Can you
By Jeffrey Savage
Wow, long but fun weekend. Two days of the LDStorymakers conference was a blast, but doing an early morning writer’s boot camp was exhausting. (6am Saturday morning is just wrong to be doing anything other than sleeping or fishing.) Add two book signings and trying to get my second Shandra book done and it’s just over the top.
So let’s have some fun today and play a game. I first heard about this game in a Stephen King novel (I’ll buy lunch for anyone who can name the novel) and have enjoyed it ever since. It’s especially fun for writers, because our goal is to put our characters into untenable situations before rescuing them in a believable fashion.
So here’s the deal. The game is called “Can you?” I’m going to start by placing our heroine Pauline Peril in a situation that seems to have no possibility of escape. Then the next person carries the story forward by getting her out in a believable fashion and putting her into a new peril. Each person gets her out of one jam and into another. The rest of us decide if the escape was believable.
An example might be that Pauline is caught bathing in the middle of a lake full of ravenous crocodiles. Her gear is all on the far side of the lake. You can’t have a ski doo suddenly pop out of the water. But you could have her use her glasses (which she always wears while bathing in case she wants to read a good book) to signal a nearby helicopter which swings down to rescue her.
Make sense? Okay, let’s give it a try.
Fighting her way through the humid Amazon jungle, in search of the famed lost diamond of Ichuinchihuah, Paula heard the warning growl of a nearby jaguar. It sounded hungry and she was in no mood to be lunch. Holding her rifle, she eased back into the bushes when, without warning. something closed around her ankle and swung her into the air. As a strong vine whipped her up and through the bushes, her rifle was knocked from her hands and her backpack was ripped from her shoulders.
“Nice flight?” said a voice from below. It was the evil Dr. Homicidus.
“You,” she growled, assessing her situation. She was hanging by her feet nearly 100 feet in the air from a vine looped over the branch of a Bunya Bunya tree. The other end of the vine was tied to a stake in the ground. “Let me down before I shred you like cheddar cheese.”
“I don’t think so,” Dr Homicidus chuckled. “You see, you are currently suspended above a pit 30 feet long by 30 feet wide. Although you may not be able to see it from your current height, the pit is lined with thousands of tiny darts. Each dart is coated with the deadly poison of the Strawberry frog. Just in case the fall doesn’t kill you, which it most assuredly will, the poison will certainly do the job.”
“Not a problem,” Pauline said with more bravado than she really felt. “I’ll just climb the vine up to the tree branch and make my way down.”
“You could.” Dr Homicidus grinned. “If I didn’t do this.” Hefting a metal five gallon can, he soaked his end of the vine with gasoline.
“I believe you have roughly 30 seconds after I light this before the vine burns through, plunging you to your death. I personally won’t be here to see it as I abhor graphic violence but my faithful servant Rapi who is both deaf and mute will stand guard with his powerful 20/20 hunting rifle to make sure you don’t do anything tricky.”
With that, he lit a match dropped it to the vine and disappeared in the jungle. His final words were, “Ta ta.”
Wow, long but fun weekend. Two days of the LDStorymakers conference was a blast, but doing an early morning writer’s boot camp was exhausting. (6am Saturday morning is just wrong to be doing anything other than sleeping or fishing.) Add two book signings and trying to get my second Shandra book done and it’s just over the top.
So let’s have some fun today and play a game. I first heard about this game in a Stephen King novel (I’ll buy lunch for anyone who can name the novel) and have enjoyed it ever since. It’s especially fun for writers, because our goal is to put our characters into untenable situations before rescuing them in a believable fashion.
So here’s the deal. The game is called “Can you?” I’m going to start by placing our heroine Pauline Peril in a situation that seems to have no possibility of escape. Then the next person carries the story forward by getting her out in a believable fashion and putting her into a new peril. Each person gets her out of one jam and into another. The rest of us decide if the escape was believable.
