Editor Roundtable: Alien

Hello and welcome to the Story Grid Podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. So this week we have something very special that I'm really, really excited to share with you. It's been in the works for months now, and it's just. It's really exciting. So many of you know that back in the fall, we brought together a small group of storygrid nerds, and.

Sean trained them for an entire week, a really long, intense week of training, and then their trainees continued on. And These are the StoryGrid certified editors. If you are on the email list, which you should be, you know that they've been posting really great articles every Friday now for several months as the fundamental Friday Friday post. And then five of them took it upon themselves to start dissecting different movies in the different content genres of storygrid and start recording their conversations as they dissect them based on the six questions from StoryGrid and of course, the other tools. And so we invited them to put that together as an actual podcast. And we are now launching that brand new podcast and it's called the Story Grid Editor Roundtable. The podcast is up now. You can go to storygrid.com roundtable and subscribe to it. The first three episodes are up, and we're going to run an entire one of the episodes as this week's episode on this podcast. So that's what I'm introducing here. So it's 5 of the story Grid editors. They'll introduce themselves elves. And I picked out my favorite of the first three episodes, which is them going through the horror genre and dissecting the movie Alien. So it's a really great episode. I loved listening to it. I learned a lot listening to it. It's really great. And I really think if you like this Story Grid podcast, you should absolutely subscribe to the Story Grid Editor Roundtable podcast. It's just more Story Grid goodness. It's diving deep into each of the genres. It's a genre every week, and they go through a movie that fits that genre. So I think you're gonna really love it. So I'm gonna stop now. And the whole first or the whole episode about the movie Alien, the horror genre, I'm gonna play that now and then I'll pop in at the end. So I'll see you then.

Welcome to the Story Grid Editor Roundtable Podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better editor. Following the Story Grid method developed by Sean Coyne, an editor with over 25 years experience. My name is Anne Hawley and I'll be moderating the roundtable today. Joining me shortly are four of my fellow certified Story Grid editors, Jari Bolander, Kim Kessler, Leslie Watts, and Valerie Francis. Each week we watch a movie from one of the 12 content genres and complete a global Foolscap worksheet, then discuss it using the six core questions. This week we're analyzing the 1979 movie Alien, screenplay by Dan O' Bannon and Ronald Shusett and directed by Ridley Scott. Here's a synopsis that I adapted from Wikipedia. There are spoilers the commercial space tug Nostromo is on a return trip to Earth with a seven member crew in stasis. The ship's computer awakens the crew when it detects a transmission from a nearby planetoid. They land to investigate, sustaining damage. Two crew members discover that the signal comes from a derelict alien spacecraft and they go inside where they find the remains of a large alien creature. Warrant Officer Ripley, the protagonist who has remained aboard the Nostromo, determines that the transmission is not a distress signal, but a warning of some kind. Meanwhile, in the alien spacecraft, an Officer Kane discovers a chamber containing hundreds of large egg like objects. When he touches one, it opens and a creature springs out, attaching itself to his face. He's carried unconscious back to the Nostromo as acting senior officer. Ripley refuses to let them aboard, citing quarantine regulations, but a crew member named Ash ignores her and lets them in. They unsuccessfully attempt to remove the creature from Kane's face. It later detaches on its own and is found dead. After repairs, the Nostromo lifts off and Kane awakens with some memory loss but otherwise unharmed. At dinner, he convulses in pain, then dies as a small alien creature bursts from his chest and escapes into the ship. In an iconic horror moment, the crew attempts to locate it. One member follows the ship's cat into an engine room, where the now fully grown alien attacks him and disappears with his body into an air shaft. After heated discussion, the remaining crew decides that the creature must be in the air ducts. The captain is its next victim, leaving Ripley in command. The four remaining crew want to abandon ship, but the shuttle won't support four people. Ripley insists on fleshing out the alien. She discovers that Ash is an Android who was assigned to the Nostromo to ensure that the creature was returned for analysis at any cost and including the crew's lives the Android taunts them about their chances against the perfect organism. Ripley disconnects it, and they smash its remains with a flamethrower. Ripley and the two remaining crew escape to the shuttle, but the other two are killed by the alien. While gathering life support supplies, Ripley initiates the Nostromo self destruct sequence and heads with the cat to the shuttle, only to find the alien in her path. She retreats and attempts to abort the self destruct, but it's too late. She narrowly escapes in the shuttle. As the Nostromo explodes, Ripley is preparing for stasis when she finds that the alien has gotten into the shuttle. She forces it into the airlock and in a series of mounting complications, manages to blast the alien into space. She records her final log entry for the Nostromo and places herself and the cat and into stasis for the trip home to Earth.

