Race against Time
The race against time. Perhaps one of the most popular and universal story motifs. Can Phileas Fogg get back to London before the eighty day deadline is up? Can Frodo destroy the Ring before Sauron works out what the West is up to? The tension grows, the reader’s heart beats faster. Very often it is elaborated by extra delays: the ship runs out of coal so they feed its woodwork to the boilers; the orcs capture Frodo and Sam is locked out. We see this also in the real world: we are indeed living in a race against time. Can the whole world agree to limit carbon emissions before climate catastrophe destroys civilized life? Can we save the world from covid in time to get back to tackling the climate crisis? Can the agents of freedom prevent a takeover by reactionary forces who value neither world health nor the environment? It’s an exciting time to be alive, if you can stay alive. For me, as a a writer, it’s not quite as dramatic. What I’ve found, and you may have had a similar experi...