New from Plotline Industries
The Skip the Montage Button!
Protagonists:
Does your adventure take you across long distances?
Does it require toiling for hours on research or production of weaponry?
Do you need to build an army one man at a time?
If you face any of these situations, you have probably used a montage. After all, nobody wants to see a hero wait half an hour to go through airport security or highlight a 200-page printout in the office. You don’t particularly want to do those things yourself.
Though they save time, montages waste valuable resources. To show the passage of time, you need multiple costume and location changes, a well-practiced “determination” look and a good song that will make someone else a lot of money. Frankly, a travel montage that shows you suffering through all the elements in a variety of locations requires you to actually be in all of those locations and suffer through all of those elements. If you’re out there anyway, why not just suck it up and make the trek?
There’s a better way. The Skip the Montage Button dispenses with the need to show the passage of time. How? Just set it to the appropriate activity you want to skip, press and poof!, you’re at the next interesting point of your story. Several preset options are available, including:
- Perilous journey
- Makeover
- Growing old together
- Training
- Research, scientific
- Research, legal/historical
- Recruitment of rag-tag band of underdogs
- Courtship
- much, much more!
How does it work? The Skip the Montage Button works entirely on trust. Montages exist because an activity is crucial to advance a plot, but the details of that activity are not all that important. The montage shows you that Rocky worked hard and got fit, or that the Blues Brothers and the kids at the orphanage went around town to promote their big show at the Palace Hotel Ballroom. The point of the montage can be expressed in a sentence fragment.
Instead of all that wasted effort, simply explain what you don’t want to slog through, set The Skip the Montage Button, press it and continue your adventure.
It’s that easy!
Sure, it’s a little expository, but as a protagonist, how many times have you answered the phone, responded with the caller’s name and then repeated back the information you were just told? Who are you doing that for? Save the storytelling for the important parts and leave the gaps in between the good bits to us.
Um… okay. Really random. But, Otto looks so cute on Claire’s back!
Return of the NPR hat!!
Breakfast looks so embarrassed in that last panel! I love how expressive your drawings are. Also, where can I order a skip the montage button? I really need one.
That pitchfork might come in handy.
In panel 3, is Otto really looking forward to skipping the montage, or just indecently pleased to be holding, er, “hands” with two cute girls at once?
This is one of the most excellent ways I’ve seen the fourth wall broken in a long, long time XD
I love Otto’s >=< smile, and also Poultry weekly. XD
How did I not also see the pineapple shorts? L’dMAO on that one.
I mean, how does he even WEAR shorts? Hee…
I love how Otto is raised up in the air when they’re holding hands. >.<
So we’ve had:
- Claire wearing a pineapple outfit in comic #3
- The Dentist wears a pineapple tie
- Now Breakfast’s shorts are pineapple
I’m sensing a theme here…