No worries. I'm glad you're experimenting! For myself - and I know others respond very differently - I usually want everything in an essay to serve the overar

No worries. I'm glad you're experimenting! For myself - and I know others respond very differently - I usually want everything in an essay to serve the overarching point. So I find fictional asides pretty distracting. There are exceptions: Imre Lakatos did it well in "Proofs and Refutations", and Douglas Adams did it well too. But it's tough to pull off!