Howdy. I just revised my pitch for the feature "Money From The Clouds" . A session I have coming up on April 1 requires it to be no more than 2 pages. I'd appreciate any comments from the group:
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Genre: Adventure.
Format: Feature.
Nutshell: A modern day pirate yarn. Rambo meets Errol Flynn.
Logline: A retired special-ops gun-for-hire seeks vengeance after a vicious pirate steals his fortune and murders his wife, then discovers that revenge alone will not cure his misery.
Overview
We draw from the classic pirate tales, with swashbuckling heroes like Captain Blood, Blackbeard and Jack Sparrow, and blend them with recent news stories of high jinks on the high seas. There are pirates in the 21st century too, taking their prey on the sea lanes east of Africa, setting sail from desperate, failed states racked by civil war, famine and neglect.
If pirates were students of history, they would no doubt carve the motto “In crisis, there is opportunity” on a plaque and mount it on the fo’csle wall. But, this motto works for good as well as evil. Sometimes, it just takes a hero to bring justice and stability to a lawless land.
Characters: Ridge’s Crew
Ridge Maxwell – Retired special ops soldier, presumed dead, with windfall profits in the cloud.
Mel Johanson – Accountant who has lost everything in a corporate scandal and divorce.
Sam Kincaid – Martial arts and weapons specialist, petty thief. Likes to blow things up.
Wade and Pat Slatbury – He’s a computer programmer. Lost his fortune in the dotcom bust. Pat does websites, but really, she’s a thrill seeker, just becoming aware of her combat capabilities.
Gary and Meg Farley – A retired investment banker who loves shooting, sailing and spending his kid’s inheritance. Meg’s a great cook, manager. Speaks 6 languages and a damn fine sailor, too!
Fred Brighton – Carpenter, diesel mechanic, can fix anything. Lost everything to bad economy and morals (marriages.)
The Somalians
Fagoon –A tatted, scarred, ‘roid raging giant. Greedy, cruel -- all the attributes of a fine pirate.
Mugawe –Warlord. Sadistic, short and rotund. Captures ships for ransom. Kills people for fun.
Nandeen – 19-year-old daughter of a slain pirate in Fagoon's crew. Beautiful, smart and fearless.
Misha – Nandeen's mother. A wrinkled old crone, the best cook in the land, who knows how to delight – or kill – with nothing but a spice rack.
Summary
On a honeymoon sailing cruise off the east coast of Africa, Ridge and Anna Maxwell are in a blissful state that can only be understood if you’ve actually experienced sailing on the open sea, in a fair wind, on a sturdy, sleek vessel, with your one true love.
However, this is not a love story. It’s a pirate story, written in blood. The honeymooners are raided by a scurrilous band of starving men, commanded by Fagoon, a despicable pirate.
Fagoon’s negotiating tool is murder, and he starts by putting a bullet in Anna’s head. Ridge then makes a sorry bargain for survival and revenge by surrendering his fortune, held in a bank account in “the cloud.” He’s set adrift, a hundred miles from land, with nothing to keep him alive but a seething desire for retribution, the name FAGOON burned forever in his memory.
Tenacity and military training get Ridge to the Seychelles, where he steals a yacht and puts a crew together with one goal: to return to Africa and deliver vengeance to Fagoon.
The crew he selects seems odd -- wrong, even, for the task at hand. Yet, they all have one thing in common: nothing to lose. Ridge calls on Sam, a professional thief, to help with a few burglaries to net the cash and supplies they need to outfit the trip. He keeps record of everything they steal, intending to fully pay it back at journey’s end.
On the voyage back to Africa, Ridge trains the crew for battle, and friendships are forged. As they reach the Sea of Aden, they get lucky, capturing Fagoon’s pirate barge with a Trojan horse style midnight raid. Fagoon is forced to walk the plank in classic pirate fashion, into water churning with sharks. It takes very little then to recruit Fagoon’s men. With some Spam®, some rum, and few $20's, Ridge soon has 6 boats and 40 men under his control.
Ridge soon learns that Fagoon was only a small part of a “pirate navy” commanded by Mugawe. They need to threaten his game of capturing commercial tankers to get his attention.
Instead of the pirate method of kidnapping and ransom, Mel, the accountant and Wade and Pat, the techies, dream up the Naval Security Services of Somalia (NSSS,) a legitimate (ish) company offering armed escort for vessels passing through the gulf. The NSSS earns a healthy profit on their first job, enabling them to beef up with RPG’s, drones and a gatling gun.
When Mugawe learns of this intrusion into his “lake,” he retaliates, calling in favors from other pirate captains to assemble a large flotilla. They overwhelm the Americans on their next escort, locking them in the bilge of a sinking freighter and stealing their million-dollar escort fee.
As Mugawe’s navy is attacking the NSSS, Ridge and Pat are raiding Mugawe’s land base, left unguarded – mostly. It’s a disaster, as their boats are blasted out of the water by Fagoon, perched on a hill to guard the harbor. Apparently, even sharks couldn’t kill him.
An unknown ally, Nandeen comes to their rescue, dragging them to shore. Fagoon, her slain father’s boss and childhood friend, sold her to him, betraying her in his quest for power, guns and money. And now Ridge must rescue her from Mugawe. Nandeen helps Ridge contact his surviving crew. They bind their wounds and hoist sail to join the showdown on shore.
Mugawe throws a big victory party, but to his misfortune Misha, Nandeen’s mom, is the cook, and her famous stew is spiced with powdered frog skin – tasty, but lethal. The pirate navy is decimated, and Nandeen has the gruesome pleasure of plunging a knife into Mugawe’s chest.
Fagoon arrives too late for the stew, but just in time for Ridge’s bloody vengeance.
With the death of Mugawe and Fagoon, Ridge and his valiant crew bring down an entire pirate economy, ending a reign of brutality and greed. The NSSS becomes a legitimate sea escort service, which lifts thousands of Somalians out of poverty, bringing stability to the region and protecting maritime travel through The Gulf of Aden, the world’s most dangerous waters.
And, spoiler alert: “Money from the Clouds” turns out to be a love story after all!
I would change Errol Flynn to Jack Sparrow. Flynn is so antique as to be obscure.
You should probably add 2 sentences about the setting & tone. I would also limit the character list to 2-4 characters and try to give a sense of the arc of each. Finally, I would try to cut the synopsis to 3-4 paragraphs. In the synopsis, focus on the main turning points for the characters more than plot points.