Making A Space Center Story
The team here at Lion’s Gate Space Center writes a lot of missions, and I mean A LOT of missions. In the early years of our program, we would be writing missions at most a week or two before they would be flown, meaning it wasn’t uncommon to have to write 3-4 mission stories per month. While that pace has slowed as our program matured, we still do a lot of writing.
Whether it be for school flights, group bookings, or other events; we put a lot of our resources into making the stories we fly the best they can be. So with the release of our newest mission, Stalemate, just around the corner. We decided to sit down for October’s newsletter and talk about what goes into writing a mission’s story.
It STarts With An Idea
Every mission, good or bad, starts with an idea. It could be a character, a moral dilemma, an action sequence, anything. This concept sounds really good in the writer’s head, and they decide to turn it into a mission. Great! The first step is complete. Now comes the first big hurdle, actually writing the mission down. A single idea, no matter how good it may be, is often not enough to fly an, at minimum, hour long interactive experience. This style of mission writing can work in a pinch, but if you want the experience to be the best it can be, and ideally able to be flown by other people, the mission needs to be written down. This comes in the form of a Mission Script.
The Script
Example Script
A Mission Script details everything a staff member would need in order to fly the mission. The trick to making a good mission script is adding enough that who ever is running the flight can fly without needing help, but not adding so much that it’s difficult to follow.
This first draft of a Mission Script often comes down to getting the idea out their, and making a framework that future edits, revisions, and rewrites will improve upon. The easiest way to lose drive is to get stuck on something small and never finish the outline. Believe it or not, this is where most mission ideas die out.
Revision And Edits
Edits often involve staff (not pictured here) sitting around a whiteboard.
Once the basic idea is done and written, it goes to edits. This is where the team come in to give notes, critiques, and edits to try and improve the mission. This process is often the longest and most frustrating part of writing a mission, as this is the part where concessions have to be made to ensure the mission is within the realm of possibility, and fits within the overall style the Space Center is aiming for.
A lot of things have to be considered, such as the group flying the mission, how best to incorporate curriculum, how to do sequences with the controls, and other factors. Not only does the mission have to be entertaining, it has to also be achievable by a group of people that may or may not work well together.
(Writer Note: You can never assume crews know what they are doing.)
Building And Testing
A reminder to not obsess over the name of the mission before it's written
Now that the story has been locked in, and is looking good. It’s time to actually get it ready to fly! A lot of steps happen here. First the mission has to be put into a special script for the controls. (Dream Flight Adventure is the ones we use.) This may mean making new custom 3d models, or scripting out event sequences. After that, it’s time to make any materials needed such as written documents, physical props, or custom programs.
For the longer missions such as those we fly for group missions, a full test flight needs to be done to ensure the mission is of the proper quality. This means bringing in a crew to run the flight and provide feedback on the mission. This can often be the most stressful part of writing a mission because if the test flight goes poorly, your work in the previous weeks/months could need to be redone entirely.
Now that everything has been written, revised, and tested to the moon and back, the mission is ready to fly! Anyone that has written a mission that flies can probably attest to the amount of work that goes into making a story a reality. It’s a lot of hard work, but for those that get to see their creation being flown and enjoyed by the general public, it’s more than worth the effort!
