rachelmanija: (Default)
rachelmanija ([personal profile] rachelmanija) wrote 2022-07-20 08:27 pm (UTC)

A short story by Stephen King, "The Ledge" - almost the entire thing is a man trying to walk along a narrow ledge on a high building.

The Drawing of the Dark has multiple examples of this but my favorite is a sequence where a character has to dispose of a pound of cocaine taped to his chest while locked inside an airplane bathroom.

Forfeit, by Dick Francis, for a sequence in which the hero has to transport his disabled wife and her breathing equipment down a flight of stairs while drunk as the villain made him chug a glass of whiskey.

All of those are also great examples of giving characters a difficult task and then paying attention to the details that make it even more difficult in unexpected ways - the tape is hard to remove, a pigeon attacks the guy on the ledge, etc.

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