With the all-new Storyform Builder found in the Subtxt/Dramatica platform, you can spin up an intense sci-fi horror perfect for the Fall of 2025, and have a 2 page synopsis to send off to your producer in little an hour.
From a possible 32,768 unique Storyforms, we’ve narrowed down our selection to a possible 128. Blue selections are ours, Orange are the inferred based on what we have chosen and what would create a balanced and complete narrative.
So let’s set Chaos as the MC Pivotal Element–fitting given the kind of violence we’re going for, and for 2025 in general…
That narrowed it down quite a bit! From a possible 128 to just 2. The Pivotal Element has HUGE implications for the entire narrative and why it’s so important to have a good understanding of its role within a story.
But then, realizing that we already chose Options for the Story Limit but forgot to set it…we go ahead and make that selection and we’re down to one Storyform.
Time to add a little imagination and artistic intent:
storyencoding: use the following storyform to outline a sci-fi thriller that takes place on a moon base in the very near future. ultra-violent, high stakes action. female lead. supernatural elements to it.
With Storyform in place we can shift to the next stage of communication when it comes to the Dramatica theory of story. Story Encoding is when we transform abstract thematic leverage points into concrete storytelling for our audience.
After a brief time “thinking”, Narrova responds with a detailed and comprehensive report:
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Premise & Logline
In the very near future, a private lunar-mining base becomes a slaughterhouse when a series of ultra-violent incidents escalate under a supernatural pall. Captain Elara Voss, a pragmatic, action-first security chief, must impose order and exhume the buried truth of a prior mission before the base’s “echoes” overwrite living minds. She succeeds in stopping the chaos by embracing strict protocol—but at a brutal personal cost.
Tone/genre: Sci‑fi thriller, ultra-violent, high-stakes action, supernatural elements grounded in psychological phenomena.
Cast & Role Encoding
MC: Captain Elara Voss — security chief, ex-military, action-first (Do‑er), linear thinker. Flaw: ingrained Conditioning (protocols/habits that backfire). UA: uncanny Interpretation of sensor data/behavior under stress. Personal Problem: Chaos—her improvisational, “kick the door” style escalates disorder.
IC: Cmdr. Maeve Kade — the base’s former commander, presumed dead; now a persistent “echo” experienced by multiple crew. Her State of Being as “the Commander” is immutable; she embodies Order, criticizing Elara’s chaotic methods. Problem: Change; Solution: Inertia (she pressures Elara to hold fast to strict procedure).
OS Protagonist: Elara (pursues the Goal of the Past: uncovering the prior mission).
OS Antagonist: Chief Engineer Rooke — weaponizes the echoes to trigger “purge events,” sowing Chaos to force a reset that he believes will appease the base. Not an inanimate force.
Allies: Dr. Ayumi Chen (neurologist), Noor Patel (systems analyst), Sergeant Kaito Mura (EVA spec).
Opposition: Corporate auditor Havel, who constantly invokes Prediction (“our models say…”) and stalls action.
Validation: Antagonist is human (not inanimate), satisfying OS constraints. IC is distinct from Antagonist, preventing role collapse.
Echo — Storyform Overview (confirmed)
Storypoint
Method (Type/Variation)
In-Story Illustration
Story Goal
Past
Reconstruct Maeve’s prior mission and the sealed gallery incident to break the repeating slaughter loop.
Story Consequence
Memory
Failure = living minds overwritten by the base’s “recording,” trapped in looping memories.
Story Requirements
Future
Define and implement a full hard-lock future state: partition plan, thermal cycle schedule, blackout windows, escape pod priorities.
Story Prerequisites
Subconscious
Crew must get their primal responses under control: sedation protocols, panic filters, heartbeat-linked access.
Story Preconditions
Becoming
Only those who “become” certified for cold partitions and EVA locks can act; infected must “become” quarantined.
Story Costs
Conceptualizing
Cognitive burden of modeling the lattice; flowcharts, branching plans, and mind-maps that break people.
Story Dividends
Understanding
Each harsh step yields deeper grasp of the echo’s rules and sync windows.