So we'll discuss this exciting and still iconic classic horror movie, starting with the six core questions. And so we'll turn it over to you, Valerie, to discuss the global genre.

Well, the global genre is. It's obviously an external genre. It's a horror uncanny, because the force of evil is explainable.

The value shift is therefore life to unconsciousness, to death. To death would be a mercy. Ellen's want is to destroy and neutralize the alien any way she can. Now, as part of the six core questions, we identify the global genre. But, you know, because we are who we are, we can't help but to see whether there is an internal genre or not. Now, we've heard Sean say that in certain external genres, like horror, crime, some action, there doesn't need to be an internal genre. But I wanted to see if there was one anyway. And I waffled back and forth between worldview revelation and worldview disillusionment.

And this is where the squishy stuff comes in. And I think an argument could be made for either. I don't think it's a, you know, a huge radical character shift from beginning to end. But I settled on worldview revelation because at the beginning of the film, Ripley is ignorant of her crew member, you know, that Ash is.

A robot. And she's also ignorant of the ship's true objective, which is wanting to get the alien, possibly for its weapons division, but to get it, as Anne read in the introduction there, and bring the alien specimen back for analysis. So I settled in the end on Worldview revelation.

Okay.

And I think we had some dissenting views on that. Jerry, you want to weigh in?

Yeah. So I took a little Bit of a different take for me. I thought it was status sentimental. And the reason is I looked at it from Ripley's perspective in the beginning of the movie. Even though she's the protagonist, she's pretty much the lowest officer on the totem pole. And as the, as the movie progresses and things happen and you know, her commanding officer dies and things start to go bump in the night, her status starts to raise and she becomes, she becomes more powerful. I mean, she's the one that's going to kill the alien. So although I agree with you guys, I mean, it's pretty weak and pretty thin in terms of internal.

Genre on this. It's mostly driven by the external. I mean this. It's just hard in any way. And when we get to in a second, like where things start in stock because it's just so much action. But my thought was that she, she really had a more of a change in social position as she, as the film went on. So that. That's my take.

Okay. And I know we've got a couple of other dissenting views. Kim, how about you?

Yeah, so when I was looking at it, I saw the worldview, disillusionment. So I was thinking about it and again, it is thin. And all I could do is think of ways to strengthen the disillusionment, internal worldview, you know, internal genre. As if I was actually editing the film. But I think, Valerie, I really like your assessment of it being Revelation. I think in the end why I went with Disillusionment was because it felt, I guess I picture Revelation as kind of being the shocking, I mean, the shocking, like one event that happens towards the end of the film. And I guess I felt like this happened slightly more progressively, just like in smaller increments, you know, going from it being a distress signal to it being a warning to, you know, finding this information from, you know, from mother about, you know, the.

Whatever the directive was, you know, 937 or whatever. And then, you know, just having it progress to the point, you know, to the point of where Ash is actually trying to kill her. And so because it wasn't just a one moment like everything becomes clear revelation, I went with Disillusionment. And also thinking about how Ripley specifically is connected to the company of being, you know, a high ranking officer.

You know, and who's, you know, talking to the, you know, I guess I was picturing if it was like Parker or Brett, you know, they were always complaining about the company and about getting their share where Ripley's like, you know, I wouldn't say like a true believer necessarily like, but slightly defending it like you're going to get your share. She follows the rules, and so it seems like she somewhat believes in, you know, protocol and those kind of things because that's what she's been trained to do and, you know, she's a good employee and all those things. To then go to the point to realizing that the crew is expendable, that felt like that sort of progression of disillusionment. So that's why I went with that one.

