Day 11 Assignment

[Jeff Reynolds]

Jeff’s-living metaphor’s

Jen -hey Einstein why do you not yell at me like everyone else does ? I get on everyone’s nerves by doing my work the way I know how and it infuriates people.

Einstein-the people that yell and get upset at you are wrong. There’s something funny about people who want to control everyone, they keep thinking the same way about every situation and some how think their going to get a different result. Jen if you want my opinion you’ll ask for it.

Jen – think I should stop being a live in cleaning and care giver?

Einstein-you ever think about expanding what you do ? I would think about your whole business plan in new ways.

Einstein -ever hear of Tiger woods Dude ?

Dude- yep. Watched him hit at torre once on the range – I was on the other side of the fence. He hit by himself til it was dark.

Einstein-when he was learning golf his dad would take his ball from the middle of the fairway and chuck it in the rough behind some trees. His dad would say anyone can make par from the fairway. let’s make par from the rough. Why do you think his dad did that ?

Dude-give him something else?

Einstein- yep golf and life always having new things thrown at you. No matter who you are when you overcome adversity you gain …..what?

Dude – confidence

My story is about getting rid of the old self and looking at things with fresh eyes and mind. All three have been through tremendous difficulty the last three years. Story is about what happens next and Einstein encouraging them to look at life differently and by helping others Einstein begins to look at life differently himself.

[Lynne Heatley]

What I learned doing this assignment is that my transformable female character is too foggy, acquiescent. Needs to be revved up.

Should work but doesn’t :

Ros chooses silence over her pregnancy and the adoption of her child. (1957)

Ros marries expecting to keep her secret forever.

Ros expects to have other babies when she marries.

Dave finds out 13 years later. The pivotal moment is him ending the marriage without asking for an explanation.

Matt and his adoptive parents. In the old ways they adored him, but after the birth of a second natural child, Matt’s genetic differences infuriate them.

The adoptive parent/child relationship was expected to be life long but Matt is loathed more and more.

At a young age Matt seeks help to find his natural mother but the Court documents are sealed.

Matt knows he will find his own way when he grows up and leaves home.

Living Metaphors:

Matt -unable to please parents.

Thrown out of home as a young apprentice.

Contrast of being welcomed by pregnant girlfriend’s family.

Matt invites his parents to his ‘shotgun’ wedding. They don’t acknowledge.

He pleads with them to get to know their grandchild but told ‘no grandchild of ours.’

He attempts to engage them over the next ten years, but they maintain a silence.

Matt uses the opportunity for change and growth with Louise’s family becoming new surrogate parents, proactive, encouraging and supportive of the young couple’s dreams.

Ros -has filled her life after divorce with a teaching career and finding pleasure in her friend’s children.

She lives alone when Matt knocks on her door as a twenty-nine year old. (Law changes in 1985.)

There is the unexpected moment when nearly thirty years of pain and anguish and wondering is dispelled in an instant.

She’s been mentally imprisoned and now is the time for rebirth and growth and connection.

Dave receives a letter from an older sister born to his parents before their marriage. The letter allows him to realize that his saintly mother (so worried she’d hear the marriage breakup was because he’d married an ‘immoral’ girl) was also an unmarried mother (1930) who’d lost her firstborn to adoption. He’s stepped into a maze.

Dave had remarried and hoped to have children, but there are none.

His moral compass has reset -he realizes how badly he treated Ros. He resolves to embrace his new sister, reassure his mother he loves her as much as he ever did, and to make some kind of amends to Ros – who has not been in his life since the divorce.

[Lori Lance]

Lori’s Living Metaphors

What I learned from this assignment is to look deeper at how I can challenge my main character that will ultimately create a change in him.

– 5 Should Work, But Doesn’t challenges:

Thomas is the pastor of a small-town church, and writing a sermon about hope should make him feel better, but he struggles to find words that feel true.

As Christmas celebrations happen all around Thomas, he should be able to get into the spirit of things, but he only feels worse and spirals down into depression.

Thomas has always been a rock for others to lean on, but he has lost the will and strength to do so, and he becomes the one that others must hold up.

Thomas pulls out all the stops to make Christmas perfect for a family in need, but it backfires when he crosses boundaries and makes things worse for them.

Thomas finally tells Miriam that he doesn’t want to celebrate Christmas because his wife is gone. Sharing his feelings with someone should work, but he ends up making the widow feel guilty about moving on, and that’s the last thing he wants.

