Timelocks Always Fixed?

questions
#11

Thanks for posting this Mike. I was having similar thoughts after Chris’s post but was nervous to voice them. The clarification is very helpful.

d is definitely an Optionlock – like you said, they tried the wrong option to disarm the bomb. (If instead the story was framed with their mistake being the initial story driver, so then they have one hour, it could be a Timelock.)

Now what about:

e) A bomb is about to go off. Twelve hours. The crew gets to work on how to disarm it. They find a way to add more time to the countdown through some procedure, giving them more time to disarm. (I think this is an Optionlock, and there might be some audience jerking around here too?)

f) An alien bomb with the capacity to destroy the universe is set to go off in one month. There are clues on how to disarm it but they will take years to decipher. The team puts the bomb on a spaceship which accelerates to close to the speed of light so that, due to relativistic effects, the bomb’s one-month timer lasts 50 years on Earth.
My guesses:
Timelock (50 years) - if the ship is set to come back in 50 years no matter what
Optionlock - if they can radio the ship to delay its return
Timelock (1 month) - if the protagonist is aboard the ship

You’d have to be careful not to jerk the audience around here too.

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#12

I’ll play along, but I’m taking the opposite approach, @mlucas
d. Unless someone said ‘anybody else got any other ideas?’ And everyone else said ‘that was the last option we had’ right before the bomb exploded, I’m saying its a Timelock. The clock running out brought about the story climax.
Ditto for e IF the bomb goes off. Basically, it’s a Timelock with options to extend it.

Basically, if the bomb is diffused in time because of a good option, or goes off because of a bad option, like cutting the blue wire when it should have been the red, then it’s an optionlock because the option, whether cutting the blue wire and setting it off or cutting the red wire and saving everyone, brought about the climax of the story.

The story only climaxes because of Time IF the timer is allowed to run down. I would think that would look like a bomb going off and killing the target, or being tossed in the water and killing only fish and everyone else survives.

G. The tricky one would be if someone cut one of the wires right as the timer hit zero.

#13

Yeah, @mlucas, I figured this was an optionlock after I posted it. It was weird how it just snapped into comprehension. Though, I think it can be dangerous to draw too many conclusions from single-sentence stories.

I’d say e) is definitely not a timelock – it’s not fixed in time, and their actions extend it. (sometimes, this is how I think about it: nobody can adjust a timelock, but people’s actions bring out the climax of an optionlock)

f) I’d say it should have been an optionlock – they should have sent the bomb into the sun! – but if they know it’s coming back in 50 years, that sets a timelock.

BTW, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to jerk an audience around, you just have to be consistent.

Nah, because the limit brings about the climax. In this case, the timer going down does this. It forces them to make a choice, but the limit isn’t about that. It’s about what forces the choice.

#14

Yes it is (assuming the timer ran out). I’ll explain, but first…[quote=“chuntley, post:9, topic:1450”]
KEEP IN MIND: All Dramatica story points are from the objectve Author’s point of view, one in which everything has already played out and all is known.
[/quote]

Doesn’t matter if the clock is set for 12 hours and goes off in 1 or set for twelve hours and goes off in 13. The author objectively knows what time it will go off. The characters can shorten or lengthen the time on the clock, but it’s still ultimately set in time when you step back and look at the story as a whole.

This is exactly why I say it would be the tricky one. Which one brought about the climax? Timer running out or wire being cut? If they happen simultaneously there’s no way to know. This is the point where the wave becomes a particle. It’s both and neither. They ran out of options at the same point that they ran out of time.

#15

If the author doesn’t communicate this, then it’s as if they didn’t know it. I mean, to put a straw man argument out there, I can’t write this one-word story : Goombah! and then claim that it’s a timelock because I know what it means. If it’s not clearly laid out in the text, then the author doesn’t get to claim they knew it.

It’s just that I think it’s clear. It’s the ticking clock that brings about the climax. They cut the wire because they are about to run out of time. The climax is before and up to when they snip the wire, it’s not just the tension the audience feels when they see the wirecutters in the hands of the hapless technician.

#16

I’m assuming there’s some sort explanation within the story along the lines of “Hey, guys, there are four keys that we can insert into the bomb, each of which will give us an additional 15 minutes!” or “Holy crap, I just did this thing and it put an additional 15 minutes on the bomb, wonder if we can do it again?” Doesn’t matter when the audience gets the info, or even if the author knows about it until he writes it. The story has it’s own mind. Once the story is complete, the Storymind knows how the whole thing plays out all at once.

Can you point to where the options are clearly laid out in Star Wars? I’m of the opinion that they are more obvious after the fact.
Is Rocky still a Timelock story if he goes down in the first round by KO just because the rounds are still timed? Or would the option of KO be what brought about the climax in that version?

Right, a story that is running out of options will look like one that’s running out of time to the characters and audience.

#17

But in this case, if they didn’t cut the wires, the bomb would go off, right?

I’ll think about the other questions overnight. I think you bring up an interesting idea: if you had a bomb, and the option to add 4 15-minute chunks to it to help you figure out how to disarm it…

At first blush, that just seems like a timelock to me, because it is fixed at whatever time plus one hour. It’s still fixed.
…
I didn’t sleep on this, but here is my quick and dirty answer about Star Wars: It’s not really a question of knowing which options are laid out, it’s just a question of knowing that they are working their way through options. So, the details are more obvious after the fact (if not impossible before the fact). But it seems pretty clear to me that people are working on options even as it is happening.

A different example would be Ex Machina: it very clearly lays out the Timelock even though it then goes on to play it out like an Optionlock… at the end though, it’s still a Timelock…

#18

If the wires weren’t cut, yes, the timer would run out. And if the timer wasn’t there, they’d still cut the wires.

