So I'm working on this piece that is most likely a novella. There's a more detailed summary on other threads, but what you need to know for this question is that the story follows three teenage girls who are telekinetic. In this world, telekinesis works by moving objects with electric fields emitted from hands. The girls have been kidnapped and are being used to generate powerful electricity to create explosive devices for a terrorist organization, though they do not know this. When a new girl arrives and tells them what's really going on, they plan to escape, which involves lots of twists and turns. I would like to develop more narrative before the new girl's arrival, the girls' realization that they are aiding murder, and their escape. I'd like to flesh out the characters more, show some of their day-to-day psyche, demonstrate their psyches to the reader. I have some ideas for subplots to flesh out the beginning (such as the terrorists racially taunting one of the girls). But here's the issue. The girls have been kidnapped. They're being held captive in one single room (and do not and cannot get out of that room until they escape). So any plotpoints, prior to their escape, are them sitting in this one room where they're trapped, just talking. There might be something to the racial piece, but because I'm solidly inside the head of a character who happens to be white, it's all just sitting in a room and talking. There are similar problems with other plotpoints I've brainstormed. My question is: How can I make subplots that all take place in a very constrained environment interesting?
What you've got here, this particular part of the story, is what's known as a chamber drama—it becomes all about subtext and human drama under intense pressure. 2 ways I can think of to handle it—the Lifeboat approach or the Steam bath approach. Lifeboat—I think there were 2 different movies called Lifeboat, one probably a remake of the other. I think one was Hitchcock. It's a distillation of a particular approach to dramatic storytelling, and originally came from theater, where drama is everything. You take a group of people from all walks of life, all stuck together in a situation such as a lifeboat after the ship sinks. It's a high-pressure situation, and the highest stakes. Life and death, not only for the group, but for individuals in the group pitted against each other. There's only enough food and water for a handful of them to last long enough to reach the nearest land, but there are too many on the boat (this was a sub-plot of Alien when they talked about getting on the lifeboat, but was solved by the Xenomorph itself by killing most of them off before that happened). The way you play this kind of situation is toward the beginning you have the characters revealing their lives and their inner drives in this situation where they're all trauma bonded. Then as time goes on things get worse, the pressure goes up, and soon people are deciding who needs to die so some can survive. Of course they all have very different ideas about this and different desperate tactics to try to enforce their own agenda before it's done to them. One thing that really grabbed me was, at the end, when a handful of ragged survivors got picked up by a ship, the captain now had to undergo court martial for things he did in a pure survival situation that were actually the right things at the time, but went against naval law. Once back in civilization you're held accountable to modern civilized standards, though in order to survive and for the group to survive, you had to become a savage. The rule for this kind of drama is—in order for one character to survive another one needs to die. This applies to each of them. Steam bath—This was a PBS program I saw when I was probably in my late teens or early 20's. It was a play made into a movie, very minimalist approach. It took place entirely in a steam bath, everybody wearing just a towel and flip-flops. It soon became clear nobody could get out and there was something magical or religious going on. Doors wouldn't open, until one of the characters had had his big scene of life revelation before the others. What I mean is, they all started discussing their lives, looking back and relating what they feel good about and what they're bothered by. This would move from one character to another, and would get really intense, people asking powerful questions and making accusations etc until the person was either reduced to a weeping wreck, terrified of what's about to happen, or in one case actually felt like he had lived a very fulfilling and rewarding life and had no regrets about dying if that's his fate. When a character reached this point (it's essentially the life review known to all religions at the transition to the afterlife) the door would swing open and only the one person could go through it. Outside all that was visible was swirling steam that he or she would walk into uncertainly or boldly or fearfully, according to their own appraisal of their life and how open they were to facing the end. No resolution was ever given, it remained open-ended, and turned out to be about the different ways we all have of dealing or putting off dealing with resolution in our lives and our moral culpability. I think it ended with the final character walking out into the steam and the camera went with him, but it faded to black or white before we saw what happened there. Of course your characters are neither in a lifeboat nor a steam bath, but take the essence of each approach and see how you can apply it to your specific scenario. I think it would definitely be a high-pressure and high-stakes situation in which the characters would feel compelled to deal each in their own ways with preparing for death. Some would tend to accuse the others as a defense mechanism against facing their own inner guilt or fear. Some might feel magnanimous or calm and confident. Some might want to give anything the tormentors want to them in hopes of getting some clemency, including selling the other girls out for their own gain.
And after writing all that I realize they're really the same technique, except that one is dialogue only and the other involves a lot of action—people getting chucked overboard while the rest are asleep, murder attempts, stealing food rations etc. Edit—Now I see a difference. The situations create different dramatic opportunities. In Lifeboat the characters are still alive but some must die, and there's ample weapons and opportunities for attempted murder. In Steam Bath they're really already dead or it's inevitable they all will die (the steam bath might be purgatory). So there's no throwing each other to the wolves, only their own inner ways of dealing with the inevitable.
Let's see what pops out of my head. - Discussing their pasts (opportunity for flashbacks) - A bit where they pay an inordinate amount of attention to a bug crawling on the floor (metaphor opportunity) - Daily life events - Long conversation with a partially sympathetic (or fake sympathetic) captor. - The girls attempt to repair some broken clothing and how annoying it is because they can't sew. - Practicing singing and how this affects their captors. - Creating a secret code that the write in the stones. 'S what I got.
Well thought out dialogue is a good saving grace for confined spaces, think meaningful with a a hint of mystery. Also little gestures that mean alot, like sharing resources and stuff like that. (or the opposite if they don't get along) (Shrugs) It really relies upon the subtle and the meaningful things that can be done in a small space, it is just a bit of work to pull it off and pull it off well. It is possible though, so just do the best you can, and get some help if you need it.
I know I'm a couple days late, but I just want to thank you all profusely for your advice! Now this is interesting. I've heard of this one time and time again from workshop leaders as a character development exercise, in the strictest and most literal sense (literally throw your characters into a random boat in an ocean and see what happens). I'm having trouble enacting it in my own text, mostly because everything is so routine as to be mind-numbing, but it's a beautiful description. Now this is fascinating, and a different way of looking at unresolved situations. I've done some unresolved short stories myself, with very much the ending you described, but again what you've done for me is widen an exercise into a real and viable plot development point. Thank you again, Xoic, for your gorgeously-written and thoroughly thought-out answers! GraceLikePain: Thank you for your wonderful list! The above is probably the one that jumped out at me the most (some of the others are untenable because of further constraints, but this and a few others are fantastic and really opened doors for me!). Thank you for taking your time and thoroughly thinking through your response! And thank you too, Cave Troll, for the very carefully described advice. That makes a lot of sense! Easier said and read than put into action, but I very much appreciate the guidance. Thank you all for your wonderful advice and for this community!
