in acidity” wasn’t just an exercise in loving these characters (though I do). It was a deliberate demonstration of skills that transfer directly to professional IP work:
1. Character Voice Fidelity
Maintained distinct psychological frameworks for both characters
Ensured all dialogue and internal thought matched established patterns
Found the gaps in canon and filled them in ways that felt inevitable
2. Environmental Storytelling
Used space, objects, and sensory detail to communicate psychology
Made the kitchen a character in its own right
Showed rather than told through concrete, specific imagery
3. Subtext as Primary Communication
Characters operate in layers: what they say, what they mean, what they’re protecting
Readers piece together emotional reality through observation
Nothing is explained that can be shown
4. Object-Based Intimacy
Used craft (cooking) as the vocabulary for emotional connection
Made objects (scallop, knife) carry symbolic weight
Avoided sentimentality by grounding everything in concrete action
5. Pathology-Consistent Growth
Characters don’t stop being who they are—they learn to connect through who they are
Reece doesn’t become warm; he expresses care analytically
Adam doesn’t stop performing; he learns when to drop the mask
6. Constraint-Based Excellence
Worked within established IP while adding value
Honored canon while completing what the film couldn’t
Demonstrated mastery of someone else’s characters
These are the exact skills required for narrative design in licensed spaces. You’re not creating from scratch—you’re working within constraints while bringing technical precision and fresh psychological depth.
Conclusion: Craft as Demonstration
Fanfiction gets dismissed as “not real writing” by people who’ve never tried to execute at this level within these constraints. But if you can make two chefs having a conversation about a scallop feel like the most emotionally intense thing someone’s read all week—if you can honor someone else’s characters while adding depth they never achieved in canon—if you can write silence that carries more weight than dialogue—then you’re operating at a professional level.
This piece exists because Burnt gave me a framework I was obsessed with: the terrible intimacy between rivals who are the only true equals in their world. My job was to complete it. To write the conversation they never had. To make the cooking matter as emotional language.
And in doing so, to prove that I can work in established universes with fidelity, depth, and technical skill.
Whether it’s film, games, or licensed fiction—craft is craft. The principles don’t change. Only the constraints do.
And constraint, as it turns out, is where mastery gets proven.
You can read “study in acidity” here on AO3. If you found this analysis valuable, subscribe for more craft breakdowns.
Fair winds,
—D.S. Black