In a post on the Killzone blog, Kay DiBianca says the best stories are full of bad decisions. “Sometimes a disaster isn’t the result of just one bad decision, but many small ones,” she says. The wreck of the Titanic, the destruction of the Hindenburg, and Napoleon’s disastrous march on Russia were the result of many individual decisions that probably didn’t feel notable in the moment. However, their cumulative effect proved deadly.
DiBianca walks through the many bad decisions that resulted in the Titan missile disaster: a maintenance worker decided to use a non-regulation tool to effect a repair; the crew failed to inform their control center about an accident that punctured the side of a missile, causing a fuel leak; the crew then reported a vapor leak, but not the accident or its cause; and they remained silent, fearing punishment for the original mistake.
Individually, we might all make those mistakes – use a tool for convenience, rather than utility; downplay the effects of an accident; fail to admit a mistake. But when those bad decisions add up in the right way, the consequences can be severe. “Bad decisions are usually born out of base human fallacies: fear, hubris, anger, greed, envy, lust, impatience, frustration, DiBianca says. “And these make wonderful fodder for storytelling. As each bad choice is made in a story, it ratchets (pun intended) up the tension. Each new decision raises the stakes and ensures the reader will turn the page.”