Story Forewarnings
Obtaining
Rooke and the echo “obtain” tokens, hatches, rovers, and bodies—each acquisition signals the oncoming catastrophe.
Validation: Utilities are all consistent with OS: Universe; Goal: Past; Benchmark: Future; Issue: Fate; Problem/Solution: Chaos → Order; and your selected dynamics.
From there, Narrova moves into greater and greater detail:
Throughline Encoding (clean)
Objective Story — Universe: a trapped base under Fate
Concern: Past | Issue: Fate | Problem/Solution: Chaos → Order
Symptom/Response: Thought → Knowledge
Benchmark: Future
Catalyst/Inhibitor: Fate / Prediction
Signposts (order): 1) Future 2) Past 3) Progress 4) Present
Act I — Future: “What will happen” tightens the noose. Options table, partition maps, and corporate “predictions” clash with on-the-ground survival.
Act II — Past: Opening the sealed gallery exhumes Maeve’s mission, logs, and ritualized checklists the echo replays.
Act III — Progress: Rooke escalates “purges,” echo spread accelerates; Elara’s rescues worsen damage; lockdown flow advances in grim steps.
Act IV — Present: A hard-lock now or never; manual welds and cryo-plunge freeze the lattice.
Main Character — Physics: Elara, the action-first fixer
Concern: Understanding | Issue: Interpretation | Problem/Solution: Chaos → Order
Act I — Doing: Breach, clear, sprint—her kinetic responses spike collateral chaos.
Act II — Understanding: She interprets micro-anomalies in sensors and behavior—begins seeing the lattice’s rules.
Act III — Obtaining: Admin tokens, access, control of the mass driver—each “win” magnifies moral stakes.
Act IV — Learning: She internalizes Maeve’s lesson; the cost of Order lands permanently.
Influence Character — Psychology: Maeve’s echo as immutable “Commander”
Concern: Conceptualizing | Issue: State of Being | Problem/Solution: Change → Inertia
Symptom/Response: Thought → Knowledge
Benchmark: Becoming
Signposts: 1) Conceiving 2) Being 3) Conceptualizing 4) Becoming
Act I — Conceiving: The echo plants the seed—“Partition or die.”
Act II — Being: She “is” the Commander, enforcing procedure regardless of pain.
Act III — Conceptualizing: Forces Elara to draft and commit to the hard-lock model.
Act IV — Becoming: The echo stabilizes as a pattern only—no longer a person.
Relationship Story — Mind: Elara ↔ Maeve’s echo, haunted by memory
Concern: Memory | Issue: Truth | Problem/Solution: Perception → Actuality
Act I — Preconscious: Startle reflexes; Maeve’s voice triggers gut-level obedience/conflict.
Act II — Subconscious: Fear, guilt, and protective urges pull them together/apart.
Act III — Conscious: Arguments over rules versus rescue sharpen; truth confessions break stalemates.
Act IV — Memory: Acceptance of the echo as a recording, not a soul—Actuality, not Perception.
Validation: All signposts reflect your saved orders and drive scene content, not just summaries.
Ultra‑Violent Set Pieces (aligned to utilities)
Red Snow (Forewarning: Obtaining; Prereq: Subconscious): A micrometeor shower pierces a dome; panic overwhelms training until sedation protocols kick in; Elara amputates a trapped hand to seal.
Blender Corridor (Cost: Conceptualizing): A tungsten-shot drone turns a hallway into red mist; Noor, trying to model angles in real time, breaks—smears her palm to “erase branches.”
Black Rock Autopsy (Dividend: Understanding): Dr. Chen opens a skull; the microfracture lattice hums; the cadaver mouths checklists. They learn the sync windows.
Mass Driver Duel (Requirement: Future): Elara repurposes the ore launcher per the lockdown timetable; a possessed tech is pulped—logs show he was reciting Maeve’s codes.
Systems Melt (Driver; Progress): Rooke crashes an ore pod into Hab B; zero‑g fire halos; Elara welds a bulkhead while bodies drift alight.
