Day 13 Assignments

[Eric Humble]

Eric Humble Delivers Insights Through Conflict

What I learned doing this assignment is: that using conflict to deliver insights is a powerful way to plant the seeds of change in the transformable character, even if the change doesn’t occur until later in the script. I struggled with this skill a bit, until I had the breakthrough that this really involves insights that the character has on the road to change, not necessarily the adoption of the New Ways into their behavior. Seeing it all play out in Seasbiscuit really helped me to understand the process.

New Way/Insight: Stand up for your beliefs

Conflict: Plan goes wrong

Conflict Uncovers a Secret: Raf sets in motion a plan to get the Russian aide talking about what he was helping Victor with and whether Victor was a Russian agent… when he realizes Natalia is after different info – about a food shipment that never arrived. Raf takes her aside and demands to know what game she’s playing here… to which she admits that she’s not going to stand aside and let this murderous regime get away with invading innocent countries and if Raf stands in her way, she’ll take him down, too. But when he goes back to the aide, he finds that the Russian President is there too.

New Way/Insight: Powerful people are only people—they only have power if you give

them power

Conflict: Public Humiliation

Conflict Uncovers an Emotional Issue: Raf uses the same ingredients for the first course to improvise a second course, since they’re the only ingredients he can trust aren’t poisoned… but all the world leaders criticize him in front of his staff. Except POTUS, who spins them all a tale about a similar dish his grandmother used to make in the suburbs of Wisconsin. His life is similar to Raf’s… he may be powerful, but he’s just an ordinary man.

New Way/Insight: Your voice counts

Conflict: Dilemma

Conflict Uncovers a Secret: Raf interrogates Natalia with Leiber watching. If she’s truthful with him, she’ll have to reveal her secret which will get her arrested by Leiber. She chooses to run – and reaches the place of her secret, a hatch where she has hidden away twenty refugees set to protest during the press conference… except they’re starving to death because Victor was murdered before he could smuggle the food in. They’ve risked everything to make their voices heard.

New Way/Insight: Success is empty if it only benefits yourself

Conflict: Power struggle

Conflict Uncovers an Emotional Issue: Raf defends his betrayal of Natalia by citing his need to get ahead. She shows him what she’s accomplished for peace in Europe during her exile. He gets angry… then realizes it’s shame. The fulfilling work is found at the foot of the mountain, not at the top.

New Way/Insight: Betrayal is never the answer

Conflict: Falsely accused

Conflict Brings Out the True Nature: Raf calls the security forces to the attention of the cook who is a hero in Moldavia, hoping that once they arrest him they’ll uncover the poisoning plot and leave him out of it. But Natalia reveals her false credentials in an effort to distract the security forces away from the cook. Raf is gob-smacked that she would throw herself on her sword just to stop this from happening… and realizes that betraying the man is a shameful thing; that he’s got to find another way to bring this to the attention of security… but first, he has to intervene before the security team catches on to Natalia.