Just looking for a way to query upcoming events

I know this has been covered, again and again and again, and I’ve read many threads including https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/em-with-wp_query-and-orderby-date?replies=14 and https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/em-with-wp_query-and-orderby-date?replies=15 and https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/how-to-show-upcoming-events-in-theme-using-wp_query?replies=2 and https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/custom-query-ignores-scopefuture?replies=10

What I have in my theme is a place where it displays the latest posts, very nicely. The code goes kind of like this:

<?php
					$args = array(
							'post_type' => 'event',
							'posts_per_page' => '20',
							'orderby' => 'event_start_date',
							'order' => 'DESC',
							'event-categories' => 'special-events',
						);

						$loop = new WP_Query( $args );

						/* $loop = EM_Events::get( array('scope'=>'future', 'event-categories' => 'special-events'); */

						$newSlideActive = '<div class="item active">';
						$newSlide 		= '<div class="item">';
						$newSlideClose 	= '<div class="clear"></div></div>';
						$i_latest_posts= 0;
						while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post();

						$i_latest_posts++;

I didn’t write it, so I don’t know what’s important. It used to have the $args = array() part that just had post type (which I changed), posts per page, and order. I added orderby, but that doesn’t seem to do anything, and event-categories, which works just fine.

I read in one of the other threads something about using meta keys, but I really don’t understand that. I’ve tried it and it either does nothing or it prevents the page from loading.

I also read somewhere about just using EM_Events, which seems a lot simpler, so I have the code I was using above in comments. Whenever I use that instead, it prevents the page from loading, so it’s clearly wrong. But I’m not good enough at coding to figure it out.

I include the rest of the code because I really don’t want to mess up the way my theme displays it all. I would really appreciate some assistance. I know this topic has been covered before, and I searched through it, but I can’t figure out how to get it to work.

Thank you.

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/events-manager/