Okay. I want to use a flood as a plot device, but I want to run the scenario past you folks first.
If someone were walking through a desert canyon, and got caught up in a flash flood, is it completely unbelivable that she might survive? Especially if she grabbed onto something large and floating? Or would she get pulled under too quickly and hit her head on something?
Thoughts?
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Key word search recommendation: arroyo flash flood.
I cubic foot of fresh water weighs 68 pounds, moving at a 20 mph velocity, a one-foot high standing wave crashing into someone walking would be equivalent to being hit and bowled down by a large child on a bicycle.
Posted by luapc (Member # 2878) on :
Be careful in equating believability to reality. Just because something is real doesn't mean it'll be believable. Many real life things, when explained, are not believed, while many fictional things seem completely believable.
The reason for this is due in a large part to the author and how real they make something seem. Hollywood is great at this. They often create scenes using "movie magic" that are impossible, but are completely accepted by the audience. An author of a written novel does the same thing, but with words.
So whether or not this scene becomes believable to the reader seems to me up to you as the author. If you lay it out right, and set it up so it seems possible to the reader, there isn't any reason why it wouldn't be accepted by the reader, even if it were impossible. Believability isn't reality, it's just good writing.
Posted by BoredCrow (Member # 5675) on :
Right, which is why I called it a 'believability issue.' Perhaps you can design a world so that someone could fall of the top of a ten story building and not die (Matrix), and I do agree that it is up to the ingenuity of the writer.
But though the story I'm referencing is fantasy, the character has no special powers, so I want to make sure that anyone reading it isn't going to go "WTF????" if she survives.
Posted by InarticulateBabbler (Member # 4849) on :
I wouldn't. I know people that have survived them (not in a desert canyon). I'd have to actually be drawn a picture (figuratively speaking) of someone dying in one--unless, of course they drowned.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Group of people were caught in a flash flood in southern Utah the other day, two were swept away and drowned, but the rest of them were able to hang onto something and survive:
