New Writer

Hello. :)

Who are you?

Don't be afraid to introduce yourself, you will find this to be a welcoming place. :)

Hi I'm Mike.

Iv been reading posts on here and desired it was time to join in. Unfortunately I think I'm having problems with the forum atm as I can see what iv writen nor see the topic I started. I just noticed it had been replied to while reading today

Dhogmeat

Things get a bit glitchy around here from time to time, also I think new members have to have their topics approved by admin/mods...not sure about that/don't remember.

I like your idea, NEW direction!!

Also, I like;

"I also wanted a story not to include marines or any of the ‘hurrah’ macho crap that seems to make it int o alien stories. It 50/50 action and horror."

and

"because I wanted the characters to get away from finding an egg and peering inside acting like idiots."

I think you'll find your ideas and direction quite welcome here!! And it'd be nice to see some work done focusing on the engineers, that approach seems to be one that few attempt.

Script format sounds good, people here would happily read script-format if it's a good story, NP there.

Dhogmeat you are welcome to share your ideas with us.

If you want to get notified about replies to your posts just go to Settings and turn on notifications, it should work.

If it doesn't, you could check this forum more often to be sure you don't miss anything Alien :)

Dhogmeat

Welcome! Your take on including Engineers sounds really good. Sharing your work is appreciated. Yes, I am feeling the Hooah stuff is played out too. You may not know who Lemmy Kilmister was, but his words apply for presenting your works. "Run your flag up the pole and see who salutes it."

Motorhead.

RIP

I am glad you clarified your title not being related to the short, which is cool too if anyone cares to see- that was immediately where my head went.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2emA8OusWo

I read the book river of pain recently. The story of 'before aliens'  and I really dislike it. Not because its bad, I just think its a story that doesn't need to be told. I felt the same way about star wars rogue one. We already know the colonists die. It just forces the author to add heroic elements that water down the horror. Who cares about the film alien or aliens if prior to the story, people have already been blowing the shit out of them and surviving in laughable ways.

Setting wise here are some story beats.

Epsilon Erridani. Its a starship fuel outpost.

The planet itself is habitable with little fawna but don't currently have much value other than being a stop over for exploration ships. People go there to escape civalisation because the set up is almost self sustaining. Drones skim the surface of the gas giant and bring back h3 gas for refining. That's how they support themselves. Prospectors roam the surface looking for ore hoping that finding something valuable will make a big company take more notice and finance a big development. This causes some friction because some of the characters think a big player like WY would shuffle off the little guys in a gold rush event, then leave. Some just want to make it work without having to rely on outside help. The planet itself has storm seasons that effectively shut down operations for months so you get isolated very quickly if you stuck in one.

That's nice, welcome aboard. I hope that you'll enjoy your time here. Write because you enjoy it, I don't think that it's common that writers can make a living out of it.

Alien: Last Survivor seems like an interesting title, you could take that into different directions. I was disappointed that they didn't have any Engineers in Alien Covenant except for those at Planet 4. Having them finding an injured Engineer could lead to something interesting. Yeah there have been too much of people sticking their heads into eggs, I agree. At this time maybe people almost expect that to happen and if that's the case you might get a feeling of disgust but you don't get as afraid as you would be compared to if that was something new.

Remember the importance of well-written characters. Not all of them need to be well fleshed out but at least some of them but it depends on how many characters that you have. You write that you're not certain how you'll present it, maybe you can have the same characters but in different genres like how they did with Alien and Aliens? Maybe you could expand it, Alien was horror, Aliens was action-horror, maybe you can put it into another genre and make it work? I’m not sure how many genres there are but maybe there's another one that haven't occurred to me that could work?

We've seen marines before, there got to be a way to make something else. There is potentially a lot to discover in the alien-universe, maybe you could try to introduce some life-forms that we haven't seen before? Cameron introduced the queen so he added his thing to the alien-universe, and if he can so can you. People that ain't famous can have great ideas too.

Maybe you can do fan-fiction that involves the Engineers? I think that they were a welcome addition to the franchise. Even though Prometheus has a lot of problems at least they were interesting. Not everything about Prometheus is bad, the same goes for Alien Covenant.

Different worlds, different factions of Engineers, different monsters, the black goo could be expanded on, rivalries to WY. Maybe there are life-forms in the alien-universe that we haven't seen? You could introduce them in your fan-fiction. Androids could be involved although I wouldn't like the story to be about them but Ash and Bishop worked well in context of the story but unfortunately it became too much about androids in the prequels. We don't need the androids to be totally ignored is my point.

