Life on Other Moons
Roger MarketPenpusher
After the extinction of women and the destruction of the moon, an imaginative young man realizes that his sexuality is the one thing that may keep him alive.
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FYI, this is based on a couple of stories from a short story collection I wrote (Life on Other Moons) to fulfill MFA requirements.
So what’s his objective goal?
Good point; that was hard to fit in there. His goal is to live?i.e., to get past the death of his mother (and all women) and figure out who he is now that the world has changed. Later, his goal is to stay alive when things get dangerous.
Well, mere survival is a start, but…
As presented, I might be over-jumping to a conclusion is that there’s no hope for the survival of the human species. Except through cloning, I guess, but that’s not presented that as Plan B now that Plan A (heterosexual intercourse) is no longer an option.
“that his sexuality is the one thing that make be keeping him alive” — huh? How? I mean the only thing the comes to my prurient mind is wanking off.
“when things get dangerous” — How? What’s the antagonistic force or agent?
There’s a lot more to the plot, and I’m having a hard time getting it down to the bare essentials that would be required in a logline?without watering it down. There are elements of magical realism in the story, so some of what happens cannot exactly be explained, and I’m downplaying those elements in the logline for simplicity’s sake. I’ve written this logline so many times! (Thanks for playing devil’s advocate, by the way. I’ve needed some feedback.)
His goal isn’t to save the rest of humanity, mind you; there’s no cloning required. First the women die, then many of the men become crazy/dangerous. The main character is left trying to figure out, What now? Does the absence of women change who I am, or am I the same as ever? And is it okay to be who I am? When the men become crazy, it is the main character’s sexuality that literally saves him from this same fate. Whatever is happening to them isn’t happening to him and his friend, and it’s because of their sexuality. Then there are some more blatant elements of magical realism, which I tried to stick in there with the word “imaginative,” but I’m not sure that works.
I sympathize with the challenge of distilling the essence of an idea you have, no doubt, expended great time and effort in expanding and elaborating.
Stories involving sci-fi, fantasy or magical realism are especially challenging to write loglines for because they entail a world that exists only in your mind — and not in the logline reader’s. Nor in a reader’s experience — they have no reference point to tether the concept to.
One potential deficiency I see with the premise, insofar as I understand it, is that there is no “B” story — no subplot entailing the building and bonding of a relationship with an emotionally significant other person. The “B” story for a guy usually involves a relationship with a gal. But gals are a less than zero factor in this premise.
In commercial film, “No Man is an island, Entire of itself” is more than a line of poetry, it’s a dramatic imperative. “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” — and that continent, that main is other people, society.
Well, you’ve got some wild and crazy guys. With whom in particular does he build a relationship?
He builds a relationship with the other main guy who is not going crazy. They’re childhood friends and have always been in love but have never been able to say it or act on it. That’s the B story, I guess. How do they find (and accept) love in this crazy world? It takes an almost-apocalypse for them (well, at least for the main character) to realize that there is something between them that they need to pursue.
It doesn’t help that the main character’s mother dies just after issuing a homophobic comment that scars him in his early life.
I like what you said about sci-fi/fantasy stories. That makes a lot of sense.
Do I detect an allegorical subtext here, a commentary on our present “crazy” world? What’s the dramatic import of the destruction of the moon? How does that relate to events on the earth, specifically the loss of the entire female population? Is the loss of the lunar orb inversely and perversely related to most of the survivors going ‘looney’?
Sorry, if I’m posting more questions that answers. I’m trying to get a handle on the premise.
Oh, no apologies necessary. It’s helpful to know what’s clear in the logline and what isn’t. I’m still not sure which direction to take in revising it, but this is all going to end up helping. Thanks! I spent a few months writing and publishing the book, and now it’s taking just as long to even conceive the movie script, let alone write it. 🙂
I think the idea is that the moon is often seen as a powerful symbol?usually of femininity (Luna) and menstruation, and thus life, but sometimes there is an aspect of masculinity involved (http://www.fullmoon.info/en/blog/moon-feminine-masculine.html). The moon’s destruction (actually, it splits in two) is a death knell to announce that hope is lost for humanity; women are gone, and eventually the men will be too, hence the descent into insanity for many of the men. They can’t accept that they are alone as a sex, so their psyches rebel.
On the flip side, there’s also the idea that the moon has had masculine ties as well (e.g., in some languages, the moon is masculine rather than feminine, and some moon gods have been male), so it’s essentially a moot point. The destruction of the moon doesn’t really signal the death of one sex or the other; or maybe it’s signaling both.
The point is not to DWELL. The point is to carry on.
Of all the characters, the two main characters are the ones who have the best capacity to maintain their sanity. They don’t freak out about the moon’s break, and they deal as well as can be expected with the loss of their mothers and other women. The mere fact that they are attracted to each other and not women helps them to see that although everything is different and not ideal, it doesn’t have to signal the end of the world. They’ll be okay. They’ll even have love.