Great. Good arguments. Leslie, I think you have something to say about whether there is an internal genre at all.

Yeah.

And one thing I wanted to say too is the, you know, we kind of talked about how internal genres are squishy. And we of course bring our own worldview and internal genre with us when we're reviewing people's work or reading stories and that it's important for us to. That's why. One of the many reasons why it's important to us to find out from the author what their intent is. And we can't always do that when we are looking at movies or stories as masterworks. So that makes it a little extra tricky, I think. But in. In this case, what I was seeing was that the. I don't see an internal genre, which I. I spent a long time, like, going through each one, and it. It just wasn't quite convincing enough for me. The. I would say about the. Mainly because, like, it doesn't change the way Ripley behaves. Like, learning that, you know, that Ash is an Android and that he was put on the ship in order, you know, with that specific objective. Didn't change the way that she behaved, didn't change her action. And the same with. She was behaving before Dallas and Cain were out of the picture, she was behaving the same way as she behaved afterward. She was, you know, relying on her wits, relying on the rules that try to, you know, that keep people safe. And again, in terms of worldview disillusionment, I just didn't see a change in her after, you know, after learning that, you know, that the company didn't really care about the lives of the people. And the. Just one other thing about that that I thought was, you know, sort of one indication that it wasn't necessarily intended to be.

A change or an, you know, an internal genre is that the.

The.

Apparently the subplot with Ash was added after the fact by some extra writers in the. On the screenwriting team, I guess. So it wasn't in the original story. And there was some discussion by the original writer about whether.

You know, whether it was a good fit and whether it actually took some focus away from the rest of the story. But be that as it may, it feels like it was something that was added on and not necessarily part of the.

Thread. You know, a thread that went throughout the story.

Great analysis, lots of food for thought there. As we are working with our writer clients to determine what they really intend versus what we read into it, let's move on to the obligatory scenes of the horror genre. Valerie, take it away.

I have a lot of fun doing this obligatory scenes, you know, I really do. I watched this film last night with my 14 year old daughter and I haven't seen the movie in years and of course it was brand new to her and we just had a hoot doing this. So of course the first obligatory scene is an inciting attack by the monster. And we have that when Kane is attacked by alien life form when he's exploring the planet. Then we have a speech in praise of the monster. And that comes in the infirmary when the crew is.

You've got Ash and Dallas are trying to figure out how to get this alien off of Kane's face. And they discover that instead of blood, it has this.

Toxin that can actually eat the hull of the ship. And one of the engineers says it's a great defense mechanism they have. You don't dare kill it.

So I thought that was a great speech and praise of monster. Because they can't kill the thing, they have to try and find some other way to get rid of the alien, get the alien off the ship. Next, the protagonist becomes the final victim after a series of kill off scenes of the minor characters. Well, I think in a movie like Alien it's pretty straightforward. You've got seven crew at the beginning and one by one they're. They're killed off by the alien until Ripley is left to defend herself. And I did have to say, however, that there's a little exception in Alien. Notably one minor character survives and that's Jones the cat. And my daughter and I are very happy the cat survived. We were starting to sweat there for a little bit. Poor cat left in his kennel. We have a lot of animals here at the house. So we were looking at the movie from a different point of view in those scenes. Moving on the victim at the mercy of the monster scene. I argue that there are two. And that actually goes hand in hand with the next obligatory scene, which is the false ending. So after Ripley has she's tried to go back and cancel the. The auto destruct and she can't do it. She's trying to get to the escape pod and the. The alien is there blocking her way, and she's just trying to get to the escape pod. So there is one sort of.

