Inspired by alternative film structures
The Sliding Doors structure
I was talking with a writer friend last night, and he was saying that the idea behind the chick flick Sliding Doors is an exceptionally interesting, cool idea.
…But it’s a chick flick.
The idea, if you haven’t seen it, is that a woman runs toward a train just as it’s about to take off. In one scenario, she catches it and is on time to work. In the other, she misses it. Both stories unravel in different directions. It’s an excellent idea… so why has no other movie done it? We could lament Hollywood’s lack of ideas, about how they ALWAYS* play it safe and the only exceptions are independent films or chick flicks… or we could jump on this grenade of an idea and use it for a challenge (mostly because I told him “We should challenge ourselves to come up with something where we use the structural idea in our stories”).
Other genres are free to use the premise, but no one does; mainstream Hollywood cinema for example is utterly inundated with typical-narrative movies that never push the envelope (Dark Knight being an obvious exception).
So let’s use an idea that an awful chick flick used, but make speculative fiction any damn story you want out of it.
Challenge: come up with a story where a pivotal moment causes a branch in narrative, so that the story has two or more directions it could go. Follow both of these within one piece and see where they lead. No word count suggestion, but the shorter, the more appropriate for meetings.
Alternatives: use other ‘non-mainstream’ or ‘non-linear’ structures to tell a story; more movie examples: Memento, Dark Knight, Pulp Fiction, Run Lola Run
