Day 27 Assignment

[Arial Burnz]

Subject: Arial’s Solved Scene Problems

What I learned doing this assignment is…a great way to reduce or eliminate cliché scenes! I tend to get married to the original version of the scene and this idea of brainstorming 4-5 different ways to do the same scene is brilliant.

At this time, the rewrites that I did for the first beat sheet have to be implemented into the draft of the script, so I’m going to see about reading the rest of the lessons and then come back to this and make some notes.

Loving this class!

[Arial Burnz]

I actually made quite a few changes to the outline, but didn’t record exactly what changes I made, and I have too much going on to weed back through the manuscript to compare and record them here. But here are two examples…

OPENING SCENES – My opening wasn’t strong enough, so I changed quite a bit. Instead of having my main character getting bullied, I have her in a seedy part of town buying black-market medicine for her mother. We find out that Aylen’s mother is dying right up front and pull on the heartstrings a bit. Then she gets chased by a couple of street thugs, one of whom she scratches across the cheek. I’m going to use this guy as the messenger for later in the story. Gives me a good reason as to why the messenger picked Aylen to deliver the letter that gets her into trouble.

TURNING POINT 1 – I up the stakes just a little, having Aylen’s best friend Key lie to her, saying that both she and Aylen’s boyfriend turned her in for the treasonous letter so they can get Aylen out of the way and be together. This crushes Aylen and she doesn’t fight the royal prefects when they come to arrest her.