Story advice (short dramatic/SF story)

J

Jerryv

Active member
Hello everyone who is reading this,

I am thinking of making a short film about a young girl (8 years old) who believes she dont belone on earth and that her parents are in fact not her own parents. She believes she is a alien.

The girl dont talk much, is a bit strange, and her parents are thinking and hoping that she will drop the nonzense about not being her parents. The dont understand her.

The girl is waiting for her real parents to arrive.


Iam not planning to make this a comedy, but a dramatic story about this young girl.
So its not only about aliens from mars or anything and i dont even know if the girl is going to meet her alien parents, but maybe she does. Iam inspired by the many, many storys about alien abductions and everything.

I do think that there are not many films about this subject (about aliens there are many movies, but about a child who believes she is from another world and waiting for her parents to arrive...? i dont know)

The pitfalls in making this movie are that dramatic movies can turn into real comedys when not making it right. Lauging is good, but not on moment when its serieus.

I believe that good comedy and good drama are both incredible diffult genres. So.. that a pitfall. The other one is the girl who is playing the girl... difficult to direct a young child i gues...

I hope some people in this forum can give a first reaction to my idea about making a short (10-15 min.) film about a young girl who is waiting for her alien parents to arrive.
And maybe can give some advice/suggestions, because iam stuck with it, i am thining a long time about this, but i wont 'lift-off'

Thanks,
Jerry
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The most important thing to do is to start...don't look for perfection in every word...and FINISH...You must get it on paper first because otherwise you will be with all those that talk about doing stuff but only have ideas and concepts...the idea is good but what is the theme? If you know what you want the audience to learn from this dramatic story then you will have less problems with writers block. think of a lesson or message to connect everything too. Whenever you get stuck, go back to the theme. And again, just keep going until you get to the end. You can always fix things when you have the entire idea down. It is not meant to be perfecty in a first draft but if you keep going over the same pages, you will never finish...

Best of luck,
Stan Harrington

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Have you seen K-Pax or Starman?

May be some inspiration there I think. K-Pax is more about walking the fine line between what's real and what's imagined. Done pretty well IMHO.

Sounds like your story is about a girl and her real alien parents. I think that may be your biggest pitfall.

Good luck with it.
 
R!ff R4ff said:
Sounds like your story is about a girl and her real alien parents. I think that may be your biggest pitfall.
Click to expand...

How do you meen? why?

Yes, i have seen K-pax... i am very afraid a movie like this would remind people, and my self, of K-pax... its so damn hard to come up with something truly orginal...
 
Nothing is truly original and odds are somebody somewhere is writing something very similar to what you are.
 
Because with a short film there isn't as much time for character and story development, it is common to use a setup/punchline format (also known as a "twist" or surprise ending). So, what if you run the story as though the girl is trying to reunite with her alien family and her earthly family thinks she is going crazy, as you described above, but then have the ending be some alternate explanation where she is actually a human child after all and the earthly parents are her parents. Perhaps you could find a medical or psychological explanation to why she thinks she is alien.

Just an idea...take it or leave it as you see fit :)
 
This is just my opinion so please don't let it discourage you from telling the story you want/need to tell.

I think, anytime you flirt with the line between reality and fantasy you run the risk of alienating both halves of the audience. There are the people who think aliens simply don't exist and they watch your movie so they can scoff at your idea or be proved right by your film. There are those who think aliens visit us on a regular basis and they'll see your film because they want to be proved right.

Alien (all three movies) takes place in the future in deep space. The fantasy element is right out there in the opening. Believable or certainly suspension of disbelief is not a problem.

Men In Black - This is comedy/adventure and everyone has a good time because the fantasy element is over the top and used for comedic purposes.

K-Pax - This movie is different. This story walks the line between realism and the fantasy element. These events may have happend but there's plausible deniability because nothing really 'fantastic' happens. Nobody sees a spaceship pick him and that other woman up out of the locked room, they're just gone somehow. I think this movie invites people to walk on that edge between realism and fantasy.

If you keep your audience on the edge of having to suspend their disbelief or not and leave them hanging, like K-Pax does, then your pitfall is two fold. You may not succeed and your story will fall on one side or the other or even flat on it's face. The other pitfall is your flick gets heralded as a K-Pax rip off.

And I agree with jpeck, you're kidding yourself if you think you can come up with something truly original story wise. The best you can hope for is a fresh re-mix. Your idea of a story may be fresh and new but the story isn't, never will be.

Personally, I think you're ripping off the wrong movie.
 
