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Lesson 3
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What I learned while doing this assignment:
Story arcs are a blueprint. Of course, you get to add on as you write the story, but understanding where a character starts and where they land – what their journey is – makes the arc compelling. I am learning that story frameworks like this one (Issue-Journey-Transformation) keep the story focused, even when you’re tempted to go off track and dump the whole kitchen sink of ideas into the screenplay.
Write a logline for the transformational journey.
IDEA 1 – After Vernon Stout dies, his family realizes they can only know the part of him he’s kept hidden through his mistress, who moves in with them. (first draft)
As an upstanding well-known family in a small southern town gets to know their deceased patriarch’s mistress, they learn to respect how he authentically loved two women and live as an extended family. (revised with the framework)
IDEA 2 – What happens when you’re locked in an escape room with the biggest hurts you’ve ever felt? Facing them is the only way out. (first draft)
When a couple enters a magical escape room filled with the biggest pains from their pasts, they learn to be vulnerable with each other and love more openly and authentically. (revised with the framework)
Define the Old Ways of life that the characters live out of at the beginning of the story.
IDEA 1 – The women of the Stout family are accustomed to being in charge and making all the decisions. Strong personalities, they define the family experience and steamroll over anyone who doesn’t get on board with them. They do it with grace and dignity, but some of that family experience they control is not honest or fully formed. They live in long-time assumptions and convenient truths.
IDEA 2 – Even people who think they’re ready to love aren’t ready. And they go to great lengths to deny it. They lie, cheat, hurt other people, shut down, run away, wear masks, live false narratives. They are as stable and ready as their deepest hurts and secrets, and not much about them is authentic.
Define the New Way of life the characters take on by the end of the story.
IDEA 1 – The “other woman” that the Stout family women have ostracized, belittled, and written off is a truth carrier. They push aside their stronghold and open themselves up to more layers of truth about Vernon Stout. They have reconciled that the many they loved, the deceased patriarch of the family, was human, honored a complex code of love, and defined the family experience more than they realized. They move from denial to open acceptance that he had another family. Over time, his other family becomes their family, too.
IDEA 2 – People who have lived through the escape room are able to openly name the things that have hurt them without falling about, recognize how the power of those things have kept them stuck, and free themselves to love others without masking themselves. Vulnerability wins.
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Madeleine’s Transformational Journey.
What I learned doing this assignment:
Oddly, as I worked through this assignment, my story’s transformational journey changed.
Now, I see my protagonist’s transformation as a closed rose bud gradually opening until she’s in full bloom.
- Tell us your logline for the transformational journey.
Lead character with an issue – A self-reliant woman,
Journey – suddenly besieged by a series of setbacks, including the senseless murder of her uncle by an unknown assailant and a subsequent threat to her own life,
Transformation – reluctantly accepts help from a former childhood foe.
- Tell us what you see as the Old Ways.
Old ways:
Isolated, closed, guarded (careful not to show her feelings or give away information), and reluctant to trust others, ashamed.
- Tell us what you see as the New Ways.
Transparent, trusting, empathetic, open to new relationships.
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Penny Wingert,
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