You Can Be One of Them

· 2 min read

I have been known to enjoy crafting a good premise from time to time.

But what if I showed you how I do it? Let’s use one of my favorite digital artifacts.

That is the story for Soldat. A 2D action game.

It is indeed like Quake except 2D and it does allow you to be one of them. I’ve played the game quite a bit, but I’ve read this line dozens of times now through the years.

https://www.soldat.pl/en/

There is so much to unpack in this story.

  • Why was the decision made?
  • Did they calmly meet about this beforehand and reach consensus?
  • What might happen if only one of them is left? Do they win, or is that a loss?

Poems are falling out of this idea already.

Of all these angles, the most interesting seems to be the meeting where they decided to kill each other. Digging into it:

  • Someone makes a slide deck
  • Someone raises a concern about parking
  • All in favor of killing each other, say “aye”
  • I think maybe the dirt lot behind the abandoned Cub Foods might be a good place to kill each other, what do you think?
  • Does Saturday work for everyone?
  • Is there a Facebook event?

This is the point where I'd get started. An easy first line might be something like

They met Saturday morning
in the parking lot
behind the abandoned Cub Foods.

Now the page is no longer blank.

The temptation is going to be to explain why they decided.
Resist it.
The poem is the meeting, not the motive.