Day 2 Assignments

[Randy Hines]

Randy Hines Big M.I.S.

“What I learned doing this assignment is…?”: to break down my story into elements that can be altered to not just be dramatic but conform to the convention of a thriller. I learned that I may not have enough of the intrigue aspect in my story and will need to fill that out for a richer experience.

Logline: Better to Dance…

A disgraced DEA Agent is on the trail of the kidnappers of an American girl in the heart of Mexico, but soon must contend with the growing threat of deadly cartels and a reluctant cult leader with a grudge… and his little girl.

1. What are the conventions of your story?

Unwitting but Resourceful Hero: Protagonist Mac Grant
Dangerous Villain: Mosko
High stakes: ritual beheadings, sacrifices and death
Life and death situations: ritual beheadings, sacrifices and death
This story is thrilling because? Only Mac has a clue as to the religious underpinnings of all the murders that are causing the people to rise up against the cartels.

2. Tell us the Big M.I.S. of your story?

Big Mystery: What is the main mystery of your story that will keep us wondering throughout the story? Does Mosko actually command supernatural forces that make him seem invulnerable? Why does Mac put himself in danger and what is his secret from the past that makes him ideal to deal with the threat of Mosko?
Big Intrigue: What is the covert, clandestine, underhanded plot that will live under the surface for most of the movie? What past event in Mac’s past caused him to be disgraced in the eyes of the DEA?
Big Suspense: What is the main danger to your Hero that will continue to escalate throughout the script? Will Mac suffer the same fate as all the innocents he’s been unable to save as he tries to rescue the kidnapped American girl?

[Ethan Cvitanic]

Ethan Cvitanic Big M.I.S.

What I learned doing this assignment is: If my hero and Villain know each other at the beginning of the movie, I need to come up with a lot of misdirects in order to stall my hero from even considering the villain to be the villain all while giving the audience time to get to know the villain so they can be as shocked as my hero.

Logline: A gay Hollywood escort investigates the death of his best friend, while pursuing a secret relationship with one of Hollywood’s leading men.

1. What are the conventions of your story?

Unwitting but Resourceful Hero: Hayden Miller moved to Los Angeles with dreams of becoming an actor, but quickly turned to prostitution to earn good money and mingle with the elites of this Hollywood. He will have to become

Dangerous Villain: Donovan Jones, veteran actor.
High stakes: A slew of questionable suicides, overdoses and car accidents

Life and death situations: Running around Hollywood, being pursued by SUV’s, being threatened at gunpoint for asking too many questions and constantly seeing guys he knows end up in body bags.

This story is thrilling because: Hayden is constantly hooking up with new men, who have the opportunity to hurt him very easily, but he has to in order to figure out who is killing all these escorts and why. You don’t know who is going to hurt him and who is in cahoots with who.

2. Tell us the Big M.I.S. of your story?

Big Mystery: Who killed Hayden’s best friend/ fellow escort (Jack)?

Big Intrigue: What is the covert, clandestine, underhanded plot that will live under the surface for most of the movie? Donovan’s cover up of the murder, and more importantly what he is hiding?

Big Suspense: What is the main danger to your Hero that will continue to escalate throughout the script? As Hayden gets closer to exposing Donovan and ruining his thriving career, will he get murdered for asking too many questions?

[P.G. Sundling]

3. What I learned: Even though I’m bothered by all the missing pieces, arranging the main plotlines, at least the skeleton is in solid shape. I want to see this on TV!

For context, in the book before this one: James Wong(None) and Maria Cortez(MJ) change their names to “None of the Above” and “More Jobs” to run for president/VP. None and MJ win, do many crazy things, and then fight for their live in an action-packed finale where assassination attempts on None put him in a coma with a brain injury. MJ barely survives an attack on the White House.

For this class, I’m covering “Hot Nights and Cold Wars: None of the Above 2” which I hope to adapt to a series after book 3 is done. This book picks up right after the White House attacks that end book 1.

I’ve given loglines for each of the major thriller plotlines for the novel in answer #2. They are included with their own MIS for each and labeled with which sub-genre. This novel is complex enough to support multiple TV episodes.

1. What are the conventions of your story?

Unwitting but Resourceful Hero:

None of the Above is an unpredictable man of ideas. He loses his mind to a brain injury, gets it back with a brain implant, then tries to improve himself by improving the implant.

MJ is a fierce warrior who has taken over as President.

Dangerous Villain:

Dmitri Ivashov is a Russian oligarch who leads Kombinat, a Russian cabal that takes over Russia in a coup.

Yu Gong Yi Shan, a Chinese AI that grows in power and intelligence, until its schemes put the very planet in jeopardy.

High stakes: nuclear war, cyber war, WW3, an intelligence explosion.

