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. These stories manifest as a closed circle, that is, your characters end up somewhere and can't get out until the story is resolved. The bridge is out. There's an apocalypse outside. They're drifting through space.

I've been watching Under the Dome. That's partially behind all this, to be sure. But it's also just a thing that's always in my head.

I like this particular type of tale because it keeps people from calling the pesky outside for help. They're on their own. There's conflict, and peril, and no one can hear you scream. It's fun.

I've used this before. Murder on Ruby Rock was a…, well, murder, on an island, during a storm. "My Soul to Take" was some kind of hell dimension. The Midnight Carnival takes place almost entirely within the eponymous carnival (which is actually a circus, if you want to get technical). Even the very, very short story "Fomalhaut" is confined to an escape pod.

I'll probably use it again in the future. I have, in my plot cache, "A handful of people are trapped by a snowstorm. One of them has a secret." That could go any number of ways. Drama, sci-fi, horror. Or comedy. Or romance. I could write one of each.

I blame cell phones for all this. These days, it's pretty damn hard to be incommunicado. Everyone is connected, all the time. People don't get lost or cut off from the outside anymore. How many problems could be solved by calling for help? Oh no, my friends are being murdered, I should call the cops. So you have to take that ability away from them. And then stop them from just leaving.

There's a conflict happening here, and you're going to deal with it, damn it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to trap some people in a small space. I'll see you Wednesday.