– 5 Living Metaphor challenges

Thomas hides his Christmas tree and decorations but has to drag them out every time someone comes to his house. It becomes an exhausting ritual that he can’t keep up. The Christmas tree and decorations are a living metaphor for the pain he’s trying to hide.

Thomas is prepared to say “no” to all Christmas celebrations, but when he turns down Miriam’s famous pie, he has to deal with her hurt feelings. The pie is a living metaphor for traditions and friendship.

When Thomas must oversee the Christmas play, and his heart isn’t in it, he makes a little girl cry. “Don’t you like Christmas?” The play is a metaphor of what Thomas’ Christmas would look like if his wife were still living.

Thomas encounters a real scrooge, and he is terrified that he will end up like him. The man is a metaphor for Thomas’ darkest feelings.

Thomas tries to write his Christmas sermon about hope but is stuck because of his lack of hope. The Christmas sermon is a living metaphor for hope.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by  Lori Lance.

[Dale Griffiths Stamos]

Dale’s Living Metaphors

What I learned from doing this assignment, is that this is yet another way to look at challenges. Although it was hard for me to come up with live metaphors – I did find that an intriguing exercise and will keep thinking of other possible metaphors.

5 Should Work, but don’t challenges:

1. Antonia has experience working in an observatory. She should be able to ask for and be given the opportunity to work in the Harvard Observatory, but Willamina Fleming lets her know that women are not allowed.

2. At Vassar, Antonia got proper recognition for her work. (She was only competing with fellow women, thus the playing field was level.) At HCO, her first discovery of a second binary (and her work on the first) are not fully recognized by Pickering.

3. At Vassar, Antonia’s meticulous hard work always paid off. She was rewarded with honors in three different areas of study. But at HCO, her meticulous hard work is met with annoyance by Pickering who 1) does not want to even consider a different classification system and 2) Is in a hurry to publish results and Antonia is slowing that process down.

4. Antonia believes that she can get her aunt to like her more by proving her work useful, but instead, her aunt remonstrates her even more.

5. She decides to return to teaching (Old ways in that this is the “safe” choice) but her desire to work in the field of astronomy pulls her back to HCO, where, in fact, she is able to throw herself into work on the binaries.

5 Living Metaphor challenges

1. The “fly swatter” and glass plates she works on are metaphors for the intricate and detailed (and sometimes monotonous) work she has been relegated to. (Working in astronomy doesn’t appear to be as exciting as she had expected.)

2. Her uncles 11-inch telescope is a metaphor representing both old ways and new, in that he was one of the people who make her feel her mind was valuable, and his telescope is now enabling her to see more detail in her work, and thus make novel discoveries.

3. When she overhears the male colleagues refer to the computers as “Pickering’s Harem,” this challenges her old way of thinking she will be treated the same as the men.

4. The article published by Pickering about the binary stars challenges her old ways of expecting equitable credit.

5. Binary stars themselves are a type of metaphor for the “double life” she must learn to live – one in which she is a woman and a scientist.

[Karen Tolliver]

Karen Tolliver Living Metaphors

What I learned doing this assignment is I can take any old way and challenge it, by creating a new living metaphor. Thinking the opposite of the old way and creating a physical or mental new way of looking at it can bring about an understanding and change the situation with a stroke of a pen. Great!!

Should Work, But Doesn’t…

1. Old Way: Sharon buys a sexy lingerie to entice her husband Steven on their 25 Wedding Anniversary.

Challenge: But it doesn’t work because Steven never comes home that night.

2. Old Way: Steven and Sharon are on their date night and the #1 rule is no business during the date.

Challenge: Steven’s secretary, Kate (whom he’s having an affair with) enters the restaurant with papers for him to sign. He excuses himself and the two kiss in the backroom but, it doesn’t work because they were noticed by an employee. Also, Sharon noticed lipstick on his collar, but ignores it.

3. Old Way: Things keep disappearing in Sharon’s office like the Horowitz file.

Challenge: Sharon leaves her office and Kate tries to sneak past Sharon’s secretary Janea with the file in hand, but it doesn’t work because Janea catches her.

4. Old Way: Sharon believes her husband would never hurt her.

Challenge: But it doesn’t work because Sharon flashbacks thinking about all the good times her and Steven had together.

5. Old Way: Andrea has a fear of flying and she’s on the airplane.

Challenge: Andrea starts to read information about airplane crash statistics and finds out a car crash is more likely, but it doesn’t work when the airplane goes bump in the air.