The Seal Choice (Precondition: Becoming; RS Subconscious): Only certified personnel may hard‑lock; Kaito hasn’t “become” cleared. Elara seals him out. Breathing frost on glass fades.
RS Preconscious: Maeve’s voice jolts Elara into a snap salute—then fury.
First Quarantine (OS SP1: Future)
Elara orders a provisional partition; Havel blocks with “prediction” models.
Forewarning: Rooke “obtains” a token off a corpse.
Memory Pull I — Prerequisites: Subconscious (MC SP1: Doing)
Noor/Chen extract shared gut-level recollections: a universal countdown, a checklist voice.
Elara’s Doing creates chaos; two friendlies die in a micro-vent.
Blender Corridor — Cost: Conceptualizing (OS SP2: Past begins)
Rooke’s drone atomizes a corridor; Noor’s real-time modeling breaks her.
IC Being emerges: Maeve’s echo commands cold procedure.
Black Rock Access — Dividend: Understanding (MC SP2: Understanding)
Admin tokens obtained; the lattice chamber found; sensor anomalies decoded into rules.
Mass Driver Counterstrike — Second Driver (end OS SP2: Past)
Action: Elara fires the mass driver; kills a possessed tech. Evidence suggests he echoed Maeve’s codes.
RS Conscious sparks: Truth vs. Evidence argument—“You killed a recording.”
Conceptual Model — Cost: Conceptualizing (IC SP3: Conceptualizing)
They formalize the lockdown flow; Noor self-injures to stop branching.
Options shrink: 3 habs left, 1 rover disabled, 1 pod locked by corporate.
Memory Pull II — Dividend: Understanding (RS SP3: Conscious)
Maeve’s past sacrifice replays; Elara finally “knows” what Order demands.
Systems Melt — Fourth Driver (OS SP3: Progress peaks)
Action: Rooke crashes an ore pod into Hab B; seven die; Elara hot-partitions, welding amid zero‑g fire.
The Seal Choice — Climax (RS SP2→SP3 bridge; MC Growth: Stop)
Kaito and two survivors pound a viewport; echo-entrained crew chant.
IC: “Seal now.” Elara halts her rescue reflex and executes the hard-lock.
Options nearly exhausted: one hab, one pod, one rover, two tokens.
Hard‑Lock the Black Rock — Concluding Driver (OS SP4: Present)
Action: EVA under micrometeors; cable trunks severed; cryo-plunge freezes the lattice. The base stills.
Outcome: Success.
Denouement — Judgment: Bad (RS SP4: Memory)
Corporate extraction celebrates. Elara alone in the cupola recites the partition checklist.
Actuality accepted: Maeve is a pattern, not a person—yet inequity persists.
Validation: Each Driver is an action that forces ensuing decisions and marks the end of SP1–SP3, with the concluding Driver in Act IV. Options are explicit and dwindle clearly.
Thematic Weave (tight)
OS Issue: Fate vs. Prediction
Fate galvanizes decisive partitions; Prediction delays and enables Rooke.
MC Issue: Interpretation vs. Conditioning (CF)
Elara’s interpretive edge yields Understanding; her ingrained tactics fuel Chaos until she stops.
RS Issue: Truth (Catalyst) vs. Evidence (Inhibitor)
Sci‑fi thriller | Contained lunar base | Hard R | Female lead | Supernatural grounded in physics
Logline
When a private lunar‑mining base becomes a slaughterhouse under a supernatural pall, Captain Elara Voss—a pragmatic, action‑first security chief—must exhume the truth of a buried mission and impose ruthless order before the base’s “echoes” overwrite living minds. She stops the chaos by embracing strict protocol—but at a brutal personal cost.
Premise
In the very near future, a helium‑3 mining outpost on the Moon harvests regolith for power back on Earth. Beneath the base lies a “black rock” inclusion that acts like a piezoelectric memory lattice, storing and replaying synchronized sensor/motor patterns when thermally stressed. These replays manifest as time‑slice overlays—voices, reflexes, even coordinated “ghost” behavior. As ultra‑violent incidents spiral, the crew oscillates between fatalism and corporate “prediction models” while a human saboteur weaponizes the phenomenon. The only salvation is to reconstruct the truth of a prior sealed‑off mission and execute a hard‑lock protocol that will save the many—and sacrifice the few.