Sequence maybe where she's trying to get away from the. From the alien, and then she gets into the escape pod and. And off they go. So that is one of the endings. When she is. When she's gone and the Nostromo explodes, we think she's safe. Then when it's just her and the cat in the escape pod, then we have the second victim at the mercy of the monster scene, which is when she discovers the alien in the wall unit, which is a great scene. I just love it. My daughter cracked up laughing because she thought it looked more like Muppet than anything else or Halloween costume, because of course, she's seen it as a Halloween costume before she saw the film. And so that leads to the real ending. That's a much more dramatic.

Victim at the mercy of the monster scene. And that leads to the second ending, which is the real ending, where Ripley manages to finally eject the alien into space and she's safe.

Great. So let's talk about the conventions of a horror story. Kim.

Yeah. So, Valerie, I agree with you. This part is really fun looking for the specific examples that meet these requirements. So the first convention is the monster cannot be reasoned with. It is possessed by the spirit of evil and is present to devour and annihilate. And I noted specifically, Asch tells them that it's a perfect organism. Its structural perfection is only matched by its hostility. And it's not clouded by conscience or delusions of morality. And I thought that was somewhat poetic coming from an Android who seemed very calculated in his goals as well. Number two was a conventional setting, conventional settings within fantastical worlds. And what's awesome is Han specifically, Sean mentions Alien as our example of a horror story that does this. So he mentions Alien is set on a spaceship, but the spaceship is a futuristic blue collar trucker transport operation. And it's where we use familiar to ground in fantasy. It's not like our world, but it's exactly like our world. So in here you have very real down to earth characters. They're concerned about getting paid for their work. You know, they have the setting, they have the bobbleheads, they have the cup of coffee on the dashboard, all these kinds of things. So even though they're in outer space and even Though we're on a spaceship and all these things, we're still, you know, it's a crew that's working together to bring home a payload so they can get paid. And so, yeah, it's just this great juxtaposition of fantasy and something that's very familiar. Number three is labyrinths. So the settings are claustrophobic, concealing the dangers within the locked enclosed space. So in Alien, we're on a spaceship, we're wearing spacesuits, we go into caves, into those air vents and lots of tight corridors. So it definitely helps with the suspense and not knowing what's going to be around any turn. Also, I think the lighting plays a lot into this. It's very dark. You know, there's lots of different strobe light effects and that kind of thing. Number four, perpetual discomfort. Conceal the monster attack randomly and never let the audience settle. So certainly the monster is not shown in full until the end. We see different aspects of it throughout, but some of them are not even that clear. I was noting there's a few jump scares, there's the tray falling over by Ripley at one point and then, you know, the cat at another point. But it didn't feel like there were too many. It felt like they do a really great job of just really just building the tension to these attacks. And the alien attacks, they really felt like they had a rhythm. To me, you kind of knew when they were coming, you know, because they would have a goal to go out and do something. And you're like, well, here we go. Someone's gonna die. But it felt like similar to the series of tests that we see in an action story. So here in rather than test their attack, and it just seemed like it followed a similar model. Number five is Mask. The power of the monster progressively reveal more and more levels of power. So first when Dallas, when they're on the planet and Dallas speculates the way that the fossil alien species died, the fact that it exploded from the inside out, that definitely sets the tone of something eerie is going to. Is taking place. And then.

When the pod attacks Cain but keeps him alive, then it's revealed that the blood is acid. And then Ash looks under the microscope and comments on its unique makeup and says that it's a tough son of a bitch, which I noted as a mini speech in praise of the monster. Then Cain is killed in this unique and horrific way with the alien tearing through his stomach or his chest. Then it takes out the crew members easily. No one can stop it. They don't dare kill it. And then it escalates to actually killing Parker and Lambert at the same time. So we go from it, you know, just attacking Kane but keeping him alive to the point where it's taking out two crew members at once. Also, it shows its intelligence when it knows how to. It knows that it needs to stow away in the escape pod. So definitely a progression of its. I mean, again, when it hatches out of Cain, it starts out as a small baby monster and then it grows very quickly to, you know, where Ash mentions Cain's son and it's this, you know, it's the full grown alien. So, yeah, so I thought that was a really great.

