#48: The Button

by fuzzyfive on March 16th, 2011
Posted In: Comic

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.