But as for the magical realism/sci-fi aspect, there’s more: another part of the story features a civilization living on the moon, plagued by a civil war that ends when a bomb splits the moon in two. So when the moon breaks in the A story, there’s actually a reason, but no one on Earth knows it. It has nothing to do with anything that has happened on Earth. God isn’t punishing anyone, etc. It’s just a fact of war.
Yikes. I feel like I’m writing an academic paper on my book. Sorry. Does that help? Do you see why I had a hard time distilling the essence of the story, as you put it? It’s actually two stories from my book, but they’re so intricately connected that I wanted them to be “one” story in the screenplay.
Okay, thanks for the further clarification.
Well, the only suggestions that come to mind would take your story in a different direction. And I am reluctant to step all over your concept like that. Maybe others have some constructive suggestions for the task at hand.
Regards and best wishes in your endeavor.
Hi Roger,
I think what you need to mainly focus on is what dpg questioned in an early reply… What is the OBJECTIVE GOAL of the protagonist. As you have written this story I’m sure there are many elements that you feel are important — but for a successful logline (and really, a successful story) you need to focus on the single most important PHYSICAL objective, which should be something that entails a struggle of life or death proportions for the hero. You need to keep in mind your audience for the logline, which, for the purpose of selling it and getting into production for a WIDE audience this initial audience is usually going to be a Reader for a Production Company etc… and they need to know what the MAIN physical action for the film is — Why? — So they can have an idea of cost and potential profit. Forget about a logline for a minute and simply state what the one thing this guy (or guys) HAVE to do. Once you have stated that, state the MAIN thing that stands in the way of the hero’s achieving that PHYSICAL goal. At this point the logline pretty much presents itself.
You need to stay clear of MENTAL/ SPIRITUAL goals/ scenarios (with a clear physical objective with a flawed protag, this is, in the best loglines, evident in a sub textual sense…)i.e. “…REALISES his sexuality is the one thing that can keep him alive…” — this tells us nothing and forces the reader to hazard at guesses — ‘hazard’ the operative word here… State HOW his sexuality is the one thing that can keep him alive…
Anyway — interesting/ original in its potential — best of luck.
Thanks, Tony! You’re absolutely right.
Three new drafts, trying to feature the protagonist and objective goal while also hinting at the FULL story (not sure I’ve succeeded on the goal front; I’ve always struggled with that part):
LIFE ON OTHER MOONS
When the last woman on Earth dies, a young man struggles to understand who he is in a dangerous, male-dominated world; meanwhile, a civilization on the moon looks for survivors in the aftermath of a civil war.
or
When the last woman on Earth dies, a young man tries to understand love in a dangerous, male-dominated world; meanwhile, a civilization on the moon looks for survivors in the aftermath of a civil war.
or
When the last woman on Earth dies, a young man refuses to accept his love for another man in a dangerous, male-dominated world; meanwhile, a civilization on the moon looks for survivors in the aftermath of a civil war.
I had hoped to stay under 30 words, but this story is fighting that threshold. I’ve actually read that the best loglines are 25 words or fewer, but I’ve also heard 30 is a good number. And I think I’ve heard up to 50 words. Anyone have any length preferences they tend to stick to?
It seems to me that there is a humongous elephant in the room that none of the loglines address head on, el numero uno, paramount plot question: what happens to the human race? What are the survivors going to do to enable the survival of the species?
Or is homo sapiens going the way of the dodo and T. Rex? There are many species on planet earth that would consider that to be an happy ending. But none of them buy tickets to see movies.
Hi Roger,
Another good point by dpg — it’s a bit of an elephant… you’re setting up the extinction of the human race and not providing a solution. A tragedy on a massive scale – zero on the hope scale. If there’s no hope there needs to be a pretty good lesson to be learnt. IMO the pay-off in a tragedy is the lesson we learn about humanity. You need to give us a clearer glimpse at this lesson in the logline.
At the moment, still in your most recent iterations, the struggle is all INTERNAL — “…Struggles to understand/ Tries to understand/ Refuses to accept his love for another man (How??)…”. For a movie (as opposed to a book) the struggle must be physical. Yes, there is always internal struggle going on — but that internal struggle must be expressed in a physical sense in a screenplay — that’s what a screenplay is, a description of VISUAL ACTION, as opposed to a book, which is description of not only physical action, but internal thoughts as well. You might get away with one of your iterations for pitching a book (a hook line), but even then, with so few words to spare (20-30, 1-2 sentences) you really need to get to the nuts and bolts of what happens — not inside the mind of the character, but what physically happens to them and/ in their world.
In effect, as this story is currently prose, you are going to be ADAPTING it for screen — this goes beyond scene headings and writing in the present tense; screen adaptation is taking what is INTERNAL action in prose and either leaving it out,and or interpreting that stuff with physical action in the screenplay… and this is what needs to be in your logline. Leaving this stuff out leaves the audience hanging as to what they can expect to see, and the biggest drawback of this is confusion over genre — a cardinal sin in the world of loglines…
I hope you don’t take this too harshly — I’m really intrigued by your story otherwise wouldn’t be replying, and hope any of my waffling helps.