Progression. Number six is the sadomasochistic flip flop. So let the reader experience the power of the monster while empathizing with the victims. I didn't have a specific example for this because it's just, it's happening throughout. You know, we're going back and forth on that all the time. And then number seven, keep the monster off screen as long as possible, which they definitely do. And then number eight, use technology to have victims experience the horrific attacks at a remove. So where they see the attack on a screen or they hear it, so it's not necessarily happening in front of their faces. They're not being, you know, eyewitnesses. So I noted a couple of these with Dallas when he's in the air duct, you know, they're on the radio with him, so they can hear him. And also Lambert is watching on the tracking screen. So all we're seeing are the, these dots moving closer together. And she's screaming at him, you know, to watch out. And he's in the duct looking around and we hear him, but we, you know, so that definitely happens where basically the crew members are removed and they're powerless to stop anything. All they can do is just watch. And then also over the radio with Lambert and Parker. So Ripley hears Lambert and Parker over the radios when they're attacked. So, yeah, they really hit all of the notes on that one.

Great assessment. The next question among the six core questions is what is the point of view? And it's really easy to just think, this is a short one word question. Well, it's third person. And as we will see from what Leslie has to say, it goes a whole lot deeper than that. So take it away, Leslie.

Thank you. So, yeah, this is third person person. It's essentially a distant, though omniscient point of view. And I likened it to.

CCTV cameras. That is because we're, you know, we're not following just one character. We're not inside anyone's experience. We're not, you know, the only way we're seeing people's thoughts is through their facial expressions and. And focus and camera angles and that kind of thing. So we're not really. It's not the same kind of point of view, for example, that we talked about last week in Billy Elliot, where we're following one character primarily. So Ripley is the protagonist, but again, we're not inside her experience any more than we are the others on the ship. And it didn't even seem to me that we were with her.

And I didn't test this, but it didn't feel as if we were with Ripley more than any of the other characters, except that she's the last one to survive besides Jones, as Valerie pointed out.

So what was interesting is I looked at the novelization, just the very beginning of that, of the story, and it has a very strong omniscient narrator who gets into thoughts and opinions of the characters, but also about the characters. So that's really interesting.

And then another thing, just in terms of the filmmaking, that Ridley Scott used a handheld camera to shoot the footage that was from this perspective of the three who went. So it was Dallas, Kane and Lambert who went down to the, you know, down to the surface and were investigating the signal. And it kind of mimics that, you know, a less clear image that they would have had.

In, you know, from their perspective. So in that, to that extent, we do get a little bit of the character's perspective. And again, when we talked about Billy Elliot, Valerie mentioned how POV is handled differently in novels and film. And what film does best, Robert McKee noted, is that it does these big action sequences. It gets the external in ways that we can't really do in the same way in novels and that we don't get as much of an internal view of what's happening. And I was thinking about that, and you know what, how can we use that as editors of written work? And I was looking at alternative script writing, which is a book by Ken Danziger and Jeff Rush. And they say.

To show thoughts and decisions and kind of internal things that the filmmaker uses rhythm, lighting, cutting patterns to change and show when something's significant. He talks about the verdict in particular.

Or they talk about the verdict in that section. So how can we use this again as editors of the written, written stories? And the important takeaway I had from this is, you know, that words can make us over dependent on telling and summary Simply because it's accessible. And it's useful to remember that we can direct focus with writing tools and make and emphasize things to show important moments and decisions that we don't have to always do. Telling.

Great.

And I find when I'm working with the writers, sometimes when they have a hard time understanding POV in the written realm, I tell them to think about whose shoulder is the camera on. Because we're so used to cinematic conventions of point of view that sometimes that actually helps a writer get what we're talking about when we talk about point of view. So we also have objects of desire, AKA wants and needs. And Leslie, we've asked you to look into that too.

Yeah, so I mean, obviously the want is Ripley wants to survive the monster. And needs depend on, you know, whether there's an internal genre. I didn't see the internal genre in here. So I would say that, you know, she just has one internal or one rather objective desire. But if you were to, if you see it as one of the others, then her need would be information or understanding.

