Everlasting Trope: Dash or Die

I don’t know what the real name of this trope is, but it generally works like this: there’s a ticking clock of some lethal kind and the character has to run–and I mean RUN–to make it in time.

Run to slam a gate to keep the monster out.

Race to deliver a letter before a dreadful misunderstanding occurs.

Hurry to get out of the city before curfew lockdown.

Sprinting through field and forrest with the hounds baying just behind you.

You get the idea.

On the surface, this seems like a pretty straightforward trope, and I suppose it is, but since I find that I actually use and think about this trope in my daily life, I think it’s worth exploring.

Where do we see this trope? Why does it exist? Why is it that we don’t get bored of such an obvious and common narrative tool?

For Instance

Off the top of my head I can think of two examples of this trope that impacted me, and I’m going to use them for the analysis.

The first is Shasta in The Horse and His Boy. Shasta’s companion, Aravis, has been wounded by a lion and must recover. Both talking horses, Bree and Hwin, are completely spent and must rest. But Shasta doesn’t get to rest. He has to keep going to warn of invasion. He can only just hope to precede the attackers by a very little bit, if at all. He has to run as fast as he can (remember, he’s already exhausted) in hopes that word can reach Archenland in time. If he doesn’t make it, Archenland won’t make it. If he does, they have a chance.

Thankfully, Shasta makes it.

The second example is of a far more serious nature, as it is based in actual history. It is the movie Gallipoli. In the film there are two extremely fast runners who enlist and fight in WWI. Towards the end of the film there is an assault planned by the ANZAC forces, meant to follow bombardment and proceed in three waves. The timing is bungled, and the first two waves are slaughtered almost instantly. There is some disagreement and miscommunication as to whether or not the third wave should proceed (it being quite clear to the viewer that they will be slaughtered just like the first two waves).

With disconnected phone lines, one of the runners is given a message to halt the third wave. He sprints. His friend–the other sprinter–is in the third wave. If the runner makes it, all those men are saved. If he doesn’t, they aren’t.

The runner doesn’t make it. The wave is sent to death.

Creating Tension

Here’s the most obvious reason for the dash or die trope. Well done, a ticking clock creates tremendous tension. I honestly have never figured out what the difference is between the well-done ones and the poorly done ones. I only recognize the difference in what I think and feel.

When poorly done, the ticking clock feels silly and forced. I don’t really believe that anyone is in danger, and I don’t feel the fear and desperation of the runner. To me this indicates that the author didn’t enter into that tension, didn’t really put lives at stake, but simply overlaid it onto the scene because they wanted more tension and didn’t really know how else to go about it. I suspect this, because I can always tell when I am trying to “add tension” to my scenes but don’t personally feel it…it ends up being very paint-by-the-numbers. The stakes could be the fate of the world, and nobody will care.

When well done, the stakes could be relatively low (a mild misunderstanding) but my heart will still race. I wish I knew the trick to this, because it astounds me, and impresses me when well executed.

Value of Fierce Incentive

For the runner themselves, the incentive is razor-sharp. It’s dragging them like ropes, even against the will of their body. When dealing with motive, characters are often given a wide variety and it’s just a matter of context and timing as to which of those motives end up having the most driving power for action. It’s complex. Motives conflict, and muddy the waters, which can be interesting, but can also muddy our understanding of why a character is doing something, or why it’s important.

Not here. We know exactly what’s at stake, and we know when it needs to happen, and we know why the protagonist is so desperate, why they are able to push past their normal physical limits. Everything is on the table. The incentive to run is visceral, adrenaline-soaked, acting like a raw scream in the ear.

Weight and Finality

This trope works best when the success or failure carries dreadful weight, and its impact is final.

When the consequences of failure are tempered–“oh, you’re too late, but some coincidence caused a deferred consequence, how lucky!! Now you get to try again”–that definitely obliterates the tension and value of a ticking clock.

Finality matters in the story because it matters in real life. Sometimes our decisions, or our failures are final. Not always, but sometimes. That’s why people love to watch doctor shows: the decisions of the doctors are often final, and often on the clock.

It’s a grander, more dangerous version of what we feel when we try to meet a non-negotiable deadline. When that happens, it can make our heart race. No less so in fiction.

As to impressing the weight of the thing on the reader (or viewer), the main factor that I’ve noticed is not whether the consequences are large or small, but whether we care about the effects in a personal way. Superhero movies frequently fail on this score. They simply make the consequences really, really big, so big that they become vague and impersonal. The fate of a city, of a nation, of the whole world, of the galaxy. Intellectually, we all know this is awful, but it’s hard to grasp something that big emotionally without tying it to a smaller person or thing. That’s why individual stories often help us understand a massive tragedy more readily than the horrible, overarching narrative.

No matter how big or small you go, if the emotional connection to the consequences is absent–the weight of failure, as it were–no amount of explosions, or ticking clocks, or dramatic pauses are going to make any difference.

I’m going to use another historical example here, but I will acknowledge up front that historical narratives are a bit of a “cheat” (a valid one) in that they actually happened. Weight and finality are inherent, because they are true. We can see a story unfold and know the ending full well, but we are still affected because it’s not just a story.

A last Example

I have rarely (if ever) seen a ticking clock and the sense of consequence used as well as in the film Dunkirk. This is first and foremost because it is a fictionalized rendering of actual events. Real people actually had all these experiences. But all actions or failures of action have direct and (nearly always) final consequences. The style of filming zeroes in with almost claustrophobic proximity, on just a few people. The fate of hundreds of thousands hangs in the air, but focusing on just a handful of people brings home what EVERYONE is going through a that moment in a way a broad sweep could never quite achieve.

In that film, small choices have fatal consequences. Over and over again. Mistakes, however understandable in the moment, result in irreversable outcomes. Many are saved. Many are lost. We see both. We see the last-second save, and the second-too-late loss. Just thinking about one particular scene right now sets a stone in my stomach.

Now Dunkirk is not a straightforward dash-or-die story, but it is a type of one if you look at the actual history. There was a ticking clock to get those soldiers off the beach. The longer it took, the more were likely to die. Consequences of a massive failure could have been devastating, and consequences of individual failure very final indeed.

That is a very sobering example, of course, so I will finish with something a bit more…mundane.

Running

I like to run. It is one of the easiest, cheapest sports. Other than shoes, no equipment required. But I have to fight against a lazy streak when I run for time. In order to improve at speed or distances, you have to be at least a little uncomfortable at some point. A comfortable pace is nice sometimes, but it is a stagnant pace. At some point, you need to hurt a little to succeed. I resist this a little. I don’t want to be uncomfortable.

For years now I have often played this little game with myself when I find that lazy streak bucking up.

“What if someone’s life was at stake? What if the fate of the world rested on whether or not I am able to run fast enough? Would I be this lazy? I’ll pretend I have a message to deliver, and if I don’t keep an 8:30 pace for these last two miles, something terrible will happen.”

Obviously this is silly on the surface, just sort of a mind-trick I employ to try and maintain a minimum goal pace. But underneath, there’s a little something more to it. What if someone’s life really did depend on my willingness, my ability to push myself past all expected physical capacity? What if that tiny streak of laziness had consequences? In dire situations, lives really do hang on the muscle memory we’ve developed–mental, physcial, or moral muscle memory–or failed to develop.

The dash or die trope strips its characters of any insulation from their flaws, any superfluous factors, any easy outs. It tells us who the characters really are in the moment of desperation, and then it shows us the consequences.