Surfacing - Second Life, Role Playing Games, a new (old) challenge

Sometimes I just need to shut off for a while. Sometimes that while is several months. So I've been engaging in hours of mindless and sometimes downright filthy activity through various avatars in Second Life.

What I learned there is that even the most detailed carefully constructed characters (some of my avatars ROCK), set in the most fascinating and detailed environments (some the the SIMs are very well imagined and meticulously designed) are still boring if nothing happens to them.

You can go out and try to make things happen, but initiating action only goes so far if the responses are uninventive or poorly executed. Really, very few people can get the hang of role playing when the animation isn't doing all the work.

So, I return now to writing one month before my 40th birthday (when the fuck did I get that old??) and just in time for the NYC Midnight screenwriting challenge.

I got open genre for my first assignment, with a bus stop for the setting, and "a lemon" for the object. Ya know, I've sat at many bus stops, in multiple countries over the years, because I didn't learn to drive until I was 32. Yet there is one particular stop that comes to mind above all with three or four others close behind.

Well, I have an idea... off to create enough conflict to make my 5 pages or less sing!