The Friday Challenge - 5/7/10

 
This week in The Friday Challenge

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Kersley Fitzgerald takes a deep dive into the realm of serious writing and begins a new series on the subject of Point of View: what's the terminology, what works, what are the limitations, and which should you use when. Join the discussion...

Henry Vogel gets asked to act his age, and decides, "No, thank you, I'd rather not." Just what is age-appropriate behavior, anyway, and why are some people so obsessed with making other people conform to it? Join the discussion...

Bruce Bethke describes the one absolutely essential thing that all writers need, and how to either get it if you don't already have it or get more of it if you do. Strangely enough, though, there isn't a discussion thread, so we can only say, Read the post... (And then express our mild surprise that not one person has yet asked us to explain "The Great Eye of Sarnoff.")

Splattering Guts for Fun & Profit gets down 'n' dirty about gunpowder, and asks, given that all known rocketry experiments here on Earth began with gunpowder, would it even be possible for a species that does not share our biochemistry and does not at some point in its history invent the gun to have the dream of someday reaching the stars, and in time to become spacefarers?

Then, in a remarkable display of the sort of unrehearsed raw creativity that we truly love to see, M and Avery demonstrate that yes, it is possible for such a species to have the dream. Okay, lads, you've covered that part of the question adequately. Now take it to the next level and show us how such a species might escape the atmosphere of their planet without first inventing solid-fuel rocketry. Join the discussion...

Ultimate Geek Fu discovers what is perhaps the ultimately ultimate pinnacle of utter geekdom—writing Perl code in Klingon—and then settles down to handicapping the first wave of forthcoming summer blockbuster movies. Which ones look like they will merely stink? Which promise to be so bad they'll require ventilating the theater between showings? And is it really true that there has never been a good movie based on a Saturday Night Live skit? Join the discussion...

Also, Kersley Fitzgerald explores the deadly influence of Thanksgiving with the family on NaNoWriMo, the inmates discuss the view from their respective places in the asylum, and Asimov's finally moves into the 1990s. All this and more, this week in—The Friday Challenge!


Folk Tales of the Final Frontier

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Because of the remarkable turnout for last month's challenge, "Folk Tales of the Final Frontier," we are taking a few more days to finish judging the entries and plan to announce the results on Sunday. In the meantime, if you haven't read them, there's still time to read and comment on the entries and to vote for your favorite. Read the entries...

And now, a new lesser Friday Challenge.


Short Attention Span Theater

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When I was a kid, 30 minute sitcoms actually had 25 minutes of material with only five minutes of commercials while hour-long programs ran 50 minutes. These days, the 30 minute sitcom runs 19 to 20 minutes and the hour-long program around 40 minutes. What has caused this drop in actual content? Some would say that programs are more expensive to produce than they used to be. Perhaps that's true, but try getting actual production costs from studios so you can prove the point. (Example: New Line Cinema, a movie rather than TV studio, denied royalties to both Tolkein's heirs and Peter Jackson because New Line claimed The Lord of the Rings movies hadn't make any profits. It took lawsuits from Jackson and the Tolkein Estate to open the books and reveal the accounting tricks.)

I think there's another explanation behind TV show shrinkage. We, as a population, no longer have the attention span necessary to watch 25 or 50 minutes of actual programming. We can only sit through 90 to 120 minute movies if we go no more than 10 minutes without an explosion, shoot-out, car chase or typical buddy-style comic banter. Romantic comedies work under a different set of rules but must, every 10 minutes or so, have a breakup, a reconciliation, a sex scene, a comic double entendre, a scene where one would-be-lover discovers the other would-be-lover in the embrace of someone else or a forbidden, passionate kiss.

That brings us to Short Attention Span Theater. In the future, sitcoms will only last four minutes, followed by two minutes of commercials then a different four minute sitcom. Dramas will last eight minutes, split by a two minute commercial break after the first four minutes. Not only will our attention spans not be taxed, the networks will still get all of their commercial minutes, too! Your challenge is to write the story for one of these short attention span TV episodes. You do not have to write the script, just the story. We're talking something that will make flash fiction look long-winded. As with any story, you must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you write 500 words, you'd better be writing the story for an eight minute drama!

As always, we are playing by the loosely enforced official rules of the Friday Challenge, and playing for whatever is behind Door #3. The deadline for this one is when the rooster crows at the first light of dawn on Friday, May 14, with the winner to be announced on Sunday, May 16.

And remember: have fun!