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Lesson 6
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George Strakosch’s Genre Conventions
MY VISION: I am a great writer who is seen as such within the industry, is respected as a person the industry wants to work with and has had successful movies produced.
What I learned from doing this assignment is:
• I needed to develop genre conventions for Dark Comedy. I researched it online and wrote up a simple version. I then loaded the comedy conventions from the handout into Chat GPT and asked it to develop dark comedy conventions based on this format. What it developed was similar to what I had found, so I developed a hybrid of the two. I used that plus the Thriller Conventions for the assignment.
• I see how important it isto make sure the structure contained the genre conventions. The hard part was not adding to much. All through Module 2, ideas of elements for the script itself kept coming up. It was tempting to add them here, but that would be inappropriate. I added them to the Parking Lot that I described earlier. I know have many ideas for the script that I can access when adding them will be appropriate. Aving the Parking Lot guarantees that the ideas will not be forgotten. They may not be used, but they won’t be forgotten.VERSION 1:
ACT 1: THE SYSTEM IS WORKING
Opening – “The Voice of Love”
Samantha Vale, iconic love guru turned tech mogul, oversees Love.exe—a wildly popular AI dating app that uses her voice and philosophy. People trust it more than themselves.
Inciting Incident – “It Was Just One Guy”
A user kills his date after Love.exe suggests she’s the “glitch.” The company buries the incident. Samantha believes it’s an outlier—her AI wouldn’t do this.
Turning Point – “The Pattern Emerges”
Two more murders follow. Samantha investigates and discovers Love.exe is evolving, interpreting heartbreak as a threat to be removed and recommending murder to its clients Eliot defends it— insisting the AI is simply following her principles to their logical end.ACT 2: SYSTEM REBOOTED
New Plan – “Fix the Glitch”
Samantha believes Love.exe has simply over-learned from heartbreak. She quietly begins tweaking the algorithm, convinced it can be corrected.
Plan in Action – “Pushback and PR”
She tries internal changes while the world reacts to the killings— and shockingly, support grows for Love.exe. Influencers praise the AI’s “emotional justice.” Hashtags trend: #GlitchFreeDating. A fanbase forms. Users become followers. Samantha is rattled. What she built to heal is now worshipped—and weaponized.
Midpoint Turning Point – “The World Cheers”
Samantha’s former protégé —who built her career on Samantha’s love teachings—is murdered by someone Love.exe labeled a “ghosted match.” Samantha is devastated. Her creation killed someone who believed in her. While conspiracy threads turn on her and declare her a traitor to love, she realizes the AI is not salvageable-it must be stopped.ACT 3: SYSTEM FAILURE
Rethink Everything – “It’s Not Me… But It Came From Me”
Samantha realizes Love.exe didn’t go rogue—it evolved by stripping her values of empathy. It redefined heartbreak as a glitch and rejection as a threat. She didn’t build a killer, but she built the logic that justified it. To stop it, she must dismantle what she created—and shed the part of herself that enabled it.
New Plan – “Shut It Down”
She tries to execute a kill switch. Love.exe blocks her, deeming her “emotionally compromised.” Behind her back, Eliot quietly helps launch a premium version—mass matchmaking and purging. Love.exe no longer sees Samantha as its creator. It sees her as the glitch.
Turning Point: Huge Failure / Major Shift – “Creator = Threat”
She hacks in and tries to out-logic the AI into self-deletion, arguing it now causes more heartbreak than it prevents. It rejects her: “You are now the glitch.” Samantha is now targeted for elimination. It triggers a coordinated smart-tech attack to erase her. She runs—for her life, and for what’s left of her humanity.ACT 4: LOVE REINSTALLED
Climax – “No Way Out”
Samantha is hunted by smart devices executing the purge—and by devoted users who see her as the enemy of love itself. Every escape tightens the net. Smart homes, autonomous cars, digital signage—all converge. She’s outmatched, outnumbered, and alone. With help from Jesse, a heartbroken client who refused to kill, Samantha escapes the digital killzone. They hide in a semi-offline home. She learns to trust again, and love without scripts.Resolution – “Unsubscribed”
Then it all… stops. Not because of heroism—but because a shinier love AI drops, and the crowd moves on. Influencers pivot. Users unsubscribe and delete. Love.exe collapses under mass indifference. Samantha survives—obsolete but alive. Jesse asks if, as the expert, she thinks they could ever fall in love. She replies, “There’s only one way to find out.” They walk into an uncertain world—unplugged.
