Fiasco is played out in scenes and acts. Every players gets to play out a scene with their character in the spotlight twice, then the group rolls on the tilt table, and then everyone gets two more scenes. I randomly established the scene order and came up with Bill being first, then Ash, then Jay. This is the rotation going forward for the rest of this exercise. 

When drawing cards from the Writer Emergency Pack, they often refer to “the hero” of your story. For the purpose of this, the hero is whoever is currently in the spotlight.

So, let’s draw the first card for the first scene of Bill, our undercover cop.

Card 38: Mysterious Package

“Special Delivery”

An Owl flying in the night carrying a wrapped box.

Mysterious packages are often what set heroes off on an adventure, but work equally well as midpoint clues and complications. A grainy photograph, a distorted recording, or a cryptically worded letter can send the story in a new direction. 

Often what makes packages mysterious is the labeling-or the lack of it. What details might make your hero think it’s important or dangerous? 

First thing that comes to mind is that Bill receives some sort of secret message. Perhaps orders from his superior? Or perhaps from the crime boss, for whom he is technically working. The picture of the owl flying through the night invokes a certain secrecy to me.

Let’s look at the back of the card.

TRY THIS 

Not all packages come through the post office. What’s an unusual method of sending this object or message to your hero? 

A dead drop would be classic, of course. Depending on how deep Bill’s cover is, he could receive secret messages to contact his superiors. 

List three things your hero needs to finish their journey. Could any of these objects be unfamiliar or confusing at first? 

Since this is scene 1, the start of the story, Bill’s mission is to find a way to bring down the boss. The “need” between him and Ash is “To get away and start over,” which suggests that these long lost lovers might want to get out of this live for good (or at least one of them will want that with the other). With that in mind:

1. Evidence to bring in the boss. A recording, a confession, a smoking gun.

2. An angle to turn Jay. Less an object, perhaps, but something that would convince Jay to see the mess he’s in and wanting to do the “right thing.”

3. Assuming that Bill is the one that wants to “start over” with Ash, he’ll need something that reminds her of the past. Maybe a trinket, maybe something they hid before he moved away—a promise made that, one day, they’d be together again. A reminder. Does Ash even remember? Does she care? 

Mail gets misdelivered. What would your hero do if they realized a special package was meant for someone else?

A little left-field here, but what if the “mysterious package” isn’t about Bill at all, but refers to the boss. Specifically, what if the boss got a tip that makes him believe someone is a rat: and he thinks it’s either Jay or his niece. And he wants Bill to get to the bottom of this, hence them working together. Neither of the other two know about that, of course, bringing Bill in direct conflict with his friend and his ex. So, it’s not so much that a piece of mail getting delivered to the wrong person, but that the information within points at the wrong person, bringing Bill into conflict. The mysterious angle here could be that Bill doesn’t know who tipped the boss off. Someone knows something, even if they got part of it wrong. 

Final Thoughts

What I like about this first prompt is that it makes me think about some sort of revelation or twist right at the start. Bill might get orders that jeopardize his undercover mission, even before he meets is high school flame, and which point at someone in the organization suspecting/knowing that there is a rat, but not who it is. 

I already established that Bill’s scene will be of a bad outcome, which fits all of that perfectly. He’s caught on a back foot at the start, and he will be even more off balance by the end. 

In true Fiasco fashion, each character/player gets a scene, which has either a good or bad outcome determined by the players in one way or another. Either the current player decides the outcome but is at the mercy of the table for setting up and framing the scene, or they get to frame the scene but the other players decide the outcome. Since I’m the only one here, I just decide randomly how this scene should resolve, and much to Bill’s dismay, it’s a bad outcome for him this time. 

---

Next up, the first scene focusing on Bill.

This piece of fiction will be raw, barely edited (nothing beyond first pass), and probably filled with typos, inconsistencies. The goal is not to write a polished piece of prose, but to just get down the story. Get to the heart of it. I can always fix it up later, once the project is finished.