The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 7 December 2009

Today's scruples are taken from the game by a random shuffle and pull. So, your task, should you choose to accept it, is to pick a number from one to ten (yes! 10! So pick one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, or ten. Got it?)

No, pick a number. We'll wait.

Now, take a look at the list and see what you picked:

1. You are a politician. The people who elected you demand that you take a position on abortion which is against your personal convictions. Do you?
2. There are no dryers available at the laundromat. Suddenly one is free and you claim it. A woman protests that she has been waiting longer than you. Do you yield it?
3. In order to marry someone you love, you must change your religion. Do you do it?
4. Late one evening, your 19-year-old daughter asks permission for her boyfriend to stay over. Do you give it?
5. Your lover has appeared as a nude centerfold. Do you leave him/her?
6. Someone extends his friendship but you aren't interested. Later you learn that he is a legal wizard. You need free advice desperately and don't know anyone else. Do you call him?
7. You are a doctor treating a patient for a terminal illness that can be extremely painful. Do you do everything in your power to prolong the patient's life?
8. A friend who is a strict vegetarian is coming for dinner. You're feeling proud of your bean stew until you remember that you used a beef stock. Do you keep quiet and serve the dish?
9. You find an expensive pen in a public lounge. Do you keep it?
10. On the street you meet a couple who have recently arrived from South America, and want to remain in the country illegally. They are destitute. Do you help them?

Feel free to shave the edges off, flip sexes and whatnot, to make these your very own scenarios. Maybe it's not abortion, but some other problem irritating your politicians in number one? Or perhaps it's just a fifty dollar bill that you found lying in the public lounge in number nine? Or... make that situation one that you can believe in, and that makes your characters itch.

Then write! How did your characters get into that corner? Why is it so difficult for them? What do other people think about it? And... what are they going to do? Is there a way for them to resolve the problem with honor? How about with their conscience intact (poor Jiminy Cricket, he has so many things to advise us about)?

Go ahead. Tell us the tale of the moral choice... or failure. And what happened then...