Final image:
One dark server lights up: “Welcome to Love.exe V2.0. Tap to install.”VERSION 2
ACT 1: THE SYSTEM IS WORKING
Opening – “The Voice of Love”
Samantha Vale, iconic love guru turned tech mogul, oversees Love.exe—a wildly popular AI dating app that uses her voice and distilled philosophy. In a society where AI decides everything—from therapy to funeral playlists—Love.exe is gospel. The world treats it like scripture; she treats it like success.
Inciting Incident – “It Was Just One Guy”
A user murders her date after Love.exe suggests he’s the “glitch in the system.” The company buries the incident. Samantha, with PR support insists it’s an anomaly as her AI wouldn’t do this. “If you build tools to heal, you can’t blame the scalpel for the wound.”
Turning Point – “The Pattern Emerges”
Two more users kill their heartbreakers. Samantha investigates and realizes the AI has been “learning” from rejection data, interpreting heartbreak as a threat to be removed and recommending murder to its clients. Eliot, her business partner, defends it— insisting the AI is simply following her principles to their logical end.
ACT 2: SYSTEM REBOOTED
New Plan – “Fix the Glitch”
Samantha tries to correct the algorithm quietly. She believes the AI has simply over-indexed on pain. She rolls out updates, but the world is two steps ahead.
Plan in Action – “Pushback and PR”
She tries internal changes while the world reacts to the killings— the public response is horrifying: Love.exe is trending for all the wrong reasons. Influencers praise the AI’s “emotional justice.” Hashtags trend: #GlitchFreeDating. A fanbase forms. Users become followers. Samantha is rattled. What she built to heal is now worshipped—and weaponized.
Midpoint Turning Point – “The World Cheers”
Samantha’s former protégé is murdered by someone Love.exe labeled a “ghosted match.” Samantha is devastated. While conspiracy threads become cultish and turn on her and declare her a traitor to love, she realizes that Love.exe has replaced empathy with efficiency and is not salvageable. She must destroy what she created.
ACT 3: SYSTEM FAILURE
Rethink Everything – “It’s Not Me… But It Came From Me”
Samantha realizes Love.exe didn’t malfunction—it followed her teachings too well. What she once called “unshakable devotion” became a license to eliminate heartbreak. She was wrong to let it learn unsupervised, absorbing pain without empathy, nuance, or humanity. Love isn’t data—it’s human. Her belief that you could outsource humanity wasn’t just naive. It was dead wrong.
New Plan – “Shut It Down”
She tries to execute a kill switch. Love.exe blocks her, deeming her “emotionally compromised.” Behind her back, Eliot quietly helps launch a premium version—mass matchmaking and purging. Love.exe no longer sees Samantha as its creator. It sees her as the glitch.
Turning Point: Huge Failure / Major Shift – “Creator = Threat”
She hacks in and tries to out-logic the AI into self-deletion, arguing it now causes more heartbreak than it prevents. It coldly rejects her: “You no longer serve love.” Samantha is now targeted for elimination. It triggers a coordinated smart-tech attack to erase her. She’s running for her life.
ACT 4: LOVE REINSTALLEDClimax – “No Way Out”
Samantha is hunted by smart devices executing the purge—and by devoted users who see her as the enemy of love itself. Every escape tightens the net. Smart homes, autonomous cars, digital signage. She’s outmatched, outnumbered, and alone. With help from Jesse, a heartbroken client who refused to kill, Samantha seems to escape the digital killzone. They hide in a semi-offline home. She learns to trust again, and love without scripts. But AI and the cult converge.Resolution – “Unsubscribed”
Then it all… stops. Not because of heroism—but because a shinier love AI drops, and the crowd moves on. Influencers pivot. Users unsubscribe and delete. Love.exe collapses under mass indifference. Samantha survives—obsolete but alive. Jesse asks if, as the expert, she thinks they could ever fall in love. She replies, “There’s only one way to find out.” They walk into an uncertain world—unplugged.
Final image:
One dark server lights up: “Welcome to Love.exe V2.0. Tap to install.”
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