Welcome to Wednesday! Today I'm starting with the last device from the Writer's Toolbox, the Protagonist Game. This uses a few different palettes to provide random options for protagonist, goal, obstacle, and action.
I appreciate having something that actually tries to drive plot for once, because that is one of my weakest points when it comes to writing. Having the "action" palette makes it much easier to get things started.
Protagonist - Joy, from the rock band
Goal - to get rich
Obstacle - fear of heights
Action - gets special training
“Joy, honey, if we’re going to make this tour a success, then you need to be able to take part in all of the special effects. How are you supposed to be a part of the big show if you can’t even handle the entrance?” Jamie sounded exhausted, even though he should have known that this was going to happen. It wasn’t like I’d ever hidden my fear of heights before. Jamie’d been with us for long enough, he’d seen me through the panic attacks at the Space Needle. This wasn’t new information for anyone.
So with this tour that was supposed to be the biggest one we’d ever done, the one that would take us coast to coast in the US and up into Canada and would make us the kind of money we could rock out on for decades, according to Jamie, why did everyone decide that the best way to start the show was to have us all floating down from the ceiling on wires? We wouldn’t even be standing on a platform or anything, just hooked up in some kind of harness and at the mercy of whatever pulley system the tech crew was rigging up! It was complete madness, and everyone knew it. I was just the only one willing to say anything.
“Joy, it’s not that bad, see?” I looked up in time to see Lisa step off the catwalk and start falling down toward the stage on her harness. I wasn’t the only one who screamed a little - she hadn’t exactly warned anyone she was going to be stress-testing the rig right then, and so the fall was a little faster than they had originally planned, but the brakes kicked in and she gently landed on the stage next to me. She giggled, dropping a curtsy to the empty auditorium. “See? Nothing to it.”
“Don’t - don’t do that again without warning us, please,” a voice stammered overhead, and I looked to the tech booth in the back to see Eric, the one who handled most of our special effects, gripping his chest as though he were trying to keep his heart in place. “We have to be ready for you before you test the equipment. You know this, Lisa.”
She waved his concerns away. “Oh, bah, I trust you,” she said airily. “You’ll never let us get hurt.” She turned to me then, crossing her arms. “You trust Eric and his crew, don’t you?”
I was still agape at having watched our bass player step into thin air and hope for the best. I finally managed to get control of my jaw again. “Of course I do,” I said, as evenly as I could. “However, gravity is a fickle bitch, and I don’t trust her for a second.”
“You know, Joy does have a point,” I heard Emily call from above us. She and Nina were looking much less comfortable up on the catwalk than they had before Lisa had dropped to the stage. “No offense to you and your team, Eric! It’s just, you know…gravity’s the law, and all.”
“Gravity is a powerful force that is worthy of our respect,” he intoned, sounding much calmer now that no one was stress-testing the rig or his heart. “We respect it, of course, but it’s not without risk that we do this.”
I turned to Jamie, gesturing to Eric. “You see? Not without risk. Why should we be so risky? I’d much rather, you know, walk onto the stage like a sane, not-risking-my-life person, than falling from the sky like Adrenaline Annie here.” I hooked a thumb at Lisa, who barely glanced up from her phone. Once the attention was off of her, she usually went back to scrolling through her social feeds and ignoring everyone until something interesting happened again.
Jamie rolled his eyes. “Because, dear heart, we want to make an entrance that people will remember,” he said, his eyes glittering in the way that usually means he has An Idea. “The best way to get over a fear is to face it,” he added abruptly, and he pulled out his phone. “Eric, can you please get the rest of the band down here? I think it’s time we take this to the professionals.”
#
Apparently, the “professionals” were the people who ran a ropes course out in the middle of nowhere. It was attached to a brewery, and we were told multiple times that the only order we could do things was ropes course, then brewery - we were not permitted to go the other way around. I found this highly unfair, because the only way I was going to be the slightest bit comfortable up on a bunch of trees, walking on ropes and connected by carabiners to other ropes was if I was at least a little tipsy. But no, something something legal waivers something. So rude.
Lisa, of course, was thrilled by the whole thing. She took to the training like a duck to water, and was raring to go up the net and into the trees as soon as they let us go. I stayed at the bottom, belaying the others while they climbed the net up into the trees and delaying my ascent for as long as I could. Emily and Nina didn’t seem as thrilled as Lisa was to go into the trees, especially when it started to rain, but they made their way up the next and onto the first couple of obstacles with minimal complaints. Most of the complaints were about how Nina’s hair was never going to recover from the combination of the rain and the helmet, which, fair.
Jamie, I noticed, was nowhere to be found. The instructors told us that he had made his way to the brewery before he found out the correct order of events, and so wouldn’t be able to take part in the ropes course, so sad, of course he was terribly sorry to miss it. Right. If I had known I could weasel out of it by having a beer, I’d have held my nose and drank one, too.
