My main character is a female alien who is on a quest to find a suitable planet for her and her babies (which are eggs). Her species are amphibious, so it is essential that her and her babies have enough moisture in order to survive. Her home planet suffered from a drought (it was maybe a swamp planet? or maybe they abused their planet and climate change was the result?) and became inhospitable for her race which require high levels of moisture or else they die. So her and the rest of her species split up in search of a planet that is suitable for life (maybe only certain ones got to leave? healthy mothers with eggs? or maybe she has more eggs than just hers so they could reproduce without inbreeding or are they asexual?). On her space station she has a computer navigation system (maybe called 'Compass'?) that tries continuously to find an appropriate planet to live on (enough moisture, atmosphere composition, protection from sun such as magnetic fields, right temperature and so on). After many many years (possibly she goes into a cryo chamber? or her race doesn't age fast?) the moisture/supplies on her ship runs low and her and her eggs both are in risk of dying if they don't find a planet soon. She holds her eggs mournfully, prepared to die from not enough moisture (maybe her skin begins to crack?) when the computer announces that it's locked onto a suitable planet. She tells the computer to go to it, causing the ship to go into hyperspace (or create/jump into a wormhole? something along those lines). She lands on the planet and exists the ship to face a beautiful new planet for her babies.
Obviously it isn't perfect, there are gaps in the story that I'd need to fix but I figured I'd post and see if I got any feedback. My reasoning behind making her amphibious (or an alien equivalent of an amphibian) is to give her an exotic alien look without being too cliché. It also allows me to justify why she'd have eggs instead of live babies and give a reason why she is leaving the planet (not suitable) and why it's a rush to find a new planet (running out of moisture).
Some gaps I can see is why doesn't she age/why don't the eggs hatch or die during the journey. Maybe they don't hatch unless it's right conditions sort of like how the Tardigrade goes into a state of hibernation/coats itself with a glass-like material when conditions aren't suitable for it..but only the eggs can do this not the hatched aliens. Or maybe they must be completely submerged in water first?
Why she was allowed to escape and not other people...maybe there's more than one ship? Maybe only healthy mothers could go? If she was meant to save her species, why is she the only one? are they asexual or is she also carrying other people's eggs along with her own...or is it an only female species?
Anyway, feel free to leave opinions and/or advice...and if anyone doesn't know what I mean by the Tardigrade here is an article about it and I'll include a video too, partially to help me document my ideas.
Hmmm; for me, you've got a plot, but not a story. Alien with eggs looking for new home; things are looking dire, then ship locates planet at the 11th hour, alien finds home. That is a sequence of events, but there's no causality, and no conflict, which is why you don't have story yet.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking that as I was writing, I've thought of a few other ideas so I plan to continue writing little brainstorms and posting them up for advice. Thanks for the feedback!
Deletefor me, I feel like it might be quite a vast amount of information to get across to an audience in a pretty short time frame. I don't know if trying to get across all the information about the species and back story is the best use of the one minute 30 frame.
ReplyDeleteMaybe try simplifying that plot down a bit and focus more on telling a story that will be easy to read without the back story. What if the mother is looking for a planet for her eggs and accidently leaves one on a planet she has visited or something? maybe try and find an event like that which sits with your back story but doesn't require you to go hugely into detail with it?
Yeah, I was wondering about how I'd fit it in the 1-2 minutes we have...I like your idea though! I'll probably do some more brainstorming.
DeleteI can also see how you could work with and also against the expectations set up by 'Alien' and 'Space Station' - I can see how acts 1 and 2 could play out very conventionally, so we think we're watching a narrative about a sole survivor in a race against time on space station, with an Alien as an aggressor, but in the third act we discover that all our assumptions are wrong and the roles are reversed somehow? Some kind of twist, anyway. By using genre assumptions you can set-up stories very quickly, because they rely on our familiarity, and you can likewise pack quite a punch when you subvert those assumptions.
ReplyDelete