Depending on what you choose there.

And what about our controlling idea?

So, yeah, I had a very simple just. Life prevails when people are persistent in outwitting monsters. And it seems way too over simplistic to me, and I was trying to argue with myself, but it really feels accurate. The only other things I would add to it really seem to be included within Outwitting. But, you know, she refused to give in to the terror, which is a contrast to Lambert. She was strong and resourceful, which was a contrast to, say, Brett and some of the other characters. And you know, but again, I think those are still included within Outwitting the monster, essentially. And in terms of specific moments when the theme is expressed, I think the best example is when Shipley or Ripley is on the shuttle and realize that realizes the alien is aboard with her. That would be a moment, I think most people would just fall apart and go, okay, Uncle. But she goes into the closet, she gets into the spacesuit, she opens the airlock and fires the grappling hook. And you know, she does all these things. She just is persistent in survival and that's what gets rid of the monster. And.

A couple of contrasting examples. I mentioned that Lambert freezes when she. When confronted with the alien. And when Parker is trying to help and tells her to get out of the way, she just freezes right there. But also it's interesting because Ripley says when the Face hugger releases Cain and you know, it's laying presumably dead Ripley Says, let's get rid of that thing. Whereas Ash argues, you know, we need to keep it, and Dallas overrules Ripley. But. And then contrast that with when Brett finds something, you know, some material the alien has shed, he inspects it and then drops it. So he doesn't, you know, he doesn't act on it. He doesn't really, you know, use that as, oh, I should be careful about this. And so I think that's a nice contrast to Ripley's behavior.

One of the things I love about storygridders is how deep we go on these important story elements. So. Thanks, Leslie. That was fantastic. Now we get to look at the beginning hook, the middle build, and the ending payoff. So that falls to Jari.

Yeah. So, you know, this is just a great movie with lots of stuff going on. So beginning, middle, and end, you know, could be a little squishy, like the internal genre. But for me, really, I think the start of the beginning, Hook, is when the crew gets woken up, and then they realize, hey, we're not where we are, where we should be. Excuse me. And we have to go to this planet or planetoid and figure out kind of what's going on. And so for me, you know, sort of the end of the beginning Hook.

Is kind of when the alien magically or mysteriously comes off of Cain's face. You know, everyone's sort of jubilant. You know, it's sort of this false sense of security. It's kind of like, you know, don't you kind of want to understand, like, what happened to this guy? So in that sense, you know, you get, for me, you just get sucked into it. And, you know, even within the beginning hook, when you talk about, you know, some complications in the crisis, it really is centered around Cain and what's going on with the alien. You know, Cain gets attacked by the alien is a complication. The crisis is, well, how are we going to get this thing off the cane? Because they have no, no idea. Because again, you know, Ash is kind of like, man, this thing's like the perfect. You know, he doesn't say this right now, but, you know, in his head, once, you know, more about the movie that, you know, he's like, oh, my mission is to get this thing back, you know, hook or crook, right? And then the climax would be, well, you know, it comes off a cane's face, and then they find it dead. And, hey, everything seems to be quote, unquote normal. And so I think at that point, you know.

I was not only sucked into the story, but I'm kind of like, okay, well, what's next? Like, something else is going to happen. So.

In terms of the middle build I had, that is the inciting incident of. That is when Cain wakes up and, you know, they're eating and whatnot. And then for me, the complication is the most. I don't know, one of the most iconic scenes in horror is when the alien just pops out of Kane's stomach or. And it is. When I saw this the first time when I was a teenager, I freaked out. I mean, I think I jumped out of my seat while I'm like, oh, my God. And so for me, that sort of brings to the crisis for the whole. The whole thing is like, well, where did this alien go? It popped out of his stomach, and now we got to go find it. And this is, again, building tension throughout the whole middle build and then the climax.

For the middle build. And again, it could be a little bit farther along, but for me, it's sort of like, oh, this alien is getting bigger. It gets Brett, it gets Dallas.

We need a new plan is the resolution after all of that. So Ripley.

