How To Avoid Being Stranded On A Deserted Island By Absurd Hypotheticals

"You expect me to talk, Sauron?"

"No, Mr. Isildur! I expect you to die!"

In fact, the more details we learn about the situation, the more distracting it becomes. It's only after you learn this whole civilization is an outgrowth of a Sino-American Alliance that you think (as Randall Munroe pointed out), "Hey, for a society that's supposed to be half American, half Chinese, there sure aren't a lot of Chinese people around.

As Dorkman said, and as I'm sure we've talked about on commentaries, it's important to have the details worked out for yourself so there's an internal consistency apparent, but that's all texture. Never stop the story to explain how your not-poker version of poker works.

Any detail included that isn't necessary for understanding the ultimate point of the story is technically a detraction.

The point where the amount of detractions will sway the opinion of each audience member will be different, but generally, the lesser the better.

*grumble grumble grumble*

Oh the crush I had.

"This is important. This means something."

In as much as I had a specific example in my head, I was thinking of Marty encountering Principle Strickland in the Alternate 1985 from Back to the Future II, with Strickland's comment, "The school burned down twenty years ago!"

Or whatever it is.

Do we want the plane to be the location of the central conflict with "mission control" as a supporting plot? Or is the plane more of a Macguffin and the central conflict happens in mission control? Is our main character on the plane or on the ground? And in either case, what are they trying to do?

If they're on the plane, then they're either trying to (A) Land the plane and/or (B) Stop the disease. If they're trying to land the plane...well, then, we're pretty much talking about Airplane! here. So maybe not so much. And based on Jeffrey's write up, not so much with trying to stop the disease.

When you get right down to it, there's only so much characters trapped on a plane can do and a good story requires characters doing things. So let's put the main action on the ground.

So our guy (or girl) is...what? An air traffic controller? Somebody from the CDC?

Isn't viral hemorrhagic fever the Ebola virus or something like that? The term seems familiar in the context of these kinds of movies.

Wow, neat. I always feel like I'm better at finding payoffs versus setups, so I'm going to jump in towards the end, but this should be interesting.

Man, you guys really can't tell our voices apart, can you?