Saturday, February 7, 2009

Short story idea - Do Over

Walking my two frisky border collies this windy morning and thinking about decisions I've made during my life. We all regret many of them and wish we could have some "do-overs" but life doesn't work that way.

This idea hit me for a story but I have no idea how to flesh it out.

Let's say you got some do-overs but with conditions. The condition being you could go back and pick a point in your life where you wanted to have a do over but the on-going catch is you can't just change that one thing. From that point on, future decisions have to be different as well. Example - you decide to go back at the point of taking some stupid job and change that. Fine, but from that point on, other life choices have to be different. For instance - if you go back to your do-over point and it was BEFORE you got married, then that future choice would have to be different. When your life moved forward to that time in your "re-doing" your life, you'd have to make a different choice, in this case either to marry somebody else OR not get married.

So the point you pick for your do-over is critical because it changes everything AFTER that point. Family decisions, job decisions etc. I haven't decided how deep they need to go.

I have no idea where to go with this idea other than it was intriguing. Some smart soul will no doubt tell me it has been done and provide the name of the movie or book. If so, please do then I can see how they worked it out.