World & Tech Grounding
3D‑printed regolith domes with internal pressure “balloons,” hard partitions, manual weld tabs.
EVA suits with micro‑thrusters; mag‑boots in metal corridors; dual sealed rovers.
Tools/weapons: mining lasers (thermal cutters), tungsten‑shot drones, flechette launchers, bolt‑drivers that also seal bulkheads.
Infrastructure: ore mass driver (repurposable as a railgun), helium‑3 array, seismic sensors feeding the “black rock” lattice.
The “Echo”: a physics‑plausible piezoelectric inclusion replaying recorded patterns—no demons, no magic; the supernatural is a terrifying recording.
Principal Characters
Captain Elara Voss (MC): Security chief, ex‑military, action‑first Do‑er, linear thinker. Unique Ability: uncanny interpretation of sensor/behavior anomalies. Critical Flaw: ingrained conditioning—breach‑and‑clear instincts that escalate chaos.
Cmdr. Maeve Kade (IC): Presumed dead former commander; now a persistent “echo.” Her unshakeable State of Being as “the Commander” pressures Elara to stop improvising and hold steady to procedure.
Chief Engineer Rooke (OS Antagonist): Zealot who believes sacrificial “purges” appease the base; weaponizes echoes and drones.
Dr. Ayumi Chen: Neurologist who decodes the lattice’s “rules.”
Noor Patel: Systems analyst whose mind cracks under the burden of conceptualizing the lockdown flow.
Sgt. Kaito Mura: EVA specialist and Elara’s lover—his fate defines the story’s moral wound.
Havel: Corporate auditor invoking prediction models to stall decisive action.
Tone, Audience, and Comparables
Tone: Relentless, claustrophobic, and viscerally violent—anchored in scientific plausibility. The horror is behavioral and systemic, not creature‑based.
Comps: Alien meets Moon and The Thing; the moral ruthlessness of Eye in the Sky; the physics‑strange awe of Annihilation; the contained intensity of 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Rating: Hard R for graphic violence and intense peril.
Plot Spine (feature, 105–115 min)
Act I — Future: What will happen if we do nothing?
An EVA cutter opens a sealed wall; preserved corpses spill out, their suit speakers looping the same countdown. The base’s options table is laid out: five habs, a finite number of rovers/pods/tokens.
Elara asserts emergency control. Havel counters with “models” and delays partitions. Rooke quietly “obtains” admin access off a body.
First quarantine fails—panic and improvisation trigger a micro‑vent; two crew die. Maeve’s echo appears, calm and commanding: “Partition.”
Signature set pieces:
Red Snow: Micrometeor shower pierces a greenhouse; near‑vacuum flenses two crew; blood crystallizes under UV as Elara slams a shutter, amputating a trapped hand to seal.
Act IIa — Past: Exhuming what really happened
The team accesses the sealed gallery and the lattice chamber. Dr. Chen’s autopsy reveals microfracture “circuitry” that hums with lunar seismic rhythm; a cadaver mouths checklists in sync. Understanding improves; morale darkens.
Rooke unleashes a tungsten‑shot drone; the hallway becomes a blender. Noor, trying to conceptualize trajectories in real time, breaks—carving lines across a flowchart tattooed on the bulkhead.
Signature set pieces:
The Blender Corridor: Bodies pinwheel in slow‑motion zero‑g; Elara body‑checks a floating corpse to use as ballistic cover.
Midpoint turn (Action Driver):
Elara weaponizes the mass driver, pulping a possessed tech sprinting across the regolith—later realizing he was reciting Maeve’s code phrases. The base crosses a moral Rubicon.
The echo spreads; Rooke attempts a “reset” by crashing an ore pod into Hab B. Zero‑g fire crawls like an aurora. Elara welds a bulkhead while bodies drift alight—saving many, sealing others.