To the Star Wars example: I think you could have a soft-edged Timelock that does the same thing. How about instead of a clock running down, the climax is brought out by someone’s life running out. That’s still something that’s fixed in time, and you could try to extend or shorten the persons life and see that the characters are working against time.

To Ex Machina, I dont remember the climax–at least not in relation to time and options-- so I can’t speak to it.

#19

I think an example of G. might be something like Disneys animated version of Beauty and the Beast. There’s a rose with a limited number of petals. It’s also tied to the Beasts 21st birthday. Technically you can look at the rose and see how many petals there are, but I’ll be darned if I could tell you that number. I also have no idea how long it is until his birthday. So is it an Optionlock or Timelock. It seems that it doesn’t matter. It can be one or the other, both, or neither. By falling in love with the Beast as the last petal falls, Belle is essentially cutting the wire as the clock reaches zero. She takes the final option just as she runs out of time.

#20

Not necessarily. Maybe they’d build a fence around the activating mechanism. (Unlss that was an earlier, exhausted option.) BUT, more relevantly, I think if you could construct a story with an ideal coming together of option+timelock, then I think it would come down to the storytelling. The author would tell the story a certain way.

Typically no, because the point of a timelock is that the out has to be a hard out. If you don’t know exactly when someone is going to die, then it won’t cut it. I think this is a good example of when something feels like a timelock (“I just want one more day!”) but it’s really not.

The flower is a storytelling device, to remind us, but it’s not the real limiter. I don’t remember the thing about the birthday.

#21

Okay, sure. Or shoot it with a shotgun from a distance. But they’d Still do something sans timer.

Totally agree on that. You’d have to pick one to make a proper argument. With the B&B example, there is definitely a line about the curse becoming permanent on the 21st birthday, but I’d agree that it’s also treated more like an optionlock than Timelock.

#22

Dad is dying. Family wants to create as many good memories as possible before that happens. Doctors are saying about six months, but could be four, could be eight. There’s no limit to the number of memories they can make and none of the memories they make would bring about the end of the story. But once he dies, the story ends. What would the options look like?

#23

I think the options would be “how many kinds of places can we get to” and “what kind of emotional memories do we want to build”?

You’d want to do everything, but eventually he’d get too sick to move (I’m assuming) and then it’s like “Well, we never got to go see a drive-in movie… do we take him, even though we might kill him?”

Also, the movie is probably not just going to be “let’s do fun things!” It’s probably going to be built around some issue to solve, and if personal experience is any guide, that ain’t easy – so it would definitely bump up against the limitation of a failing, ill parent.

#24

But isn’t that saying that the characters haven’t run out of options yet? If he’s too sick to move, can they sit around the bed and laugh at old stories? How does that force a conclusion?

#25

As written, the Story Limit is a confusing optionlock. It is not a timelock because the Story Limit was not locked.

All this speculation is silly from a story creation context because you’re looking at it backwards. A story has a Story Limit of a Timelock or an Optionlock because that is what the author has chosen. BOTH are possible choices until one is decided (from a story creation point of view).

From a story analysis perspective, you must look to what the author gives you – which is why it can be wishy washy if the author is not clear.

The importance of the Story Limit is that it gives the story a boundary that tells the audience the conditions necessary to bring the story a climax, final confrontation, and ultimately a resolution. I like to think of it as the size of the story, which is why it is important that the audience understands what the limit is. Even if you aren’t explicit, the audience will pick up on it if it is there. If it’s not there they won’t have a clue when the story will end (timelock), or what is necessary to bring it to an end (optionlock), and the story will feel like it meanders along without much direction.

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Onward - The Return of the Story Limit
#26

I’ve never considered Optionlocks to be about running out of options. I think it’s more like “There are seven things you could do, but you only get to do four, so choose wisely.”

So, in terms of the ill parent scenario, it would be “if we do option A, we might kill him, but if we do Option B, we don’t have a good chance of a Success ending… What do we do?!”

I like this metaphor.

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#27

Here are some Optionlock possibilities:

  • Dad has five friends who live in various places around the world with whom he’d like to make peace before he crumps out.

  • Dad has a bucket list he’d like to complete before he crumps out

  • Dad wants his estranged family to reunite before he dies (the number of family members determines the options)

  • Dad wants to assure his family’s security before he dies, so he goes through the options he has for securing their future: finding a purchaser for his company, paying off old debt, securing scholarships for his kids, and a regular income for his wife.

…and so on.

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#28

Chris, would you agree that the below quote from The Matrix is an illustration of, or at least related to, the Optionlock Limit in that film?

MORPHEUS: We have survived by hiding from them … and by running from them. But they are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys, which means that sooner or later… someone is going to have to fight them.

I think it’s a useful example of a limit that isn’t very explicit – most people wouldn’t consciously think of that story as being limited by the options for dealing with agents. Yet somehow when Neo stands his ground in that subway station, you just know that “this is it”.

#29

I think the quote identifies the base inequity at the heart of the story. This is the fertile ground that sets the stage for the story to come.

I think the story is about the introduction of “the One” into that equation – Neo strong text’s what changes the equation. The options I imagine have to do with exhausting all the ways to convince the new guy (Neo) that he is “the one.”

#30

So I’m trying as hard as I can to see it your way. But what is the option lock here? As written, there was nothing to suggest a limited number of options-they were presumably in the middle of another option when the clock hit zero-but it was written so that the timer reaching zero presumably ended the story. Same thing with the dying dad. You offered some great examples of optionlocks, but it was written so that the characters keep going until dads life expires.