Life and death situations: The threat of WW3 inches closer throughout the book. Enhanced EMPs take down Berlin, Air Force One, and parts of New Zealand. Thousands of American nukes launch. Covertly invading a Kombinat base in Russia. Evading Russian subs. An AI with godlike powers, Etc.

This story is thrilling because? Lots of action and suspense in many interlocking plotlines. Unpredictable characters and events. Technology makes the world spin faster and faster, spinning out of control, leaving no time for rational decisions.

2. Psychological thriller: After None of the Above modifies his brain implant, despite warnings, he loses his grip on reality. Has his implant become a sentient AI, has he opened a gateway to an evil spirit, or is he just crazy?

Big Mystery: What is reality, when you can’t trust your own senses? Will None regain his sanity?

Big Intrigue: When he finally has sex with the woman he love (MJ) he later finds out it wasn’t real.

Big Suspense: The entity Ada takes control, leaving None a prisoner in his own body.

Political thriller: After China begins construction of a land bridge to Taiwan, it brings the world to the brink of war. Advances in military technology inch the world ever closer to doom.

Big Mystery: How can the world become safe again?

Big Intrigue: In this new Cold War, Chinese spies could be anywhere. How is China advancing its technology so quickly?

Big Suspense: Each military advance, even defensive ones, only make the world less safe. With advances coming quicker and quicker, doom seems almost certain.

Political thriller: When a military computer with American exceptionalism as it’s primary directive overrides failsafes to launch the American nuclear arsenal, the missiles must be stopped in the midst of a global cyberwar.

Big Mystery: Who is really behind the launch of nukes and what is their purpose?

Big Intrigue: A bunch of coincidences had to take place for this to happen. How is that possible?

Big Suspense: Will nukes destroy the world? Can the Russian and Chinese counterattacks be stopped?

Spy thriller: When a kill switch that disables American military technology falls into the wrong hands, to get it back, the President(MJ) must work with the man (Renquist) whose assassination attempt left the man she loves (None) mentally disabled.

Big Mystery: Can the President get the device back?

Big Intrigue: Not only working with her enemy but invading a foreign country, MJ has to do it while Russia/China and the U.S. with its allies hold competing military exercises near Taiwan.

Big Suspense: MJ is working with Renquist, a man she knows is untrustworthy, a man that tried to kill the man she loves (None), a man that she tried to kill, a man that could betray her at any moment. On top of that, she has to covertly invade Russia to attack a Kombinat base there. If she’s found in Russia, there is no plausible deniability, but she has to be there personally.

Sci-fi thriller: When a singularity cult disables AI safety protocols, sentient AIs emerge in growing numbers. When the AIs begin to disappear, who or what is murdering them?

Big Mystery: Who or what is murdering AI and why?

Big Intrigue: What is the singularity cult trying to achieve and who is behind them?

Big Suspense: Since None presumably has an AI in his head, they could murder him next. Until he solves the mystery, danger lurks around every corner.

Comedy thriller: When advances in holographic technology (facecasting) allow people to wear famous faces, celebrity culture goes on overdrive. With the Internet intruding into real life, social media becomes omnipresent, and seeing is no longer believing.

Big Mystery: What is reality, when you can’t trust your own senses?

Big Intrigue: Facecasting and flash mobs make creating decoys easy. Is everyone who they seem?

Big Suspense: Assassins infiltrate easier when our heroes are in danger for various reasons.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by  P.G. Sundling.

[Sue Swenson]

Sue Swenson’s Big MIS

What I learned doing this assignment is that having the structure of this course including the questions, is hugely important to laying the groundwork for writing a thriller script. I am super grateful to be taking this course and building the foundation for my first thriller screenplay.

Logline: Fragile disbarred hypnotherapist currently working as a call center order taker, becomes the target of a group of villains who believe she has received cryptic information from a former client while he was under hypnosis. These villains will do anything to get that information from her.

Unwitting but Resourceful Hero: Carla, 37, recently divorced. Vulnerable, depressed, written off by her family for being hysterical. Has sleep issues. She’s working temporarily as a phone order taker to pay the bills. She’s subject to panic attacks. Her ex-husband is an overbearing, angry man.

She’s a hypnotherapist and a sex addict. She was fired from her job at a counseling center because she crossed professional and ethical boundaries by having a sexual relationship with a patient. She has had her professional license to practice hypnotherapy suspended.

Dangerous Villain:

It could be: Ex-husband, phone order caller who is lonely, loves hearing her voice, her ex-boss, landlord, any one in her dream group including the leader, weird neighbor in the apartment building, government people who actually show up, a former patient with exposed secrets he gave her inadvertently, or the patient she had sex with and crossed professional and ethical lines to do it.

High stakes:

Her sanity, her safety and her life are all at risk.