Finally is like, quote, unquote, in charge, and she now needs to step up and figure out, okay, what's going on. And that's when she talks to Mother, which in the movie is the computer, which is where they go and figure out.

Telemetry and whatnot. And in the scene where they go talk to Mother, it's this beautiful room with all these lights, and you just feel like you're in the presence of. You feel like you're in a womb almost, or you're like, presence of God almost. So that is sort of like, for me, you know.

The end of the middle build is when, you know, Ripley now has to go talk to Mother because now she's in charge. She's got to figure out what's going on. And I know, Ann, you wanted to make another comment about maybe another device to use to figure out where things are shifting.

Yeah. One of my other writing instructor people has been Larry Brooks and his story engineering. And I know we're not supposed to go off topic like that here, but a really interesting feature that he gives a lot of weight to is what he calls the midpoint shift. And he. I'm putting words into his mouth, but basically, that's where your character or characters turn and face the strange. To quote David Bowie, they have been on the run to this point, and at the midpoint, they turn and take on the offensive role. And in this Movie, which they clearly do. This point happens at exactly 50% of the movie. They jettison Kane's body out into space, they turn to each other and they start planning for how to go after the monster. So it's a useful device when you're analyzing stories. Go to the very middle, move your slider to the middle of the movie and you can see this happening. And if you argue for a four act structure rather than a three act structure, that is the shift between sort of middle build one and middle build two.

So, yeah, if you want to go on with our ending payoff here.

Sure, sure, yeah. And yeah, I mean, that again is what Anne mentioned. I mean, that scene is.

When you're watching that, you're like, yes, the world has now changed. They need to figure out a plan because this is not going to end well. And so when it comes to the ending payoff for me, the inciting incident of that is when Ripley goes into Mother's, the little Mother room, and she finds out about order 937, which is basically collect the alien at all costs. And that is like, oh, we've been set up, you know, this, this is, we're expendable. And oh man, she now really figures out, okay, the odds are really against me. And, and then the, the complication during that is that, you know, Ash is actually an Android. Ash tries to kill Ripley and then they end up killing Ash. And then again, the crisis comes back around in the ending payoff of, well, how are we going to kill the perfect organism according to Ash? I mean, Ash is like, you're just not going to kill it. And there's again the scene where, you know, they, they re, they turn him back on and he's just like, yeah, good luck. You're like, oh man, this is not going to end well. And so you really start to feel the, start to feel the tension. And then the climax of the ending payoff is, you know, Ripley, you know, gets on the shuttle, she thinks she's safe, okay, everything's going well, and then, oh no, she has a visitor which happens to be the alien. And then there's the whole scene that we talked a little bit about where, you know, she's getting into the spacesuit and whatnot. And the resolution, obviously, she ends up killing the alien. So again, wonderful, action packed sequence at the ending payoff where you are really on the edge of your seat trying to figure out what's she gonna do next. So, yeah, really, really, really wonderful, wonderful way to end. Always got to kill the monster.

And she saves the cat. Which has made me wonder whether that notable book on screenwriting drew that expression from this movie. I suspect maybe that's the case. I haven't read it.

Yes, Saves the cat. It's awesome.

We like to wind up our analysis of a movie with some good examples, special scene types, outstanding tropes, clear tie ins to other genres. And Kim and Valerie have agreed to talk about this.

Okay, I came up with a couple of examples. And, and first of all, I think that Alien is a really good example of why in the story Grid universe, science fiction is considered a setting and not a genre. Because, I mean, we just spent, you know, 45 minutes going through all of the obligatory scenes and conventions and so forth of a horror genre. And we can clearly say that Alien is a horror film, but it is set on a spaceship. So clearly the setting informs the story, but it really is the type of tale that could be told anywhere. And we, we already touched on that as well earlier in this discussion. The other thing that I think it's a really good example of is a false ending because it's, it's very clear. We can see Ripley faces the alien once and we think once she's jettisoned from the, when she's gone in the escape pod and she's away from the Nostromo, that she's safe. And then we have another attack by the monster and she's got to defeat him again. And that's actually the real ending. So those are my two examples. Kim.