What kind of family does the girl come from? Is she from a poor-crackhead family, or is she from a suburbanite, upper-middle class home whose parents don't pay attention to her? Putting ordinary people in extraordinary settings, and extraordinary people in ordinary settings, are often the most "dramatic" choices. Subtlety is key. For example, what is more dramatic to watch... someone bawling their eyes out or someone trying to keep that emotion from coming through. I would say the 2nd one, of course.
Think in terms of opposites. Get an idea for a standard kinda scene and then flip it... find some opposite choices from the ones you have come up with. Doing that and continuing to do that in small chunks and re-writing in that fashion repeatedly is probably a good direction if you are going to attempt to give this story some meat and substance, as it could very easily become quite cliche due to the story line. Good luck
Jason
 
Well, good comedy and good drama are different. Many great movies use both like American Beauty, so that's not something to completely rule out. Not every movie needs to be all serious like Requiem for Dream (which is one of the reasons I don't really like watching it).

Another thing to watch is the series "Taken". It had a kid with an earth mom and an alien dad (who is somewhere in space). Mother goes nearly insane waiting for the alien father to return.

Personally, just the concept of someone waiting around for something isn't interesting to me. There are three things in my mind that make a script. A story, characters, and a concept. Shawshank Redemption and Ernest goes to Jail have similar concepts (neither too original), but the stories seperate them a good distance. Currently, you've got a character and a concept. Could go either way.
 
My comment earlier is not suppose to be taken in a bad way. I just think trying to create something so out there and original is shooting yourself in the foot, its not impossible, but if you are just starting to get into writing, its not going to be easy.
 
Thanks for alle the advice!!!!

I know, a truly orginal story is almost impossible, but i find it very frustrating when someone say: "heey, its the same as in.." Even if the story is told in a whole different way, people will still remember the concept and see your little movie as a rip-off, or as motivation. So i would do my best to make something orginal. Another thing i have noticed is that common concepts are not often called a rip-off. How many films about a detective and a murder case are made?
But if you make a movie similair to, lets say, THE TRUMAN SHOW, than most people will call it a rip-off. So it seems that some concepts (high concepts) are more a danger to make than the 'general' concepts.

Back to the story,
I know its difficult to make this a short movie, thats why iam seeking advice. I have search on TAKEN and yes, iam afraid, it looks the same on paper! Girl = alien.... dammit!
 
You have to answer the question of what your world is really about. Is this a psychological thriller, where the girl simply has this idea that she's an alien, and any evidence to support that idea is just as easily disproven? That could be interesting... the most interesting aspect is probably in questioning your characters. How did this idea get in the girl's head? How did she come to believe it so completely? Come up with compelling answers to those questions and you're almost guaranteed to have something original and interesting. This is a character study about the drama within the girl's head, and the problems she may cause for her family.

The other way to go is that the girl actually IS an alien child. Well, this is obviously going to be a completely different story. It's a much bigger story in which you're at least a little bit obligated to deal with the straight science fiction aspects. The movie becomes automatically much bigger than the girl... and has a serious risk of doing what you're worried about: turning into comedy when you didn't intend it. Still, if you're careful, I think it could be done.

A buddy of mine does a lot of films that are all kinda similar to this. Sometimes they work really well, sometimes they seem sort of ridiculous. Just make sure you deliver on what you're promising to the audience and you're probably okay.
 
J-

Don't get discouraged...if you boil EVERY story down to its basics, there's only like 5 or 6 stories that are possible to tell and they have all been told already. But while there are similar themes at work in Boyz N The Hood and Titanic, I don't meet too many people that complain they tread the same planet.

The point is, the thing that makes a story unique is the characters and the choices they make. Fish out of water, boy meets girl, coming of age, etc etc etc. Whatever. Listen to some of the suggestions by previous posts to find out more about your characters. They will tell you where to go and what your story is. Maybe they'll take you on tangents that you have to reel in or discard, but fully fleshed out characters talk to you. Ask the little girl questions and she'll give you answers. Of course it ain't that simple, but writing's a hard gig. Good luck...
 
Good advice in here :thumbup:
I understand now, that i must work out the girl, the persons, because what i did was working out a story.
Creating scenes. things to happen. Actions. But the advice here is the other way around: first create a solid person, than put here in actions/things to happen. Instead of creating a person around actions.

I wanted to ended the short with the fact that her 'earth' parants (the girl does not believe that thea are her real parents) are in fact her real alien parents!
But that the did not wanted to tell here, and that the did not wanted the girl to find out, or to attract other alien life, because the want to stay on earth.

So in fact, a major twist point, we discovere that the girl was wrong about the deny of her parents. And that she was right about the fact that her parants are not humans.

How does that sound?
 
Sounds like it could be pretty interesting, actually. Again, you're gonna have to tread carefully, but if you pull it off it could be cool.
 
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