D W E L L E R S -- (now posted in Scenes Section!)

[atb]

DWELLERS
(contained thriller)

"An unhappy Biology professor and her distant husband set out to explore uncharted cave tunnels, but when a troubled student pays them a mysterious visit and her husband goes missing, she’s forced to explore the depths of her crumbling marriage and find a way to save her lost husband before the coming spring thaws the snow above and floods everything below."


... give you a good idea of the story and where it can go? Anything else that's needed?

I've just begun outlining this. I'm thinking of a mesh between "Villain" by Josh Zetumer and "Kristy" by Anthony Jaswinski.

Also wondering if the "troubled student" aspect may have less potential than, say, a malicious group of cave explorers that torment the married couple?? Anyone like to weigh on those two options... Jealous Student or Malicious Cave Explorers??

The idea of the troubled student would be that the student and Biology professor have had a short affair, and he's found a positive pregnancy test. He believes she may try to pretend that it's not his and that it's really her husband's. But the student knows (or thinks he knows) that the couple hasn't had sex in many months. So the idea is that he wants to get rid of the husband to be with the professor. So it becomes both and external and internal struggle for the couple to escape with their lives and their marriage intact... and possibly stronger that it was before they entered the cave.

Soooo, does the logline above give you enough?

[mscherer]

atb,

I think your logline gives us too much information. Needs to be boiled down to the essentials. Protagonist. Antagonist. Stituation. Stakes.

Something along the lines of:

When a young Biology professor’s estranged husband disappears while exploring an uncharted cave she struggles against a disturbed student and Mother Nature to rescue her husband.

Just my two-cents.

[teamcoco]

I think mscherer's logline is good, although I would drop the 'her husband' at the end and replace it with 'him'. That is nit-picking though.

As for your story: I think the ticking time bomb of the snow thawing probably is not needed, as I don't know of any massive snowfalls that would melt in a matter of hours. Something like that would take weeks, surely? You would not need a ticking time bomb in this case, as the goal is pretty clear from the outset (ie. escape from the student).

Also, does anyone know of a word for a male mistress? You can have 'A man and his mistress...' but what is the female equivalent? 'A woman and her...' Lover doesn't convey that it is an affair, and as Liz Lemon would say "That word bums me out".

[oz]

How about paramour, sugar daddy, inamorato.

[lizzo1014]

I like mscherer's logline as well. Simplifies everything.

[Hal Berlin]

Still think we need to condense it more, and perhaps losing the old After X, Y struggles to get Z might be of help. What's the core of the story here? Give it to me in three words.

[atb]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Hal Berlin: 3 words, huh?... Not much room to work with... How about... "Woman against psycho," or "Teacher versus student," or "Lady trapped in cave" (4 but does "in" realllllllly count as a whole word??)

But on a more serious level... I'm thinking the essence of the story is really about the wife and husband's relationship, and the fact that she's been unfaithful and this whole situation is just a test to see if they can withstand all of this and stay together through it all. The setting of the cave and psycho/student/lover is just the external conflict that's driving the plot and action. The real story's beneath it all, the real reason we write, eh?

[atb]

teamcoco: the whole "thawing snow" thing is just one of those old cave dangers that seems like it needs to be explored. Especially if you're going to exploit the claustrophobia aspect of cave exploring... which is impossible not to do, I think.

Also, it wouldn't happen in hours. The idea is that the couple has a Cave Telephone (yes, they actually exist... weird, right?) that's connected to miles of wire that travel to the cave's entrance. They can communicate with a kind of Base Camp, with a certain person, to update them on their progress, any findings, and so they can we warned of any potential flash floods or any other dangers.

But when the student shows up and her husband goes missing, this telephone stops working... obviously, the wire's been cut... must've been the student, right?... so not only can she not call for help, but she can't be warned of the temperature increase above... so one night will go by before the student actually comes out with his reasons for being there, and then the second night will be her ordeal and attempt to save her husband and escape... the entire time the water level in a certain Main Chamber is slowly rising... until the warm-up takes full effect and begins to quickly flood the cave tunnels.

Soooo it's more of a slow burn than a quick flash flood I guess.

[adamcarter216]

I'm struggling to see the connection between the conflict of searching through an uncharted cave and a disturbed student.

I think you need to just chop off the latter and focus on the tighter, but possibly more effective, idea of an estranged couple's relationship being put to the test when one has to risk it all to find the other.

Your protagonist already has a two-fold conflict, both internal and external. Externally, she's dealing with the cave itself (a bevy of potential obstacles here). Internally, she's questioning how far she's actually willing to go to save her husband (her marriage).

[attatt]

I think you need to add a detail that makes this setting a ticking time bomb. It is hard to picture this melting snow as a real factor because my idea of melting snow is a season long thaw process.

You could add something to this like, the cave is at the bottom of a hillside where the snow is about to avalanche as it continues to melt causing a massive cave in of snow and water. The couple thought they had time to get in and out, but now 2 days becomes 5 days which is way too long.

The logline could become something like this:

A biologist struggles with the decision to risk her life or leave her estranged husband to die when he is mysteriously lost in a cave that will be flooded in 48 hours.

[atb]

Okay, I've tweaked with the concept quite a bit.

adamcarter216: I agree with the disconnect between the student and cave exploring.

I'm thinking of just having one COUPLE exploring this uncharted cave for a more accessible entrance for tourism. But the Woman's husband disappears and she's confronted by a mysterious group of young, thrill-seeking cave explorers.

Turns out these Explorers have a good reason to make this couple disappear before they find a commercial entrance to this cave.

So the external conflict will be these malicious Explorers attempting to catch her, while she tries to find her husband, and another way out.

... probably just cut out the whole "flash flood" idea.

@attatt: I really like that logline. Concise, clean, and intriguing. But I do want to keep this in the thriller genre, so I'd like to keep pushing the action with some extremely motivated villains.



I'm wondering if I can make the Mysterious Cave Explorers and the potential Flash Flood work together....

This may sound ridiculous... But I'm thinking the Explorers could actually be using the cave as a kind of hideout for growing massive amounts of marijuana (in Eastern Kentucky they have a problem with this and they have no way of finding a drug operation that's utilized undiscovered caves -- their method of scouring the miles of forests and mountains with helicopters won't work if the plants are grown underground).

So this Mysterious Group shows up and pretends to just be Explorers that happened upon the area. But they know it's close to Spring as well, and they need to get all of their weed out of the cave before the water rises. They actually have a kind of secret room that's behind this underground waterfall that you can only access by swimming beneath it. And they need to get rid of this couple to get these 100s of 1000s of $$s worth of weed out. They'll do what they have to.

So I'm thinking it could build and build and build as this group chases her through the vast cave tunnels, the water level rising slowly over the course of about 2 days (I like your idea that the cave could be at the bottom of a hill and be a kind of underground river for the thawing snow and ice above), and the tables end up switching on the group as they try desperately to get their drugs out before the water's too high. And this woman finally finds her husband and they somehow find another exit out of the cave... but the "Explorers" don't.

... any of that sound more appealing??