Evenin all.
I was thinking about submitting a future shock and wanted some feedback on the idea that I've had:
A scavenger explores a ruined space station encountering various dangers such as unstable decks, space parasites, security droids, etc. He reaches the cargo hold and grabs the case that he's been looking for and manages to escape the station as it collapses around him. Back on his ship he looks inside the case and finds a strange oblong box thing with thin pieces of paper inside. Annoyed at the lack of anything valuable to be found in the station, he chucks it out of the garbage disposal. Last panel would be his ship leaving in the background with the book floating with the debris of the station in the foreground opened on the words "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth".
Any thoughts, comments, flames are more than welcome. Is this worth doing or am I just wasting my time?
I like the basic concept but I'm not sure that the Genesis message on the paper does it for me by itself: I want something that'd link back to the opening of the story a bit more.
It sparked off a couple of random ideas, which you're welcome to use or ignore or what have you:
1) Rather than a space station, have an alien archaeologist checking sites on a dead, future-shocked Planet Earth. It can encounter pretty much the same dangers, but with a bit of a twist i.e. it spends some time fighting through a particularly tricky bit of spidered metal and says "This was obviously designed to keep out intruders", then in the next frame it's revealed to be a collapsed Eiffel Tower. That sort of thing.
Anyway, after a long and hazardous journey, he gets to the end of his quest: a heavily shielded chamber, seemingly hollowed out of the core rock of a mountain. He breaks in, but comes out after a while reporting to his commander that there's nothing there, just some valueless pieces of stone. He beams out. Final shot: broken stone tablets, visible on the first one are the words of the ten Commendments.
2) Same as the way you sketched it out, using the genesis quote as well, but the jettisoned fragments fall to a nearby planet. There the microbes multiply and form the basis of life on the new planet. Last shot again reveals the words. Big difficulty with this is showing evolution happening in an interesting way.
"but the jettisoned fragments fall to a nearby planet. "
To fall on an organism,the first of it's kind,to crawl from the proverbial primordial.Story could be juxtaposed throughout with this creatures struggle for survival to break the surface.Killed by trash."In the beginning..."
That's copyrighted BTW ;)
M.
Oh, that's NIIIIIIIICE...
HAve you tried scriptdroids yahoo group lots of pro's and good amatuers on there. Youll get a reasoned critique or not
Link: scritpdroids ???
Thanks for the feedback!
The scavenger could wear some kind of helmet with a visor right up to where he looks at the book, then he takes it off to reveal that he's an alien, then he jettisons the book.
OK, I see where you're going with this - the shock or twist needs to be that it's a human space station.
Problem as it stands for me is that that doesn't seem very shocking - you haven't given me enough investment in the ship itself or interest in its presumably dead crew for it to be scary and thrilling that they're from Earth.
Needs an extra element somewhere - maybe the race that built the station has been destroyed?
Ah Ha!
there are two scavengers, as they travel through the hulking wreck, they have a running conversation sort of like this:
"So what is this place?"
"Last relic of a dead race"
"which one?
No one knows what they were called, records are a little hazy going ten thousand years back, they were pretty advanced though, had worm hole tech and advanced hyperturing AI's"
"What happened to them?"
"Heh, we did!"
Or something like that ;)
That would certainly cover it quite well. The advanced hyper-Turing AI's phrase gets me thinking these guys are human, and the ship is an alien vessel, for sure.
I'd echo some of the comments above.
I never got a sense of involvment or adventure. I got the idea that it's just talking heads on a space station - not particularly exciting for the reader.
Also I just didn't plain get why it was meant to be shocking either - possibly just me but I couldn't see the twist.
There are submission guidelines on this very site with a good word or two from DIG-L about how to make sure you have a hook for the reader and drama in the story.
There's also a section where you can bung up your script for critique.
I think these are all in the CREATOR - SUBMISSIONS section.
Thanks Tiplodocus,
I admit, looking at it there's no real SHOCK! value, but then, I haven't written the actual script yet, I'm still turning ideas over in my head and figuring out which I can use and which don't really work. My original premise was that there would be no dialogue at all, just a scavenger alone on a derelict ship. Plus, the main action would be the journey to the cargo hold... but then the point of a future shock is the shock itself... hmmm, back to the storyboard for me!
I like the idea but it does sound incredibly familiar.
I'd love a series of GN reprints of Future Shocks etc Would work really well I think. And be good for future writers to check against.
++ just some valueless pieces of stone. He beams out. Final shot: broken stone tablets, visible on the first one are the words of the ten Commendments. ++
Wouldn't they have to be inside the Ark of the Convenient?
B.
I haven't written the actual script yet, I'm still turning ideas over in my head and figuring out which I can use and which don't really work.
Definitely have a look at Mr Diggle's submission guidelines and see how many of the following points you can find a way of including:
1. A protagonist with a definable (and sympathetic) goal.
2. An antagonist who gets in the way and complicates stuff.
3. An ending which is both unexpected but is also in some way related to previous events (as opposed to, say, "But luckily I had a robot army in my pocket all along!", deus ex machina-kind-of-thing). Everything should come nicely full circle.
