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.
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.
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”.
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.”
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.
Greg, the options weren’t well encoded because they’re just silly examples. Regardless, those examples (changing the time on the clock, dying dad) simply cannot be Timelocks because the time isn’t fixed. Fixed means a specific moment in time that doesn’t change. Unless the dad’s under a magical curse to drop dead on a given date, the limit is one of space, not time. I had a similar question here (dying mom) which Chris clarified similarly: Timelock - specificity of deadline
Okay, thanks Chris. Interesting.
Based on what @chuntley has said, I suppose I could retract all previous answers and say that there’s not enough info to determine. There needs to be a statement of ‘this story is over when…’
Something like ‘we must protect the senator until noon tomorrow’ or ‘we must investigate every floor’ could turn any of the examples into either a time or optionlock.
Neither were the options.
Although I’m still of the opinion that if you look at the story as a whole, you can see the whole thing from beginning to end, the clock reaching zero is still a fixed point within the story whether the characters or audience believed they had twelve hours or two. Without super specific examples, I don’t see a reason the audience can’t go into it being told that the story will climax when the bomb explodes (when, not if) and then switch a twelve hour clock to a two hour clock and have everyone leaving the theater saying ‘I see, even though I thought the character had twelve hours, he was never going to have more than two all along.’ To say that you have to know the limit unequivably up front just seems to me to say that you’re not supposed to look at that one storypoint holistically like you do with all the others. And if that’s the case, I can accept that too.
The difference is if somebody or something in the story actually changes the supposed deadline. In that case, the Author/storymind knows the deadline wasn’t fixed in time.
Your example “even though I thought the character had twelve hours, he was never going to have more than two all along” is okay – in fact that was @MWollaeger’s b) which we agreed was a Timelock. Nobody in the story changed it, it was fixed all along.
So is the important thing that the limit provides a boundary that says “this is what forces the climax, etc.” that the audience can see once they’ve taken in the whole story, or is it that it gives the audience something to expect upfront? Because if it’s the second one, that seems more like audience reception than storyform.
The LIMIT gives the audience a sense that the story has a maximum size or threshold. It is up to the author to be overt or covert in encoding the story dynamic into the narrative. The simple way is to state the limit up front, e.g. “The children have five lessons to learn (Nanny McPhee),” or “You have him for 48 hours (48 Hrs.)” ideally, you want to take your audience into consideration as to how blatant you want to encode story points, which is 100% an author’s choice.
You do not have to tell the audience that the limit will bring the story to a climax, but it must be exhausted before the story is over, so there is a natural connection of the Story Limit to the starting event and the climax/closing event.
I don’t know if this will help anyone but I made some examples with both a bomb countdown and a wedding date.
I think they’re pretty accurate but feel free to disagree. I was careful to only say “not a Timelock” instead of Optionlock for the ones that couldn’t be a Timelock, since I didn’t necessarily try to illustrate limits of options or space in the tiny examples.
So what if you have a bomb set to go off at some specific time. The person who set the bomb knows what time but doesn’t tell anyone and neglects to include a timer on the bomb. It will still go off at some fixed point in time, but neither the major characters nor the audience are privy to this info. Not a Timelock because there’s no ‘hard out’ shown to the audience?
Yep. Think about what you are really saying, though. There is a major detail that the author decides not to share. The problems with this go far deeper than problems with the Limit.
It’s not about the bomb, though. That’s this just this example. If someone’s death were to force the climax, it would make more sense not to share. Again, it’s a fixed point within the timeline of the story, but only the author knows when it will happen until it does happen, so not a Timelock because it can’t be stated up front in order to provide a hard out.
Though the timer on a bomb may go off at a particular time, that does NOT make it Story Limit. If it IS the story limit, you’ll need to connect it to the Story Drivers and the inequity at the heart of the story.
The story limit is a part of the storyform that lets the AUTHOR indicate to the AUDIENCE when the story will be over. The other characters awareness of the detonation time on the bomb is not strictly necessary, though it is difficult to build and maintain tension WITHIN the story if they aren’t aware of it, particularly if it is tied to the story limit.
So why can an Optionlock wait until the end before telling the audience that the story has come to a close, but a Timelock can’t?
If a story says it will climax at sundown (or that it can’t climax until sundown) and doesn’t tell you how many hours until sundown, the audience can still see that when the sun is down it’s time for the story to climax. Is this in any way different from the timed bomb example? I’m assuming that the specific lack of numbers means this can’t be a Timelock.
If you can wait until the end of a story to see that there were X number of options, does that force every story without a timer into an Optionlock? Or is it possible for a storyform to be broken because of a lack of a limit on both Time and Options?
Like all story points, the limit should appear at least once a signpost/act, so I do not recommend withholding illustrating the limit over the course of the story. The question is how much attention you draw the audiences attention to it.
I hope you don’t mind me chiming in Greg. Just regarding the sundown question, I think sundown could work for a Timelock because it is a fixed moment in time that can’t be changed. It would certainly make it easier to communicate to the audience if you mentioned the number of hours/minutes remaining, but you could still communicate the Limit running out without numbers (we have “loads” of time until sundown; we have “some” time; uh oh it’s getting close).
Still, sundown is a weird one because the sun is traveling through the space of the sky, while also making a decent clock. I think you’d have to frame it to be about the time, not the space. This would come in when you tie it to the inequity and story drivers, I think, but I admit it’s confusing.
One thing I just realized is that you could tie ANY event in a story to the Timelock’s exhaustion, even stuff that seems malleable like “the moment of Havelock’s death” or “the moment that Ms. Peters spreads jam on her cracker”. The way to do this would be to use an omniscient narrator who clearly states that the event will happen at a particular time (Ms Peters will have her cracker on Wednesday at 12:17 pm), and make it clear that this cannot be changed. Then show the time counting down toward that – and of course tie it to the initial inequity and story drivers. There’s got to be a reason that jam cracker is important.
A way you could do it without an omniscient narrator is time travel – someone comes back from the future knowing at what time the President will be shot, for example. Then you work against this time, making it clear the story’s not about delaying or altering the time of the shooting – they have to stop the shooting before (or at) that time.
Back to the Future is kind of like this, using time travel to predict the important event that brings on the climax.
Can’t the question of Optionlock or Timelock be answered by asking:
Off the top of my head, I can think of limits that would push a story forward when coupled with consequences (aka stakes):
I think that another part of the puzzle that needs to be looked at is consequences or stakes. They are going to arrive if the character doesn’t solve the problem even if there isn’t a set time.
Did they arrive because there wasn’t enough time; because there were no viable options left; because a previous decision caused a limitation in future options; etc.?
It does seem that Optionlock has the most flexibility, whereas Timelock is a one trick pony. Working outside the constraints of Dramatica language, I think a person could call it Optionlimits and come up with a large list of things that limit options including time.
I am not criticizing the language of Dramanta just as I would not criticize Spanish for not having possessives. Different ways of thinking and methodologies bring us to the same destination. Having a specific category for Timelocks is reasonable because it is a common way of driving the action and creating tension or urgency.
As for the original question, are Timelocks always fixed? I think they must be or be perceived to be without the illusion being broken.
For example, if a character tells your protagonist that he will blow up the world in 24 hours unless the protagonist pays a ransom – either the ransom must be paid because the protagonist perceived the consequence to be real or the consequence must occur. If neither of those happen, then it was just an Optionlock in disguise as a Timelock.
I wonder too, if all Timelocks start out as an Optionlock because we have two options always. To believe the Timelock or not to believe the Timelock.