Screenwriting : Sci Fi story thoughts by Jeff Walesa

Maybe good old fashioned sibling rivalry. many, many people can relate to this. Give your protagonist a mysterious, possible more successful, and jerky sibling. Then you leave open future doors... maybe they aren't really siblings, maybe the sibling is an alien, etc...

The original concept I've developed revolves around those inside the secret government/ military complex. They want power and to compete at a galactic level while also killing humanity to further their agenda. Reverse engineering ufo's, alien abductions, energy sources, etc. Been toying with some humans that are involved but as shape-shifters but you don't see their true form.

It's the humans on the inside. To them humans are expendable give the size of the population along with those who get too close.

I vote aliens...

Conflict is almost always the key to interesting plots. Add conflict, whether human or alien, doesn't matter. Give it a human conflicting subject, and you should reach the hearts of the greatest number of people. Good luck,

In my current screenplay the aliens are never seen, they "influence" groups of humans. in my story there are two types of humans, ones born in space and the primitives from Earth. The aliens can take over the space-born, so my hero and his team are all Earth-born. Before the alien influence, there were already racial tensions between the two groups. This is one way to go with the series.

Anthony, the space borns are simply trying to make Earth great again. LOL.

Anthony, I like your conflict in your story with Earth based vs space based. The overall tone for me is a religious vs philosophical debate on God/ gods (aliens). The secret human military/ elites want to save humanity at the cost of humans and overpopulation of earth. This is a conflict I have but trying to fit the aliens into it (as in show them).

Just a thought but you could have the characters have different beliefs(religion, how they live there life, what they day to day, how they talk, act,etc.)and show how the subject matter of what they are dealing with effects them and there beliefs. It's a great way to show conflict within the characters themselves and the others.

What if the "aliens" are actually just humans and the experience forces the protagonist to remember it as an extraterrestrial experience?

Have you watched "X-files"? They do a great job of making you second-guess whether things are alien or terrestrial. Sometimes it's better if the audience doesn't know.

Allen, I'm laughing here. That's exactly what I'm going for and had that "Eureka" moment earlier today.

"Eureka" - Now there was a good TV sci-fi series!

Back to the subject at hand - What if we found proof alien existence? Like an artificial material in a large quantity that our scientists just discovered how to make days before or a floating artifact that we can't figure out how it works. Once the news got out people would instantly be polarized. Some would want to destroy it, some worship it, some deny it, other would try to profit. In "Arrival" they had a ship and an undecipherable message in an alien language. They were on the brink of war while the aliens were sight unseen.

The Twilight Zone did a great episode about people freaking out at the thought of Aliens. Perhaps they exist in a different way and must inhabit a human.