Well-Contained Plots

Bottles. Great for cramming messages into. Also great for stories you want to keep contained.

That's right, we're talking about bottle episodes, or bottle movies. Or bottle stories in general. Terrarium fiction, I once said. You take all your plot, characters, and conflict, and you stick them in a confined space and sit back to see what happens.

Bottle stories are not necessarily bound to the bottle. There is nothing keeping the action there. It just happens to all take place there. Personally, I think it's more interesting if the bottle's been corked.

What Day Is It? And What Year? Have I Gone Back In Time Again?

You ever stop to think about the time you're living in? How the era you grew up in shaped who you are? And how ridiculous it is that we're now living in the future and everyone has a computer in their pocket and they're using it to look at cat videos and send people pictures of their junk rather than curing cancer or developing a universal translator?

115 years ago, we couldn't get an aircraft off the ground. Less than 50 years ago, we put a guy on the moon and managed to not leave him there. Now we've got robots on Mars. That's impressive, people. Be god damn impressed.

I had a point to all this, though it's gotten away from me because I am constantly amazed that we're living in the god damn future. We take for granted the time that we're living in.

Oh. Right. Time.

That's where I was going.

The Oncoming Storm

So far so good. I'm already ahead of schedule, and hopefully I'll stay that way.

I did notice something now that I'm writing instead of plotting. See, I had a clear idea of personalities for all these characters. I knew how they should think and act. But once I put them in the story, that all changed. It's like they had one personality when they were alone and a different one when they were around other people. Hmm… almost like… real people. That might just be me who acts different when anyone is around.

Either way, I've just introduced all the characters. Now they can become whoever they want. I can always go back and fix these first impressions later.

An Overwhelming Lack of Exits

Let's talk about setting. The tale that's been rolling around in my head takes place in a bed and breakfast type deal on an island. They're cut off from the mainland. The last boat out has left. There will probably be a storm. (Hint: there will definitely be a storm.) The point is, it's a Closed Circle. Nobody comes in, and nobody gets out. That keeps characters from doing pesky little things like going for help.

"That is such an overused trope!" you might say.

And you might be right. If you look at the examples on the page I linked, there are a ton. Maybe that's because it's super convenient when you don't want your characters wandering off. Maybe it's because it's a lot of fun. You can decide for yourself. For me, it's a bit of both.

Because, see, if you have a way out, insisting you can't leave gives you a little thing called a false dilemma. Which is something I find irritating and try to avoid. Say my options were "try to find the killer and stop them" or "wait around until they kill us too" while there is a perfectly good way off the island. That's not going to work for me. In my case, the choice is more like "stay here" or "swim a few miles in the frigid Pacific."