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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42171
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42171
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

If you want to see conventions; look to action flicks like Die Hard or Taken (or dozens of others).

There is your standard ticking bomb.

There is the bad guy escaping -- Willis must find a way to follow. On top of that, the bad guy has kidnapped his wife and daughter to use against him.

There is the impending action of the bad guy -- Liam gets an urgent message from his daughter, and knows she is kidnapped by sex slavers. He must find her before she is sold, or raped.

There is the delaying capture or setback, when the mission gets routine -- The transportation breaks down, or the hero is captured, stranded, or trapped (like Indiana Jones, 007), eating time on the clock while they must escape and then get back on track.

If the hero has partners, especially novices to emergency, there is the breakup -- it all becomes too much for the partner, they are overwhelmed, they almost DIED, and they throw in the towel. That eats time because the hero cannot succeed without the super-hacker or whatever skill the partner brings.

The ticking time bomb can take many forms, it does not have to be a literal bomb. It can be _new information:_ We discover the President will be assassinated at 1:30 PM, in twenty minutes!

The bus is going to explode if it drops under 50MPH, and we just learned it is running with the fuel dial a hair above empty!

The plane is going to fall out of the sky if we don't get the engine restarted in the next three minutes.

The asteroid is going to hit in three hours, we have to finish drilling the hole for the nuke, and the now the bit is stripped and has to be replaced.

We were wrong about who is behind the coup, and that means it isn't happening in three weeks, it is happening tomorrow, and our plans to prevent it are out the window.

The essential elements of urgency are "surprise" that ruins plans and demands fast adaptation (surprise includes failures of the hero's plans), and inevitable terrible consequences if you don't act immediately, usually taking a great risk by doing so. (It isn't that exciting if immediate action demands no personal risk.)

It is **_always_** time dependent, but you can cast that in many ways without a ticking clock: Matt Damon (Bourne Identity) cannot lose the bad guy he is chasing over the rooftops, he **has** to make the same leaps and jumps and catch this guy. The clock is there but hidden; Matt must **keep up** in the race or lose the game.

Likewise, he must infiltrate the facility and eliminate agents quickly and efficiently or risk discovery and failure. Or they are searching for him and by sheer manpower will find him if he doesn't get out quickly. The clock is there, but hidden. Hurry up, Matt, find that stupid file already!

Or take Ocean's Eleven scenes. A piece of hacking equipment is balking and won't work, it needs to be fixed on the fly and they only have seconds to do it. Their plan for interrupting power fails due to city work, now they must hurry and steal an EMP. But then the amateur amongst them disobeys orders and screws THAT up, and in the hurry to escape somebody gets hurt, then they have to deal with THAT quick. An unexpected development produces urgency; while addressing that in an impromptu manner an amateur mistake leads to another urgency, that forces an accident that leads to more urgency (a broken hand), which is an unexpected development that demands a new plan...

Original score: 1