4. Scariest of all - something that hasn't been done before.
5. A Big Idea. I get the impression our current Tharg is big on high-concept ideas.
Oh, and points 1 & 2 should ideally be set up by the end of the first page...
My original premise was that there would be no dialogue at all, just a scavenger alone on a derelict ship. Plus, the main action would be the journey to the cargo hold...
I suspect Mr Diggle would call that "just a bunch of stuff happening", ie: no central drama to really involve the reader. You can see why Future Shocks are so difficult to write!
But then, that's the whole point to writing: you write and rewrite and the script constantly evolves. Sometimes you'll pick up on one or two points (or an underlying theme, which is just as important and can be very inspiring), that you can turn into something really good, but has little or no resemblance to the original story.
Keep going. All feedback is a good thing and nothing beats the experience of constantly writing and finding your own style.
You could have a nuclear war wipe out the entire human race, with the exception of two survivors, one named ADAM and the other named EVE!
And at the end, they come to the last garden on Earth...
I hope you were being facetious as I'm sure I've read the Adam & Eve story line at least three times already.
Yeah, it's been done before. It's in some religious book or something I think ;)
... only it's not actually the last garden on Earth. It is, in fact, a virtual reality prison!
Created by the machines that destroyed mankind!
Hey, that sounds pretty good! wonder if I can get some Kung-Fu into it somehow...
Tsk, stone tablets, bible... its a copy of Tooth they need to find!
Genius! The thrillpower will power their home planet for generations to come!
When I was much younger, I sat down to write what I thought was a genius idea (*I*was*YOUNG*) for a Future Shock. It involved an alien armada getting ready to destroy this planet that many had attempted to conquer but none had ever succeeded. Pull away and, surprise surprise, it's Earth. Various jiggery-pokery ensues about how the other races had tried to bring down the planet, and how these guys are doing something new. Anyway, as the fleet goes into a screaming dive, they become aware of a strange dimensional effect, which appears to be doing strange things to them. The upshot of the whole story is that the planet's defence is that all aliens end up trapped between the pages of comic books - including the one you've just read. This was utter turd, one of the worst things I've ever written, which was disappointing given the huge amount of effort I put into writing and rewriting.
Anyway, one thing I realised was how amazingly difficult it is to be self-referential within the comics medium (I don't mean the characters self-referencing, or sly undercutting of "realism", or any other po-mo tricks, I mean actually coming out and saying "All this world's a comic, and we merely 2-D constructs").
There's a really quite bad early Judge Dredd where he impounds a job lot of illegal 2000ad's that makes this point better than i ever could.
So, question: can anybody think of a strip that DID manage this trick without disappearing up its own arse or getting too far-out & hippyish?
"The Day The Earth Stood Fairly Still"
We start with an ad for "Personality Amplifiers", the new wonder device that will make you more popular by amplifying your personality. A before and after picture shows how a Peronality Amplifier makes a miserable nobody into the darling of his office.
One of there customers wants his money back as the Amplifier is having no effect. After a quick scan with some special equipment they deduce that he has almost no personality, and so modify the personality amplifier to bemuch much stronger to bring out what little personality he has...
The amplifier gets turned up so far that it starts emmitting his blandness, turning everyone and everything around him. Britain is shown caught in the wave of blandfication, ending on Tharg, in his Nerve Centere, deciding to cancel Future Shocks and replace them with a series of 'Future Prosaics'.
End on a large blank panel with the words "The Twist Ending To This Strip Has Been Cancelled".
Hahahahaha!!!!!! This MUST be commissioned immediately!
I can just see it - use loads of different artists with contrasting styles like that old Armoured Gideon episode...
That's great! Perhaps have Tharg panic at the sight of his Thrill-o-meter dwindling away to nothing before he too becomes infected by blandness!
There's a really quite bad early Judge Dredd where he impounds a job lot of illegal 2000ad's that makes this point better than i ever could.
So, question: can anybody think of a strip that DID manage this trick without disappearing up its own arse or getting too far-out & hippyish?
A couple of jokey old Shocks spring to mind. The Lanulos Run, where the crew of a spaceship overcome space pirates, black holes, etc to deliver vital cargo to a dying planet (punchline - it's boxes of progs for thrill-starved natives), and the much funnier Hot Item, where energy is at a premium due to the universe winding down through heat-death. Two guys slowly steer a steam car through the snow carrying a vital energy source to their freezing village, and are chased for hours over a few yards by heat-jackers who can't be bothered to crawl after them (punchline - yep, it's boxes of progs).
Also Alan Moore's Tom Strong comics do this a lot.
Never heard of it!
It sounded good!
I looked it up!
Here it is!
Link: Tom Strong review
It's a good comic is Tom Strong, but bewary getting into it - it's done in a kinda ye olde superhero style but it's been Mooreified.