An example might be that Pauline is caught bathing in the middle of a lake full of ravenous crocodiles. Her gear is all on the far side of the lake. You can’t have a ski doo suddenly pop out of the water. But you could have her use her glasses (which she always wears while bathing in case she wants to read a good book) to signal a nearby helicopter which swings down to rescue her.
Make sense? Okay, let’s give it a try.
Fighting her way through the humid Amazon jungle, in search of the famed lost diamond of Ichuinchihuah, Paula heard the warning growl of a nearby jaguar. It sounded hungry and she was in no mood to be lunch. Holding her rifle, she eased back into the bushes when, without warning. something closed around her ankle and swung her into the air. As a strong vine whipped her up and through the bushes, her rifle was knocked from her hands and her backpack was ripped from her shoulders.
“Nice flight?” said a voice from below. It was the evil Dr. Homicidus.
“You,” she growled, assessing her situation. She was hanging by her feet nearly 100 feet in the air from a vine looped over the branch of a Bunya Bunya tree. The other end of the vine was tied to a stake in the ground. “Let me down before I shred you like cheddar cheese.”
“I don’t think so,” Dr Homicidus chuckled. “You see, you are currently suspended above a pit 30 feet long by 30 feet wide. Although you may not be able to see it from your current height, the pit is lined with thousands of tiny darts. Each dart is coated with the deadly poison of the Strawberry frog. Just in case the fall doesn’t kill you, which it most assuredly will, the poison will certainly do the job.”
“Not a problem,” Pauline said with more bravado than she really felt. “I’ll just climb the vine up to the tree branch and make my way down.”
“You could.” Dr Homicidus grinned. “If I didn’t do this.” Hefting a metal five gallon can, he soaked his end of the vine with gasoline.
“I believe you have roughly 30 seconds after I light this before the vine burns through, plunging you to your death. I personally won’t be here to see it as I abhor graphic violence but my faithful servant Rapi who is both deaf and mute will stand guard with his powerful 20/20 hunting rifle to make sure you don’t do anything tricky.”
With that, he lit a match dropped it to the vine and disappeared in the jungle. His final words were, “Ta ta.”
Jeff Savage — 3/27/2006 01:23:00 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Squinting, Pauline grabbed the laser pointer she used for her lecture series"Empowerment in Peril and the Modern Woman" and took careful aim.
Rapi, keeping careful watch through the rifle's powerful scope grinned fiendishly. "How like a woman to clutch her heart at the thought of death!" he thought as the laser beam pierced through the highly polished and maginfied scope blinding him in his one good eye.
Using her abs of steel, Pauline "crunched" herself upright grabbing at the vine. Knowing that once the fire traveled past the stake the newly freed vine would plunge her to her deaath, she grabbed the staked vine just as the it snapped.
Racing against the climbing flames she furiously sliced the end of the newly freed vine with her 5 carat engagement ring (Dear, dear Roger) sending it tumbling into Rapi as he lay on the ground clutching his eye.
Twistingthe vines together in true empowered fashion, she returned to her original plan and climbed to the branch and made her way down the tree.
She took Rapi's rifle and whacked him on the head for good measure.
"Boy that must be a really big tree to have a branch that would hold me in the middle of a 30 x 30 poison pit," she mused. "At least it took care of that jaguar, but if the jaguar has been poisoned, what is that roaring sound?"
Pauline looked up as a wall of water came crashing through the jungle. Dr Homicidus had blown the dam to cover his evil tracks. Pauline clutched a the trees and branches as the water pushed her closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. The jungle creatures, desparate for higher ground were scambling madly. The rocks and hills were completely covered with vicious jungle cats and venemous snakes, both hissing their displeasure as a warning to others that the high ground was theirs alone.
Good show, mean aunt!
Thank you Amy Black.
It was posted rough because The Noisy Cousin was yanking on the Mean Aunt's arm which I took to mean No More Computer For You.
But at least no infodumps :)
Bravo! Okay, who can save Pauline from the flood, wild animals, and venomous snakes, before she is washed over the cliff?
Post a Comment
<< Home