A clown, a hobo, a ballet dancer, a bagpiper, and an army major wake up in a large, metal cylinder. No, this is not the start of a complex joke. It’s the opening to a fairly popular episode of the original Twilight Zone series, first aired in 1961. These vastly unrelated characters all have one thing in common: they are trapped, with no idea of who they are or how they got there.
Create five diverse characters, with no connections to each other, and place them in a situation in which they are stuck. How will they get out? How did they get there? How do they communicate with each other in order to problem-solve? Put yourself in this situation, with these characters, and see how the story unfolds.