The News From Poughkeepsie - Day 6

April 27th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

New superpower (could be Third Wave, could be in another universe, whatever you like): Your character’s day is one hour longer than everyone else’s - essentially the rest of the world stops for an hour while they live on. While the potential for fun, good, mayhem, and crime is huge, the dangers are huge as well. If they are sick or injured, they would be alone for an hour with no one to help them. What would your character do with this power? Would the time of day matter (for example, would the extra hour come between 8 and 9 AM? What if it changed daily? How about any worries that your character is aging subtly faster than everyone else - every 24 days they’re one day older than the rest of the world?

[Note - this is very likely the first NfP that I will be using myself, provided I continue the Playing For Keeps universe. This changes nothing regarding the rules of you using the idea, just letting you know. :) ]

The News From Poughkeepsie is a daily blog post featuring an idea for you to take and do with what you will. Read more about it here. This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. You can take this idea, change it, make something new, and even make money off of it. All I ask is if you create something - anything! - that this post inspired you to make, please link back here.

There Are 8 Responses So Far. »

  1. Pingback by The News From Poughkeepsie - Day 6 | Try New Shit on 27 April 2008:

    [...] Go to the author’s original blog: The News From Poughkeepsie - Day 6 [...]

  2. Comment by solak on 27 April 2008:

    What if that hour with everyone else stopped is compensated by an hour of self-time-stop while the rest of the world goes on. Gotta find a closet or someplace to hide before your freeze-time! Every day!

  3. Comment by CharlesP on 27 April 2008:

    Ohhh, I like this one Mur. I can never remember what it was I saw as a kid that involved stopping time (some TV movie with kids and a stopwatch? or just that silly show where the girl was the daughter of a human and an alien who talked to her from a crystal box on her bedside table… the one with “Would you like to wish on a star” as a theme song), but I’ve always liked a good take on somebody getting more time than everybody else.

  4. Comment by Jesso on 27 April 2008:

    What if it’s not a superpower, but just a random thing that starts happening? What caused it? Is someone/something sinister behind it? If the main character alone in this? How would s/he find out if others were experiencing the same thing?

    I really like this idea :-)

  5. Comment by solak on 27 April 2008:

    Uh-oh. Watch out for duplication. According to Mark Jeffrey in his interview with J.C.Hutchins in Ultracreatives #11, the one-extra-hour-people story has been done, and was the reason why his sequel to The Pocket and the Pendant did not go to TV/Movie. It wasn’t the same as his story, but the one-line summary was indistinguishable-by-executives. Both his and the other existing show were about Jr. High or High School students, so that may have contributed to the degree of matching.

    Just a heads-up.

  6. Comment by Peter Tupper on 27 April 2008:

    A sufficiently industrious person can do a lot in an hour (assuming he or she can manipulate objects in the extra hour.)

    Of course, this could be an interesting power in the hands of a slacker: an extra hour to catch up on Daily Show reruns. Then the challenge for the character is getting Hour 25 to do something useful.

  7. Comment by Mur Lafferty on 28 April 2008:

    solak- I appreciate the warning, but that would be like telling the writer of The Incredibles that it wouldn’t work because ElastiGirl was too much like Reed Richards. (Or, in movie terms, I suppose it would be that Reed Richards was too much like ElastiGirl.)

    This is a superpower. I promise you that every story written with this power will be different. Just like every story with the super-strength power is different, or the “I’m on fire and it’s cool” power is different, and “lookit my stretchy limbs” is different. This is just an idea. Execution is the key here.

  8. Comment by solak on 1 May 2008:

    Exactly; it is up to the writer to take the concept in a new direction.
    Q.v. Orson Scott Card’s recent rebuttal of J.K.Rowling’s suit against the Harry Potter Encyclopedia.

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