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rowynI've been trying to think of story ideas that take place over a short period of time. Like, a day or less. Part of my motivation in this is that almost all my fiction, whether it's an RPG or a book, runs really long. And I'm thinking that if the time period covered by the story is short enough, then there'd be a limit to how long even I could drag it out. "Game of October" demonstrated that one month is still too long. Maybe 12 hours would work?
This dovetails with my post a few weeks ago looking for non-violent books, since another common fixture in my writing is violence-based conflict. Also, conflict on a huge scale. The fate of the world hangs in the balance! I want to scale down, to write about something important but not earthshaking, interesting but not epic.
So far, I don't have many ideas.
The most obvious one is a literal race: characters competing to reach a physical goal. It doesn't have to be as simple as a horse race or a car race: "Rat Race" showcased one way of injecting variety into the "race" premise.
Other kinds of sporting events have a similar time-limited nature. I don't really like sports, and most don't translate well to written form, but possibly a fictitious (fantasy or futuristic) sport could sustain a story.
Another possibility is a "race for treatment" -- one real-world example of this would be getting a snake-bite victim from the jungle to a hospital. Still, I'm wanting to steer away from life-or-death scenarios. A fantasy example might be "get the faerie back to the portal before it closes at dawn or she'll be stuck here on Earth for ten years" -- where failure is bad, but not fatal.
Then there's "you have to stop X event from happening at Y time". Classic ones are "stop the meteor from hitting the Earth" or "stop the bomb from going off", but less dire possibilities exist. For example: Lily is marrying Damon tomorrow, but Lily's ex-boyfriend suspects Damon's lying to her. Can he get proof that Damon's really a sleazeball before it's too late? In a similar vein would be political scenarios: "this treaty will/won't be signed unless the protagonists are able to provide certain information by X time."
Anyway, not sure I have anything I really like yet. Anyone have ideas they'd like to share?
This dovetails with my post a few weeks ago looking for non-violent books, since another common fixture in my writing is violence-based conflict. Also, conflict on a huge scale. The fate of the world hangs in the balance! I want to scale down, to write about something important but not earthshaking, interesting but not epic.
So far, I don't have many ideas.
The most obvious one is a literal race: characters competing to reach a physical goal. It doesn't have to be as simple as a horse race or a car race: "Rat Race" showcased one way of injecting variety into the "race" premise.
Other kinds of sporting events have a similar time-limited nature. I don't really like sports, and most don't translate well to written form, but possibly a fictitious (fantasy or futuristic) sport could sustain a story.
Another possibility is a "race for treatment" -- one real-world example of this would be getting a snake-bite victim from the jungle to a hospital. Still, I'm wanting to steer away from life-or-death scenarios. A fantasy example might be "get the faerie back to the portal before it closes at dawn or she'll be stuck here on Earth for ten years" -- where failure is bad, but not fatal.
Then there's "you have to stop X event from happening at Y time". Classic ones are "stop the meteor from hitting the Earth" or "stop the bomb from going off", but less dire possibilities exist. For example: Lily is marrying Damon tomorrow, but Lily's ex-boyfriend suspects Damon's lying to her. Can he get proof that Damon's really a sleazeball before it's too late? In a similar vein would be political scenarios: "this treaty will/won't be signed unless the protagonists are able to provide certain information by X time."
Anyway, not sure I have anything I really like yet. Anyone have ideas they'd like to share?
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an idea? (beginning of one that is?)
Date: 2008-05-28 08:43 pm (UTC)or knocks down a gate loses...
could there be a race designed to reward an ability
to travel in time avoiding some sort of check point?
or in space requiring teleportation...
the first one who arrives at tomorrow morning 8am without
making all of the marked intervals wins.
does this make sense?
not much but I wonder if there could be something here...
in fact small jumps in time could be imagined to be
easier than large ones on the principle that small
atomic particles seem to have a freedom in time that
larger ones do not
that is at best pseudo science of course...
umm best I can do. +S
Re: an idea? (beginning of one that is?)
Date: 2008-05-28 09:03 pm (UTC)