Less than 2 weeks into writing Tendrils to the Moon, I got nervous and entertained the idea of throwing a twist into the first act. The twist was this: The main characters intend on colonizing Mars, but detour to the Moon when they face hardship.
The reason for this had nothing to do with the story I wanted to tell, and everything to do with my loss of confidence in the Moon as the location for a colony. In real-world scenarios, Mars makes more sense for a colony because of its more abundant natural resources, and because it's a potential gateway to the outer solar system. And, from a writer's perspective, Mars is a titillating subject because of constant speculation about life and/or water on Mars, as well as the wildly successful novel The Martian by Andy Weir.
Fortunately, my research into orbit types and in situ resource utilization killed this idea. In so many words, a "detour" to the Moon makes no sense for a Mars mission. There's nothing you can gain on the Moon that you can't gain for less money in less time on Earth. Also, a lot of the stuff you would take to Mars would be no good on the Moon; they are completely different environments.
I'm sure there's a pretzel-like contrivance that could have made it work, but audiences can sense when artists try to justify or rationalize the direction their art is taking. It's a big turnoff. The Last Jedi proved that in spades.
In retrospect, keeping my sights solely on the Moon was the right decision. I lost about 3 days to this bad idea, but that's preferable to the disappointment of a contrived plot device.
Leave a comment below and let me know what you think! I'll respond to it as soon as I can.
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