Screenwriting : Remote or timer? Which is more dramatic? by Stefano Pavone

Stefano Pavone

Remote or timer? Which is more dramatic?

Hey, guys. 

It's been a while since I showed up here - I've been busy working on my last full-length story (I'm going on a loooooooong hiatus after 20 years of writing when it's done). Current predicament is this: remote or timer? 

My final work (not counting my dialogue-free short "31", which I need to get writing) is a tech-noir set in a post-Brexit Britain in the near future (working title "Phantom Crisis"). The antihero (there really aren't that many heroes, it's really a grey-and-gray morality world, similar to the TV show "Blake's 7") has been apprehended and sent to a high-tech Gulag-like colony in the Shetland Islands - after escaping and rescuing his surviving comrades, he sets about destroying the place while the remaining prisoners are evacuated (especially after learning what kind of dark shit happens in said colony - I'm talking super-soldier experiments with human lab rats, forced labour, cremations of those executed and/or those who don't make the cut, and there's even a disturbing type of death sentence in which the victim is killed by their own worst fear). 

I'm just not sure whether to have him destroy the colony with a remote-controlled explosive device (really a series of C4 planted on key structural weaknesses) or a silent countdown timer (with the same mechanism and result) - there may or may not be a "boss fight" between him and the military in this climax. I know the concept of a modern-day Gulag-like camp sounds ludicrous, but it's something which I fear could happen in our world, if the powers that be were unbound by the chains of morality.

Any thoughts are gladly welcome.

S. P.

Maurice Vaughan 5

Hey, Stefano Pavone. Welcome back. 31 sounds interesting! I would go with the silent countdown timer because it's more suspenseful (will he escape from the colony before the timer goes off?). The boss fight would slow down his escape.

Göran Johansson

Agree. The silent countdown is something the audience can see. And wait. So it is best. An alternative is to put something on fire, and then the fire spreads, slowly, until it reaches the explosives.

Jon Shallit

Have something tick tick? That no one can find?

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