To me the central theme in the franchise has always been about human beings (that can't be stressed enough) that get into situations that they think that they can handle but are not prepared for when they face the situation. Corporate greed is another theme that we see with Weyland and Yutani, that could be expanded on.

What if there is a part of it where the corporation try to bribe someone to do something and they get it to work but then you got to have the good guys as a counter-balance. It's almost like those that are attempted to go to the dark side in Star Wars. The point is how someone can go from an idealist to get bribed and go to the other side without the point being that everyone is just in it for the money.

Remember that they talked in AR that they could use the Xeno for new vaccines, maybe that's something?

There is more in the alien-franchise than just the Xenos is my point. It could be expanded, the Engineers was a good start I think since it gives us a example that it could be done. Feel free to use any of the ideas to your fan-fiction that I have mentioned here. You probably have fan-writers that are writing about the same things but in different ways. Human drama has been around for a long time and very few stories are totally new, the same goes for the alien-verse. There is a possibility to find inspiration in old things and make it your own without stealing it.

About your name, that is from Hudson, right? He said something like that to Burke, as far as I know.

BWW: Yes! More Engineers would be a good way to expand it. Let's say that the Engineers built up their empire but that they were in competition with another life-form maybe humanoid. The Engineers got introduced in Prometheus so there is still a chance to introduce something else, even though if it's just in a expanded universe. Maybe you can do something with that and introduce new life-forms in your take on the alien-universe? One thing that they could do is to make it clear that the engineers are a civilization, that explains the different look of the LV-223 version and those on Planet 4. I listened to a podcast, I think that it was from AVP-galaxy where they discussed the difference between those two.

The central theme in the alien-universe seems to be about humans that get into situations that they are poorly prepared to handle based on sci-fi. With this in mind you can put it into different directions.

I’m just throwing out random ideas, some might say that having a universe with many life-forms is more like Star Trek, maybe but then if Star Trek can do that so can the Alien-universe. There could be and can be other alien-movies that are not about seeing Xenos for the 100th time. Especially with the addition of the Engineers, then who knows what kind of things that they have developed or encountered?

Thoughts_Dreams

Loved your advice and things to ponder you said to Dhogmeat !! :)

Believe, I read through it, and took notes!

 I've been pondering the Engineers since Prometheus first struck my eyes.
 My short story ORIGIN is an extremely experimental piece but expands upon some things learned about the Engineers in ALIEN: Manticore.
 It's taking longer than I intended as there's the adverse effects on me from The Enemy, but also because it's something I am being very, very careful with regarding details and canon, continuity and Plausibility.
 That said is does offer some thoughts/answers/plausible reasons why the population of Planet-4 looked so different from the LV-223 Engineers.
 The Alien does figure in to the story, but only insofar as is Necessary...think 'cameo' basically. lol
I've established that Shadowfall and indeed the Lakota star system (Mentioned in PALOMINO and ALIEN: Manticore) was NOT a work of the Engineers, nor was Earth...despite what Shaw thinks.
 I will say this;
 There was a War In The Heavens, and as Shaw learned, everything she thought about The Engineers was 'wrong, we were so wrong!' :D

 After the sequel to ALIEN: Manticore, I'm sending The Big Chap off an Vacation. I will not be writing anything involving The Alien directly for quite some time after the sequel.
 Tall, dark and slobbery needs a sabbatical. 

 And, as you point out...it's a BIG universe and there's Other Things out there to challenge Humanity on every level.

One thing I like about how things are not explained alot is the horror of finding out theres no deeper meaning to things we see when rummaging around in some creapy old engineer ruins. For example the black goo, in my opinion it kills you, or it creates monsters designed to mop up any survivors. It does not create, nor does it have any deeper meaning other than its a biowepon made it kill you dead. I think as fascinated the engineers might be at a fully functioning xenomorph, they would consider it a failure because you can imagine that the black goo does its job and clears out a planet, the creatures it spawns die off after a time. The xeno on the other hand, survives and its eggs ley dormant indefinatly. If you attacked a planet with a cargo full of eggs, then that planet is effectively ruined. 

Thank you for the advice as well. Appreciate it alot.

Dhogmeat

Loved what you said in this post!!

Just a small example of one point I really liked!!

"One thing I like about how things are not explained alot is the horror of finding out theres no deeper meaning to things we see when rummaging around in some creapy old engineer ruins."