Best of luck.
No, I get it. I think I’m struggling with the fact that (A) I don’t want to give too much away in the logline and (B) I don’t want it to be too on-the-nose. For the former, maybe you just have to. For the latter, I guess there’s just a balance that you have to find.
As for action, I’m trying to add verbs, which are action words by definition, but apparently the ones I’m adding aren’t the right ones. 🙂 Here’s one that gives away more than I thought the logline would and probably has the wrong verbs again:
A decade after the last woman on Earth dies, her son must either accept his love for another man or risk becoming one of the many lonely, insane men who roam the streets; meanwhile, a civilization on the moon looks for survivors in the aftermath of a civil war.
I will say that the story IS kind of a downer, so while I feel your elephant comment, I’m not sure how to address that problem. Maybe it’s a problem inherent in the story. I happen to like dreary, tragic stories. Pan’s Labyrinth is one of my favorite movies, but it has an insanely dark ending.
That said, there is some hope at the end of my story, but it really takes place in the moon civilization story, which eventually connects to the Earth story. I’ve been holding back a crucial element, one that gives some hope, but I need to figure out whether I need to do that or not. I would love for it to be a surprise, but maybe that’s just not in the cards; maybe I have to reveal it upfront. In which case…bummer.
Okay. I guess I give up. Here’s the twist, which connects the Earth story to the moon story and gives away the message/some hope:
Unbeknownst to the moonlings, their queen has escaped the broken moon and crash-landed on a male-dominated Earth, only to be surrounded by lonely, psychologically broken men who haven’t seen a woman in ten years but who now feel the hope of sex. While her people search for survivors on the broken moon and give voice to the hope that they will find a way to repopulate their race?that maybe they are not alone and maybe there is life on other “moons” with which to commingle?the main character on Earth and his lover see a woman for the first time in a decade, feel nothing, and realize once and for all that it’s okay to be who they are (gay); there is more the one valid way to be. (i.e., to make it painfully obvious, there is life on other moons.)
I feel your pain — but I’m not suggesting you give away the ending… just more clarity in the set-up…
From what you’ve mentioned above, in terms of a story arc, it feels as though the ‘Moon Queen’s’ crash landing on Earth would be the inciting incident..? And do the protag and Queen meet? Does she make advances on him? Does she make him an offer to re-populate humanity? Make him question his homosexuality and his commitment to his partner? For me, that would be the stuff of an intriguing sci-fi social drama. Even though these may not be events that occur in your story, if they did your hero would have a specified dilemma — to stay committed to himself and his lover — or, get into bed with a fallen Queen and start a new world… Of course, I could be way off. If I’m close, it’s this kind of thing that the logline needs to convey.
Again — go for plot specifics over trying to be intriguing, IMO, anyway; if the scenario and character are spelled out clearly, and if the plot is a new twist on an tried and true theme, and the character reads as sympathetic but active (has a clear goal and goes after it…) then the audience will want to know how it ends. If the action/ plot/ scenario/ dilemma/ character is unclear because you are trying to not give too much away it usually just comes across as vague — the kiss of death. First and foremost, a logline needs to tell us what the movie is about… as specifically and succinctly as you can, but without giving away the ending. I think if you can ‘spell it out’, so to speak, you will have a clearer idea of where you can get away with being a bit a bit intriguing…
Again, I wish you the best of luck with it — I can sense a cool story in there.
What Tony Edward said.
A logline shouldn’t give away the ending, but it has to be “on the nose” in the sense of describing what the story is about in terms of the inciting incident and consequently the external struggle for an objective goal. (Objective being defined as an object [example:treasure chest full of gold], destination [example:Tasmania] or event [example: crossing the finish line first] that can be visualized on screen.)
Internal struggles, of course, enrich the characters and the story, but that’s what actors are paid to do, bring out the subtext in the text. The logline’s job is to bait attention, get people to read the script.
I think my big problem is that I need to restructure the story (luckily I haven’t actually started writing it yet). That’s something I’ve struggled with a lot. I tried a lot of different permutations, trying to decide where certain events should go and what should be added/removed compared to the book version. I think I need to rethink it so that the queen appears on Earth closer to the beginning. That’s the root of my problem.
Right now, my inciting incident is the death of the mother and a call for the main character to move on with his life, fall in love, etc., and the act 1 break was the moon cracking, leading into the fallout, the arrival of the queen, and so on. I did that to avoid having a flashback to the mother’s death later in the movie (just have it come first instead). But maybe I SHOULD flash back or…just leave out that scene, which pains me to do, but maybe it’s necessary.
Thanks to both of you for helping me confirm that my structure and focus were still off!
Now I need to make some decisions about linearity, flashbacks (which I know we should generally avoid), and turning points. I feel like the logline usually comes first, but considering the nature of this story and the problems I’ve had, I think I need to work backward or, rather, work on the logline and the structure in tandem.