Writer's Workshop: Clock is Ticking! (or not) · 10:37pm Nov 19th, 2015

Imagine you're on a gameshow. You're in this warehouse, and there are a bunch of suitcases suspended from the ceiling. One of those suitcases has $1,000,000 in it; the rest are all full of worthless paper. Ready, set, go! ...This isn't a very interesting game, is it? After all, what's stopping you from just walking leisurely from suitcase to suitcase, opening each case in turn, and eventually finding the right one? There's no tension, no stakes!

So why am I bringing this up? I read a lot of stories where the writer forgets to put this in, just like my hypothetical game-maker. (Looking at you, shipping stories!) We're frequently told that conflict is the key factor of all stories (in fact, I'm pretty sure I've said it myself), but conflict is only part of the equation. After all, there's a conflict in my gameshow: you want to have the million, but you don't know where it is. The problem is that there's no limit to your capacity to solve said conflict. Like I said, you'll just keep trying suitcases until you find the one you want.

So let's fix that, shall we? There are two basic ways I can limit the players' attempts to find the million dollars. First, I can limit how much time you get. If I only give you one minute to search as many suitcases as you can, you'll race back and forth and tear those suitcases apart. As the time gets shorter and you still haven't found it, you'll get more and more desperate. This kind of game is fast and frenetic, and you'll need to take every shortcut you can get in order to open more cases.

We can write stories like this, too, where time is the limiting agent in the resolution of the story. Just like the game, in a Time-locked story, the characters race about, never able to stop for a moment for fear of losing any more precious seconds. This is kind of rare in ponies for reasons I'll explain at the end, but let me see which ones I can think of... Well, I suppose the most obvious is "Lesson Zero," so let's go with that. Throughout the episode, there's always that hanging deadline: sundown. Each attempt she makes eats away a little more at her time, and as time runs out, she grows more desperate. That's why the big ending, the scene that shows she's failed to achieve her goal, is that of the sun setting. She's finally run out of time. Other episodes that are like this would be the first part of the pilot (kind of), Fall Weather Friends (kind of)... Family Appreciation Day? Seriously, this is way harder than it sounds. Oh, "The Crystal Empire!"

The other way I can make the game interesting is if I limit the amount of suitcases you're allowed to open. This game would feel very different from the Time-locked version of the game I described before. After all, there's no point to racing from case to case when you have all the time you need. However, you would need to be much more choosy with which case you decide to open. Maybe the one with the scuff marks is more likely to be the million-dollar case? Or maybe it's the one with the red tag, or the one with the blue one? As you run out of tries, you get more desperate and search even more for critical clues to guide your guesswork. You'll try to generate as much time as possible to get more thinking time and forestall having to make your last choice.

So what kind of stories have this Choice-locked limit? Basically, if your favorite story isn't Time-locked, it's probably Choice-locked. Let's look at "Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3" to see a Choice-lock story in action. Yes, there's a time limit to this story, but you know what you never hear? "I only have X time until the test!" There's no hanging deadline, no "Clock is ticking, Twilight; clock. is. ticking!" moment like in "Lesson Zero." The limit, instead, is the number of ways Twilight knows to teach Rainbow Dash the material she needs to know. As they run out of methods, not time, Rainbow Dash and Twilight get more heated in their argument, and the future seems bleak. Thankfully, Twilight discovers how Rainbow Dash really thinks, and they finally get the stuff in Rainbow's noggin.

Remember, this is really important. As readers, we need to know what's keeping the characters from trying every option forever to solve the problem, or else we'll feel like there's no urgency here. Think about an episode like "Griffon the Brush-off." Good episode, sure, but... kinda forgettable. Why? Well, what is Pinkie's plan here? We get this idea that she wants to befriend Rainbow Dash, and Gilda's in the way. So... what's stopping her? Is there a deadline for Pinkie to befriend Rainbow Dash before she's lost forever? Uhh... no. So is it a Choice-lock then? Granted, she tries a couple different methods to stay in the circle, but... that's it. Once Gilda tells her to buzz off permanently, there doesn't seem to be anything keeping the story afloat. Or look at "A Bird in the Hoof." What's the urgency here? The episode seems to suggest a Time-lock, that they only have so much time before Celestia gets back and realizes that Philomena is gone, but it never says how long that'll be! And as for Choices, sure, Fluttershy tries a bunch of different remedies, but that doesn't really seem to be holding the story back, right? She doesn't really seem to "run out" of options, so as long as she keeps trying, there shouldn't be a problem, right?

So, yeah. Some stories forget to put a cap like this. But other stories, strangely enough, do have a limit, but don't seem to understand which limit that is. Look at "Dragonshy," for example. All throughout the episode, Twilight laments, "We've got to get up the mountain, and fast!" Every delay by Fluttershy is punctuated with, "We've lost precious time!" So... this is Time-locked. But what's the deadline? The smoke covering Ponyville? But that's already happened! The truth is, there is no deadline. The limit isn't the time until... something happens; it's the fact that only Fluttershy can stop the dragon, and they need to try whatever Choices they've got to convince her to take action. And "Show Stoppers..." I'm not even sure what's up with "Show Stoppers." I think they want it to be a Choice-lock, what with the characters having different options of which role they can fulfill, but it's kind of odd that they do that when they have a perfect good Time-lock in the form of the approaching showtime available. Why not have them try a bunch of different things, getting more harried each time as the deadline looms, until at last they're stuck with the crappy ones in the episode?

Okay, so you may be wondering why I said back at the start that MLP tends to go for Choice-locked stories over Time-locked ones. The reason why is, well... apparently, girls like Choice-locked stories better than Time-locked ones. Don't shoot the messenger, that's just what I've heard! IIRC, it has something to do with the way they process time or navigate choices? I don't know. It's probably the same kinda dealy like with the problem-solving, where a lot of (but not all!) women are Holistic thinkers. Take of that what you will.

This is another one of those blind spots you'll need to get accustomed to as you work on becoming a better writer. You know how you want the story to end, but the readers and the characters don't, so they have to try other options. But you can't let them try all of them, or (obviously) they'll know they can succeed from the start. So when you set your conflict, don't forget to set a limit on how they get to solve it. Otherwise it'll be just like that gameshow I described before: a total snoozefest.

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Lost_Marbles

Lost_Marbles #1 · Nov 19th, 2015 · 1 · ·

Wow... now that you point it out, a lot of episodes really don't have high stakes and the conflicts could easily be seen as, well, forced.

There is little-to-no reason why Pinkie couldn't wait for Gilda to leave, why... uh... I'm having a hard time coming up with examples, but you make a good point.

I've never heard about this in writing, but I'm glad you wrote about it. It's one of those things that I feel I should be very aware of when planning a story. (And I just figured out how I'm going to apply these rules to my next story.)