Finally, I was the only member of the band left on the ground, and there was nothing for it - I had to start climbing. One of the instructors took up the belaying position on the ground below me, and I started to climb the net. It was not great - the net was made for someone who was much taller that I was, and so I had to stretch uncomfortably far to reach the next rung in the net to continue forward. It had been raining for a little while now, and so the rope was getting slick. I didn’t drop the rope, but my feet slipped off of it a few times, leaving me dangling like a fly in a spider’s web while I tried to scrabble my way back to some kind of footing. It felt like it took hours to get to the top, and once I was there, another instructor was at the top, ready to get me established on the first obstacle. That’s when I looked down.
Big mistake. Big, huge, monumental mistake. I knew I had climbed forever, but it didn’t occur to me that that meant I was twenty feet off the ground, or just how far twenty feet was. I was standing on a rounded log up in the sky, gripping onto two ropes that were attached to my waist and to a rope strung above the log, and I froze. I had no idea how I was going to get down, but I needed to get down as soon as possible.
The instructor was talking to me, but my ears were buzzing so loudly I could hardly hear him. I forced myself to look at his face and try to focus on the sounds coming from his mouth, and eventually I realized that he was offering to walk me through the first obstacle. “We’ll do it together, and get you to the platform,” he said, speaking a little louder than strictly necessary. “Once you’re on the platform, if you want, you can get down from there on the zip line.”
All I heard were the words “get down,” and I nodded vigorously. Together, we walked step by step, him walking backwards and holding onto the ropes that attached to the guide line above the log, while I shuffled forward and did my best not to look down again. Once we got to the platform, I relaxed - it was a large, flat surface, with no round logs or anything that would cause me to slip and fall. I looked around for the ladder or stairs or whatever I would need in order to get down, and that’s when the words “zip line” finally made themselves heard.
The instructor who led me there squeezed my shoulder, wished me luck, then headed back onto the rest of the course to keep an eye out on the rest of the band. Another employee was on the platform, already working on changing my ropes to be hooked to a zip line that would take me down to the ground at an angle that was positively dizzying. “Wait, can’t I get down some other way?”
He smiled sympathetically. “Sorry. This is it. All you need to do is hold on,” as he wrapped my hands around a horizontal bar, “and fall forward. You don’t have to jump or anything, you can just lean forward until you fall and you’ll be just fine. You can even sit on the edge of the platform to do it, if you’d rather.”
I sat down, legs dangling over the edge, and eyed the path I’d be taking at entirely too fast a speed. There was no way I was going to be able to do this on my own. “Can you, like, give me a little push or something?” I said, looking back up at him and trying to keep the rain out of my eyes.
“Sorry. You can do it, though. I believe in you.” He sounded entirely too chipper for the situation. I took a deep breath. “Just so you know, I’m going to have to scream a lot,” I said, and I leaned forward until gravity took over.
I’m a singer in a rock band, so I can scream with the best of them. Even I had to admit that my scream was one of my better ones - it was pitched perfectly like the opening of our first single, “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof.” I made it to the ground and was caught by yet another employee, who kept me from keeling over as my knees tried to give way.
“Good job!” he said enthusiastically, working quickly to unhook all the ropes and set me free. “You did great. Nice scream, by the way!”
“Thanks,” I said, adrenaline rushing too hard to feel embarrassed. “I’m just so happy to be on the ground. Which way to the brewery, by the way?” He laughed and pointed me to the station where I could remove my helmet and harness first, then directed me to the brewery.
Two weeks later, we were all on the catwalk, ready to make our entrance for the first show in our tour. “Are you sure about this?” Emily said, twisting her hands a little. She rarely knew what to do with her hands when she didn’t have her drumsticks going, and waiting for the show to begin with nothing to do but stand there was one of her personal circles of hell.
“We’ve got this,” Nina said, bouncing a guitar pick back and forth over her knuckles. She’d toyed with the idea of coming down while wearing her guitar, but ultimately decided against it, not willing to risk her instrument in case anything should happen. Since she didn’t have her guitar, it meant Lisa couldn’t have her bass, either, and we had had to take her phone away from her before the show to make sure she was paying attention to the start of the show. It wouldn’t do to have one of the band members show up on stage late because she got stuck scrolling.
“So long as you’re OK with it,” Emily fretting, squeezing my shoulder. I was sitting on the edge of the catwalk, legs dangling, trying to keep breathing. I smiled up at her, though I know the smile was pretty artificial.
“We can do this. I can do this,” I said. I put a hand up, and the rest of the girls reached over to stack them together in our usual pre-show routine. The lights in the auditorium went down, and I could hear the audience start to scream in excitement. “Let’s give them what they paid for, shall we?” I said.
With one last deep breath, I leaned forward until I started to fall, and screamed the first note of “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,” holding it as long as I could while the rest of the band landed around me and picked up their instruments. The crowd swelled around us, and I grinned. Yeah, I can do this. We can do this.
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