Maeve’s echo forces Elara to draft and commit to a bleak hard‑lock model. Noor self‑injures to stop her mind’s branching. Options dwindle: fewer habs, one rover, one viable pod, fewer tokens.
Signature set piece:
Systems Melt: The base becomes a red, flickering maze; each acquisition by Rooke/echo—keys, hatches, bodies—forewarns the next loss.
The RS hits its subconscious nadir: Kaito and two survivors pound a viewport while echo‑entrained crew chant behind them. Maeve: “Seal now.” Elara—who always breaches to save—stops. She executes the hard‑lock and watches Kaito’s breath fog on the glass one last time.
Final EVA: Under a micrometeor strobe, Elara and Chen sever cable trunks and trigger a cryo‑plunge. The lattice freezes; the time‑slice echoes cease. Silence.
Denouement:
Corporate recovery teams arrive to “congratulate” the save. Maeve’s echo flickers and dissipates—revealed as pattern, not person. Elara sits alone, reciting the partition checklist under her breath. She saved the base. She will never forgive herself.
Signature Visuals and Set Pieces
Red Snow: Blood crystallizing under UV within a depressurizing greenhouse.
The Blender Corridor: Tungsten‑shot drone shredding a zero‑g hallway; carnage as slow‑motion physics ballet.
Mass Driver Duel: The ore launcher firing canisters as hypersonic slugs across black regolith under strobing beacons.
Black Rock Autopsy: The skull’s microfracture lattice humming—a “score” tied to seismic rhythm.
Systems Melt: Zero‑g fire curtains; manual welds sealing screaming crew behind glass.
The Seal Choice: Frosting breath, gloved hands on a viewport, a single red toggle thrown.
Themes
Fate vs. Prediction: “On this rock, it always ends the same.” Crew fatalism spurs action; corporate modeling paralyzes it.
Chaos vs. Order: Elara’s improvisational violence worsens disorder until she embraces brutal procedure.
Truth vs. Evidence: Confession and acceptance pierce sterile log wars; the echo is a recording, not a soul.
VFX focus: Practical gore, wire‑assisted zero‑g, particle sims for crystallizing blood and zero‑g fire; minimal CG “creatures” (none)—humans, drones, and physics do the horror.
Budget band: Elevated mid‑budget (think Moon/Annihilation scale), with event‑level spectacle in select sequences (mass driver, systems melt) concentrated for cost control.
Why Now / Why Us
Fresh take on “haunted base”: The antagonist is a physics‑driven “recording” that weaponizes human reflexes and systems. No demons—only us.
Star vehicle: A ferocious, complex female lead making an unforgivable choice.
Market fit: High‑concept, contained sci‑fi with awards‑friendly craft potential, sellable to both theatrical and premium streamers.
One‑sentence sizzle: In a lunar abattoir haunted by recorded time, a security chief must choose Order over love—or let the Moon keep killing on loop.
Next steps
We can deliver a visual lookbook (sets, palette, VFX approach) and a 40–60 beat outline with page estimates for budget/schedule. Would you like the beat‑expanded treatment or the lookbook first?
Validation: This pitch encodes the confirmed Storyform (Goal: Past; Consequence: Memory; OS: Universe; Action‑driven; Options‑limited; Outcome: Success; Judgment: Bad) and maps Acts to Future → Past → Progress → Present.
And with that, we have a strong basis for an exciting and compelling and probably most important–meaningful narrative. Yes, even in a Hard R violent Sci-Fi horror you can still give the audience more than just blood and guts.
The above Storyform argues that yes, while order and protocol can sometimes overcome issues caused by chaos, it comes at a great personal cost. Elara was the only one certified enough to seal the portal and lock her friends away – doomed to become horrors for the next generation of visitors to the moon base.
That sense of Success/Bad permeates every last scene, up to–and including–the movie poster itself.
There’s so much more detail and nuance to get into when it come to further expanding and developing this concept…but let’s hold off until we hear back from the producers…no sense spinning our wheels on a concept they’re not going to buy into…
…and no sense spending weeks getting it to this point doing it without Narrova.