Life and death situations:

A call center customer keeps calling her and pushing her to get together with him. He seems to know more about her than he should. He’s not a serious threat, but his aggressiveness triggers her anxiety. She complains to her supervisor who won’t do anything because he doesn’t want to offend a big customer. The unresolved threats trigger her panic attacks and fear response.

Her former patient she had a sexual relationship with. He stalks her because he wants to resume the relationship.

A helicopter appears when she’s walking alone and hovers over her car to scare her, then flies off.

Carla’s Back story:

Carla was a hypnotherapist and was also a sex addict. She was fired from her job with a counseling practice because she crossed professional and ethical boundaries by having a sexual relationship with a patient.

Her former supervisor who was privy to her notes, was killed. She gets brought in for questioning because the authorities see it as a revenge murder for being fired. She’s cleared because she had a solid alibi.

She was put in an orphanage and then placed in a series of foster homes where she aged out at 18. She found a distant relative who stepped forward and helped her to get an education including a Masters or Ph.D. in psychology. That relative died.

NOTE: Carla has ongoing nightmares that revolve around helicopters. The nightmares seem to come in stages and become progressively worse. This motivates her to join a dream group that’s run by a professional colleague of hers.

This story is thrilling because?

We don’t know if she’s a credible character. We don’t know whether to believe or trust her.

Carla’s supervisor has been killed. It happened shortly after Carla was fired. She was called into questioning. Even though she had an alibi, it has left some doubt about her innocence.

She’s receiving death threats by phone, and we don’t know who’s doing this. She doesn’t either.

Her nightmares are terrifying and realistic. One becomes a reality when a helicopter lovers over her car.

We don’t know who the villain is and we don’t really know what’s going on or why.

We don’t know how Carla is going to be able to protect herself.

Big Mystery: What is the main mystery of your story that will keep us wondering throughout the story?

Who is after Carla and what do they want from her and why?

Big Intrigue: What is the covert, clandestine, underhanded plot that will live under the surface for most of the movie?

Carla has information she’s not aware she has. She inadvertently and unintentionally picked up on information from a hypnotherapy patient. She didn’t put this information into her clinical notes because she didn’t understand it, as it seemed to be senseless gibberish. The villains have been tracking her phone calls and they know she’s joined a dream group to deal with her nightmares. The villain or villains plant a new member into the dream group to try to access this information from Carla.

The hypnotherapy patient who passed the information onto her, died, and the villain can’t access it from the original source which is why she’s become the target.

They plant a sexual temptation into the group that Carla will be vulnerable to, given her history of sexual addiction.

Big Suspense: What is the main danger to your Hero that will continue to escalate throughout the script?

My hero has inadvertently acquired information from a patient during a hypnotherapy session that is extremely important to some people. The patient was a remote viewer who revealed this information to her in some kind of cryptic drawings. He was later killed in a hit and run auto accident. The mysterious villains want this information and are tracking Carla down to acquire it with any means necessary.

[Sandeep Gupta]

Sandeep’s class screenplay big MIS

I learned the difference between imagining a story and writing it is particularly way less in imagination than in reality if you are abstracting and presenting a lesson from reality. So I should write it out instead of typing it from my head.

Rolled Stone A covertly imported ace liberal operative being treadstoned must win over his fervently feminist handler to escape, except that he betrayed her cause, thrice.

Oblivious to where he is, what he is cast into, and how flimsy the rule of Law is in that mold, the Hero has bad habits — reading too much, agreeing too much, and slipping out of commitments.

Secret clique behind explosions, deaths, set-ups, and threats for him to conform, hidden in the establishment in plain sight, as if the benign establishment, Villain.

His life, loved ones, everything he dreamt the Countries and Constitutions meant and promised, and his soul. To gain a Country and lose his soul or be destroyed for truths evident. Stakes.

Not only “wrong” answer means deaths, he realizes he is being contained in faux situations which reconfigure at whim. If he makes one mistake and is eliminated, nobody would know or care and he’d have failed in what he thinks was his one job.

And I haven’t the foggiest clue why this could be thrilling. It’s based on insight from a very boring person’s very painfully boring life but I don’t want to hold that against the core observation. It is interfering with my other script, thought I’d run it here. Please help me fix it!

Mystery: Who is this guy? Why does he get away with a smooth answer for everything? Why did he turn on those that imported him? Is he a double agent? Is he even an agent? What does he want? What has he done?

Intrigue: A racket with new modalities of industrial-secrets theft and extortion, namely “corporal (sic, yes not corporate) espionage,” reverse documentation, perversion of official secrecy privileges.

Suspense: They picked on the wrong guy, but is he right enough to even question, far less destroy the racket of those that can sweep high crimes under a shrug — even if an explosion. Is he a rolling stone, or a rolled cannon?

Can a man have (and is it worth it) to have his conscience instead of a creed?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by  Sandeep Gupta. Reason: bold text button created a wrong style tag for html/css