The Realm of Possibility

I have sometimes had some difficulty with the genre I am now writing in. For instance, many TV shows feature amateur sleuths, and it can sometimes stretch the limits of your imagination that the sleuths, who are neither police detectives nor private investigators, just happen to have murders to solve wherever they go.

Action films can also stretch your imagination this way. (In fact, I poke a little fun at this idea in Action Men with Silly Putty.)I've seen an episode of MythBusters where they proved that the bus jump in the movie Speed, where the bus jumps at high speed over an unfinished gap of highway, is physically and scientifically impossible.

So,I've been trying to avoid situations that are scientifically impossible in my own writing. Still, I like playing right at the edge of what might be possible.

I've been doing all sorts of research for future Action Men stories, discovering a plethora of helpful Youtube videos. As I do so, I sometimes think we need to rethink what we consider possible. A lot of amazing and astounding things exist in the realm of possibility.

I've been watching videos of accomplished athletes in extreme sports such as parkour (the art of avoiding obstacles,) stunt biking, extreme skateboarding, etc. If I tried any of these stunts, I would end up in the hospital and, possibly, with a video to enter into America's Funniest Home Videos. However, certain talented people can do stunts that seem to be completely impossible -- and would be for the average person -- and accomplish them safely. I've seen stunt bikers hop off of roofs and land right without harm or do flips in the air jumping over cars. The same goes with intellectual talents. I recently learned about a guy who solved four Rubik's Cubes in a matter of minutes while holding his breath underwater.

I will try not to give away any spoilers here about my latest book or future book projects, but my brain has come up with some fairly crazy plot ideas for Action Men with Silly Putty. As I was researching these ideas, as nutty as they seemed to me, I found there were some other nutty people out there in Youtube world, that experimented with these very ideas. I was glad they did, because I watched the videos and had some assurance as to plausibility and how my ideas would work out in theory.

For a future story, hopefully coming soon, I wondered today about an object that would not ordinarily be thought of as a weapon and wondered if it could be used as one. A Google search quickly brought up three articles and a video that address that very thing.

I suppose it should fill us with optimism that seemingly impossible things are sometimes possible!