Living Metaphors

1. Old Way: Teen age girls stand in front of Victoria Secret window looking at the New Push Up Bra.

Living metaphor: Halle Berry is on a TV screen next door giving an interview saying, “It’s a lot of pressure to get plastic surgery, but I stand my ground. I believe aging is natural…”

2. Old Way: Sharon thinks the Police Department stole her money after leaving the jail and returning her belongings.

Living metaphor: After getting to the car, Sharon reaches into her pants pocket and pulls out her money.

3. Old Way: Sharon’s mother tells her Steven is “Just like your father, who abandon you”.

Living metaphor: Carol’s husband who is a wonderful man and father enters the room and tells Sharon what he knows about Steven.

4. Old Way: Andrea snatches the Karaoke microphone from a Caucasian lady and sings.

Living metaphor: Christina Aguilera walks on stage and snatches the microphone from Andrea and blows the audience away.

5. Old Way: Sharon is depressed and takes a walk on the beach talking to God.

Living metaphor: Sharon drops to her knees crying and an Angel appears before her giving her encouragement.

[Lauren DeCicco]

Lauren’s Living Metaphors

What I learned doing this assignment:

Two ways to create subtle challenges to more easily cause the audience to question their beliefs regarding the subject of the story: 1. Should work, but doesn’t and 2. Living metaphors which challenge the Old Ways.

Brainstorm at least five of each of today’s challenges that you can put in your screenplay.

1. Go through your story outline or script and brainstorm the following:

– 5 Should Work, But Doesn’t challenges

1 Old Way: She doesn’t care about the children she kidnaps. This is merely a job.

Challenge: One child hugs the woman and doesn’t let go. Hugs are something she hasn’t experienced throughout most of her life. She yells at the child to stop and calls her names but she won’t let go. The child’s tenacity and desperation softens the woman. The woman doesn’t reciprocate yet she stops yelling and emotionally abusing the child.

2 Old Way: Accepting the organization as the main controller and decision maker of every aspect of her life without question.

Challenge: She discovers what they’re actually doing with the kidnapped children. She must ask questions, look further into what’s going on and secretively go behind the backs of those she once put all her trust in.

3 Old Way: She only thinks about her own survival without concern for anyone else.

Challenge: She cries over the mangled dead body of the child who hugged her so tightly. She feels deep emotions for someone else.

4 Old Way: She believes her real family abandoned her and sold her to the organization. She was told her real family doesn’t want anything to do with her.

Challenge: Her brother, Asher, takes a chance when the woman is working the street collecting children to tell her about her beginnings, that she was wanted, their mother was murdered and he suspects the organization kidnapped her. She doesn’t believe Asher yet the information hits her hard.

5 Old Way: The woman is beaten and starved to keep her in line.

Challenge: She discovers the same marks on one of the children as she has. This begins to bring her out of her brainwashed stupor and see reality.

– 5 Living Metaphor challenges

1 Old Way: The woman believes her family abandoned her and never loved her.

Living Metaphor: The photograph

Challenge: Asher gives the woman a photograph he’s been carrying for many years. It’s the woman as a small child hugging her mother. Her mother looks just like her now.

2 Old Way: The woman is clearly malnourished but doesn’t know this isn’t normal.

Living Metaphor: The food

Challenge: A child passes her on the street, looks back at her with sad eyes and whispers to her father. A little while later, the child returns and hands the woman a sandwich. What’s this for? asks the woman. You eat it, says the child, you look like you haven’t eaten in days.

3 Old Way: She is heartless and unfeeling toward the children.

Living Metaphor: Asher’s necklace

Challenge: Asher wears a leather necklace with dozens of score marks on it. He explains that each cut on the necklace represents a child he’s saved from sex trafficking.

4 Old Way: The woman believes the organization treats her okay and she is lucky to be cared for the way she is.

Living Metaphor: Asher’s wounds

Challenge: Asher shows the woman wounds on his body from his time in an orphanage when he was growing up. He tells her this isn’t how children or any human being should be treated. Later, back at the compound, the woman considers her own scars as well as the fresh wounds across her body.

5 Old Way: The woman doesn’t think kidnapping children is wrong because the organization says they place them in wealthy families where they have better opportunities.

Living Metaphor: Asher’s proof

Challenge: Asher shows the woman his documented research of the true motives of the organization. He asks her why the organization never placed her in a wealthy family after they kidnapped her.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by  Lauren DeCicco.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by  Lauren DeCicco.