Re:[2] In a World...

The funny thing about the In A World... post was that, by the end, I didn't really care about the specifics of each story. What was useful for me was taking the idea (Prison Planet) and seeing what kind of "movement" each kind of story could give it. For example, when Richard Garfield was designing "Magic: The Gathering" (and presumably when he designed other games) was he would sit down with blank cards and before he even really knew what the rules were, he would play with them. What is it like when I turn a card ninety degrees? What's it like if I lay out cards in a pattern on the table? What's it like to draw cards from a deck? Is there a difference in feel between drawing three cards or seven?

So I ended up thinking about that post in a similar way. When I think of "Prison Planet" as a concept, I think of prisoners on a planet that want to get off. But what else can be done with the concept? For me the breakthrough of #5 is that the character finds the hidden Prison Planet and goes there. In #6, the character wants to break into the Prison Planet, which sounded fun and cool. The idea behind #7 is that escape is impossible, and maybe not even desired by the end. In #4, the idea that the Prison Planet is kind of a front for something else (the "ancient secret underneath") was what was most interesting to me.

So while I do like some of the small specifics of each idea, I'm not married to any of them, and seeing how skeletal they are, I think some cannibalism from the other ideas will be necessary :-)

But here are my favorites:

My third favorite, #6, is also, oddly, my least favorite. I like the ridiculous idea of combining blatant supernatural elements in a SF setting -- it appeals to my love of mash-ups and novelties. And what's good about it is also what's bad about it for this project: I read it and I feel like I know it already. It's basically "The Dirty Dozen vs. Underworld... in SPAAAACE!". And while normally I'd be attracted to something that's structurally already kind of prefab, I think this project needs something that's a little more mysterious and more difficult. Also, while other ideas lend themselves to different kinds of expressions (drama, comedy, etc.), this one seems primarily action-oriented.

Second favorite is, perhaps surprisingly, #1. Yes, it's awfully vague and a little corny, but that's also the appeal. What's suggested here is emotions as weaponry, something kind of invisible and intangible in a concrete, material SF world, and I kinda like that. However, one of the pitfalls of "Prison Planet" (and probably most screenplays) is steering away from the pure, always-right protagonist in a world that's evil and clearly wrong, and this one is already pointed in that direction.

First favorite, and head and shoulders above the rest, is #5. Here's why: The conflicts stated have already given us huge clues as to the character of the protagonist. We know that she lives in a world of unimaginable amounts of data, and she makes an choice to escape from all that. She finds a place that is "off the grid", and decides to fight for her place there. But where in a lot of these ideas, fighting is literally physical fighting (and that tells us nothing about the character; if a character doesn't fight when attacked, usually that means the end of the story), the fighting here might be of a different sort: it could be emotional manipulation, economic bargaining, political maneuvering. And also already embedded in this skeletal frame are a number of parallels and contrasts that could be interesting. I'm assuming that this woman, because of the data universe she inhabits, is well-off, but she's looking to escape this everything-at-your-fingertips society for something more primitive. (She could be leaving because of a scandal or because "she knows too much" or the like, but it works for me if it's simple dissatisfaction, ennui.) So she finds this "off the grid" planet, but to her surprise, it's a prison planet. (Perhaps the prisoners are either political in nature -- they've been "disappeared" -- or they're the descendants of those prisoners.) But these people are probably longing to get "plugged back in" to the universe at large and probably want her to help them. And what happens to them and her if they did? But while there's an obvious action/thriller quality to all this, I can also see it as a space version of something like Out of Africa or The Piano -- a space period drama, if you will.

But while we both like this one and we could proceed on it now, I wouldn't mind taking the time to develop more of these "In A World"s. I'm thinking of aiming for 50 -- that would give us enough to choose from, and a lot of material to cannibalize from as well. (And obviously, the "In A World"s are my way of canvassing the territory in an Inside->Outside way, like your way of circling the story world and asking questions is your Outside->Inside way.)

What do you think?