Yeah, so as I was watching this and I watch when we do these movies, I watch with my laptop on my lap and I'm just like dictating, typing all kinds of notes while I'm watching it. And I'm just noting that this is a really great example of progressive complications. So every single scene really feels like it does its job and furthers the story and progressively complicates things in a steady build. So I just note. I just wanted to specifically break down the beginning hook. So from the moment when they wake up, they're in stasis, they wake up, they find out it's a distress call. Well, first they find out that they're not where they're supposed to be. Then they find out that there's a distress call. Then they realize they have to answer it or there's no share of wages. Then they land and the ship is damaged. Then they find the fossilized alien and it died in this obscene way. Then they find these eggs, which then seem to be almost aware it's like, they are dynamic when someone is near them, and they have this protection with, like, electric shock. Then Kane is attacked, but he's still alive, which is a really interesting moment. Then the quarantine protocol argument, and then we have. We start to progressively complicate with the crew kind of arguing amongst itself. And then the fact that Ash undermines Ripley, which, again, is a setup for later.

And I just. I really noted that it was such a unique choice to have Cain attacked but still be alive and have this hope for survival. Then to actually even to go as far as have the alien detach itself from him. The alien's dead, and then he wakes up, and we think that things are going to be okay, only to have things turn so harshly in the dining scene. And so I just thought this was a great setup and payoff and so much more rewarding, if you want to use that term, than if Kane had just been attacked outright and killed, you know, on the planet. And the fact that they. And I really thought it was interesting the fact that that was kind of done off scene. You know, we see this thing jump into space, and then we cut back to the Nostromo, and the crew is arriving back, and they're like, hey, you got to let us on. Something's going on with Kane. And we're like, wait, what happened? And then something's attached. Like, they just. They dole out the information bit by bit, rather than just even us seeing what it is right away. And the fact that then when they take off his helmet and we see that it's on him and he's breathing, I mean, they just really build it up bit by bit by bit. And I just thought that was great. And also, it reminded me of when on the. On the traditional StoryGrid podcast, when Sean was working with Tim on his novel about not going too big too soon. I remember one of the initial scenes with Jesse where she was going to. Like, she was going to stab the president in that opening scene with them, and they just went ahead and they backed it off, where she just says no and so not. And Sean really talked about not going too big too soon. And I thought this was a really great example of how they just. It's that slow. That slow build and just progressively complicate in small ways that builds the tension for the ultimate payoff.

So, yeah, yeah, this puts the progressive in progressive complications in a big way. And the movie is a classic for a reason. One thing that I just wanted to add to the end is that even though we can look at it at this almost, what is it, 40 year distance and see the kind of ridiculous takes on technology that now seem kind of stupid. Like this computer that can't even talk or show visuals or anything.

It still works as a movie because it is not dependent on its technology in the science fiction sense, but depends on these classic standard tropes and conventions of true horror. So it was even though I've seen it before and I knew exactly what was going to happen, I sat there kind of glued to my screen watching it the whole way. So great discussion. That wraps it up for this week. I'd like to thank everyone, Leslie, Jari, Kim, and Valerie for excellent editorial insights into this classic science fiction horror movie. We hope that our discussion helps all of your clients write a better horror story or better stories in general. So join us again next time when we're going to take a little detour and we're going to take on the crime genre. Maybe we're going to watch the movie Hot Fuzz, which we think might be crime but probably also fits another genre. We'll see. So we'll see you next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid Podcast. I hope you enjoyed that episode from our brand new podcast, the Story Grid Editor Roundtable. I'm really excited about this podcast. Like I said, I've known it's been coming for a while and so it's really exciting to actually get to share this with you. So make sure you go over to storygrid.com/roundtable and subscribe to the podcast. Also for each movie they do Story Grid, full scap and extensive show notes. All of that can be found@storygrid.com roundtable so thanks as always for listening and supporting the show and supporting this brand new show that we've created. I know you're going to love it. I will see you next week back here on Story Grid.