Allow me to paint the scene…

You are Alan Wake — (a writer, by the way) — and he’s a bit of a grumpy sourpuss angry man. Angry Wake, if you will. He forgot how to write a book because he’s a little goober and kinda sorta just went,

“me sad too hard, I’m off to my pouting room.”

BUT that’s the thing — his wife, Alice Wake (aka “Corpse” for most of the game), is like,

“yo Alan, I got this great idea. We can go to the Pacific Northwest and just have a blast and a good ole time.”
Alan probably rolls his eyes and was like,
“Okay sure I believe you.”

So they depart…
LIKE THE BOOK — (getting ahead of myself) — to the land of Twin Peaks where super spooky things happen and there are cool trees, coffee, some weirdly obsessed people who enjoy the pastime of deer-related activities, a weird amount of Energizer batteries just chilling in the woods like it's a sponsorship deal (because it is), and a lake. Which, let ME tell you, is both a lake and an ocean (spoilers) with a cabin that may or may not be there.

But that’s just it. Alan and Alice think it’s there, because despite planning this trip and paying money for it, they pull up to a diner with a cutesy name and see another Alan…

A second Alan. A more cardboard Alan, which, I guess, Rose (the waitress) brings with her to work like it’s her body pillow. That would probably weird him out, but I guess he’s used to being famous and unsettling. She tells him,

“Oh yeah, the dude with your keys for the cabin in the middle of the dark, creepy, gross, evil lake — where a lady once drowned probably — will be just a few minutes, my man’s in the bathroom.”

So, without hesitation, Alan is like,

“aight bet,”
and ignores an old lady having an episode about darkness and light. Not gonna lie, Alan probably thinks all these old people are insane — because an old viking rock star just asked him to play “Coconut” on the jukebox.
♪ Da lime in da coconut, drink ‘em both up ♪

I’m getting lost here. So he ignores the warnings and sees a creepy lady dressed in funeral attire — who, by the way, happens to have a hole in her chest — greet Alan, a man who couldn’t wait five minutes for a man to stop having a coffee-and-pie-related bathroom break.

Anyway, a lady in all black, standing in a pitch-black hallway in front of the bathrooms, asks Alan to take the keys. She asks him passive-aggressively — twice, as a pastime — and as a member of the Not Leaving His House Club, Alan folds immediately, which is usually reserved for people who are, like, alive. So… she could be kind of a big deal.

So they pull up to the lake, and Alice is like,

“ahhhh, darkness is spooky, I don’t like it.”
She tells Alan to go play Dead by Daylight in the shed and power the generator so she doesn’t freak out and drown herself.

He does it, and she rewards him for this action like any loving wife would — knowing her partner is in full mental career collapse, writer’s block mode, and utterly incapable of functioning. His reward?

A typewriter — so he can write a book, because she’s not making money, and he needs to.

Mind you, she gives him this gift while wearing no pants, and my man gets so irrationally mad about the situation that he throws his arms around, has a hissy fit, and storms out of the cabin.

BUT — uh oh — the lights are out now. And Alice, like mentioned before, does not enjoy that.

So she does the only logical thing: she drowns herself.

Alan runs back inside, sees her body in the lake, and says the iconic line:

“Oh… no.”
And then jumps in the lake.

Smash cut to:
Alan wakes up in a car on the side of a cliff.

He is like,

“hmmm. Where lake go? Where wife?”
To solve this problem, he grabs God’s revolver, flashlight, paper pages, Energizer batteries, and his trusty Verizon cellphone…

And off he goes.

To go find her.Within 0.4 seconds of walking into the forest, Alan meets his first Taken — a blurry lumberjack man who speaks in glitchy slam poetry and throws axes

These guys are:

Completely made of shadows

Invulnerable to bullets until you flash ‘em like a paparazzi at a breakdown

Speak exclusively in random words like “YOU’RE GONNA LOSE YOUR JOB” and “YOUR BOOKS ARE TRASH,” which is honestly just Twitter

Luckily, Alan discovers the core mechanic of the universe:

Flashlight + Gun = Justice
Shine your flashlight hard enough and you burn away the emo layer.
Then you shoot the sad man beneath.

Alan accepts this without question, because nothing says “professional writer” like immediately defaulting to gun violence when things get weird.

Also, Alan Finds Out He’s Psychic Maybe?
So here’s where it gets weird (. Alan starts finding pages of a manuscript titled “Departure.”
Written by him.
About events that are currently happening.
But he doesn’t remember writing it.
Because mystery.

The pages say things like:

“Alan saw the axe-wielding maniac coming toward him.”
Alan looks up.
Axe-wielding maniac enters stage left.

He does not question this.
He just goes:

“Huh. Wild.”

This means we are now operating in a universe where:

Alan’s writing may or may not control reality

The pages are appearing in places before he gets there

And the entire forest is now basically an interactive audiobook from hell

Let There Be Product Placement (And Also Fear)
So Alan finally stumbles onto a gas station, which should be a safe haven, right? NOPE.
Because instead of human help, what does he find?

A television commercial. For Verizon Wireless.
Like, literally. In the middle of a life-threatening forest horror scenario, Alan looks at a screen and watches a crystal clear, branded, multi-camera Verizon ad, and the game says nothing. No context. Just pure corporate energy beamed straight into your survival horror.

Meanwhile, the gas station is empty (except for shadows and trauma), and Alan, still processing absolutely none of this, uses the phone to call the cops like:

“Hi, yes, my wife disappeared, I maybe killed a guy, I’ve been in the forest for seven days, and also I have reason to believe I’m writing reality.”
And the cops are like:
“Cool story, we’re sending someone to arrest you.”

Sheriff Sarah Breaker Enters: She’s So Done Already
Sheriff Breaker, who by the way deserves a raise, shows up with strong “I didn’t sign up for this” energy. She finds Alan babbling about missing wives and murder lakes and demon trees, and instead of immediately tranquilizing him, she’s like:

“Let’s get you some coffee and figure this out.”

Alan, in turn, is like:

“Yeah, great. Anyway I saw my wife fall into a lake that maybe doesn’t exist and I think my dreams are becoming real.”

Plot Bomb: The Cabin Was Never There
So Alan’s like “You gotta take me back to the cabin! That’s where Alice disappeared!”
And Sarah’s like “Yeah cool okay” and they drive to Cauldron Lake, again.
Only this time…

THERE’S NO CABIN.
NO CABIN. NO ISLAND. NOTHING.

Just water. A big spooky lake. With no record of a cabin ever existing there. No building permits. No boat logs. Not even a chair.

Alan’s brain officially blue screens.

He just stands there like:

“But… we… it was right there. The cabin. The woman. The manuscript. My wife. The screaming. The darkness. The typewriter. The rage tantrum. The splash. It was all real!”

Sheriff Breaker, who is already regretting leaving the office, is like:

“Okay. So. We’re gonna go ahead and maybe get you some help. Maybe some nap time.”

Alan’s like:

“The darkness did it.”
Sheriff:
“I’m sure it did, champ.”

By the way the true cake is by tilting the camera, Alan has a bakery and a half