-
Day 3 Assignments
Reply to post your assignment.
-
18 Replies
-
Josh Lee’s Right Characters!
What I learned doing this assignment is that I have the right characters! It sounds like a snarky reply but I mean it in all honesty. I wasn’t sure before but I am now.
So, I’m not really sure how much to write here, but I will say this: I know I have the right characters because they are a group of criminals how have committed felonies of various seriousness and they are locked in an abandoned mental hospital doing community service. They also don’t know one another at all and so their skepticism of one another is through the roof. Couple that with a guard watching them and their paranoia is going to be high considering they are all what you would call unsavory, untrustworthy folks.
-
Don’s Right Characters
1. I thought about my characters and hook.
2. Jeremy tries to use logic. Lora is at peace with the situation. Donovan tries to strong arm his way out of it. Cassie uses endurance and strength.
3. Jeremy causes conflict by belittling the others thinking he is the smartest. Lora is too Zen and her passiveness angers the others. Donovan bullies the others with his physicality. Cassie tries to organize the others into action.
4. Jeremy is the right character. He’s an investment banker/weekend warrior. He has the smarts and the athleticism. Lora, a yoga instructor, accepts the things she cannot change and stays calm. Donovan has always slid through life on charm but now must make decisions. Cassie, always prepared, must find hidden resolve to succeed.
5. What I learned doing this assignment is that having a sketchy idea about what motivates the characters’ actions may be useful when writing he first draft.
-
Auguste’s Right Characters!
1. Hook – Twin girls confined to a room.
2. One girl has amnesia and is desperate to find herself. The other is mad.
3. The mad girl uses her unwilling sister to talk to a psychiatrist to keep from going to an institution.
4. Each girl has a desperate need to get out of the room for different reasons, but only one can succeed.
5. Emotional dialog would be necessary to sell this story.
-
Barbara’s characters…what I learned is that I’m still brainstorming the hook, the story, and the POV but so far…
Working Title: The Castle
Working Hook: Would you volunteer to help your ancestor’s victims pass peacefully to the other side?
Unique Monster/Villain: The Prisoner; The Piper Boy; Lady Mary, and The Drummer Girl.
Characters: The Tour Guide (1), the Tourists (family of 4); the Filmmakers (2), the Historians (1), the Genealogists (1).
Ways the characters pay off the hook:
They volunteer to stay in the Castle overnight during a full moon.
They are locked in the Castle overnight by the desperate filmmakers.
They get trapped in the Castle overnight.
They hide in the Castle overnight.
Ways the characters pay off the conflict of the hook:
Let their children join them on the journey to find the ghosts.
Help the ghosts pass over at the risk of great harm to themselves.
-
Joanna’s Right Characters!
What I learned doing this assignment:
I learned that characters can make or break the suspense built into the script. If they are too capable, the story is not interesting. I personally love flawed anti-heroes. For my ideas, my main characters have their own agendas that run parallel to the main conflict.
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Joanna Kagal.
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
-
Renee’s Right Characters
What I learned doing this assignment is how thinking about how the characters fit in your story before you start writing can help you create characters that engage the audience and create natural conflict in the story.
Concept Hook: an all-civilian space crew must fix their craft’s damaged navigation system and find a way back to earth.
Contained Setting: a disabled spacecraft
Protagonist: Constance
• She won a prestigious award in mechanical engineering, making her great a fixing things.
• She’s a mother, making her good at conflict resolution.
• As a gay woman, she’s always had to work twice as hard to prove herself to her male colleagues.
Antagonist: Parker
• He’s a con man that has been able to manipulate people into getting what he wants.
• He’s a misogynist and feels he’s entitled to everything.
• He thinks he’s better than everyone else because he has money.
-
Sean’s Right Characters
What I learned was to think more about how the characters and the story are tied together.What I learned was to think more about how the characters and the story are tied together.
Hook: An ASL interpreter witnesses a murder 3,000 miles away during a video call, can the police really find the killer before the killer finds her?
Protagonist believes that she is a dial tone as an ASL interpreter in a call and should not get emotional involved. She has a trainee that is struggling to not get too emotionally involved with callers and their situations. Now the protagonist is stuck with on a call with a killer. Her character is set up this way to show that she really needs to stay neutral for herself and because her profession demands it.
The killer and the ASL interpreter are connected through their association in the Deaf community, the killer is using his contacts to track the interpreter. He ends up killing the trainee in the process of trying to find the main protagonist.
-
Matthew Frendo’s Right Characters!
What I learned doing this assignment was how to create strong characters that enhance the concept.
She’s an ex-SEAL who fought for people’s freedom. Knows stealth and how to handle explosives
He’s a gangster who wants to control his town through violence and intimidation. Runs gang flamboyantly with guns and explosives
-
Diana’s Right Characters!
What I learned doing this assignment: By creating competing interests with high-stake goals, I can create better characters.
Concept Hook: Woman must convince date not to eat her
Contained Setting: Yacht in the middle of the ocean; no one to hear her scream
How Characters Uniquely Fit the Hook: Both are cannibals and smart/equipped to escape: one, a discharged Navy Seal, the other an Army Ranger on leave.
How each main character enhances the conflict: Both want the same thing but only one can win.
What makes these characters
right for the story: They are both ruthless cannibals/counterparts/equals with
competing goals. When the tables turn and they realize neither will win, they
join forces and invite the friend who set them up “for dinner and eat her eyes first,” giving
new meaning to the phrase “blind date.” -
BEVO BEAVEN’S RIGHT CHARACTERS
What I learned from doing this assignment is that when you are sticking by a goal that your characters have to fit the confined/contained model of creating conflict for the protagonist, new ideas for the story itself, how it unfolds, start flying that you never thought of logically when the story concept first came up. I learned that the story path can be driven by the characters themselves, not by me populating a preset story with generic characters and then trying to fit them and have them say dialog that moves the story forward within their generic character categories – the angry son, the jealous wife, wild daughter, etc. These characters are moving the story and the main character into new directions. That’s how I know they are the right ones. It’s got an unpredictable feel to it.
What makes these characters the right ones for this story is that they are connected to each other before the main character even meets each of them. But this unfolds as the story moves forward. Each of them has a reason to either hate the main character/protagonist, want her to die, or they want her to do something that will enhance their own cause (of course at her expense).
-
Jason’s Right Characters!
What I learned doing this assignment is there is a “right” set of characters for any story. Characters who bring conflict, possibilities, and interesting takes make a more engaging story.
A group of tourists rushed into a nuclear bunker after an explosion find themselves trapped inside with a mortally wounded man and a killer among them.
What makes my characters the right ones (still a work in progress) is that they are designed to have conflict and create suspense. Each has something to contribute to the situation, as well as a reason to fall under suspicion. Their attributes are meant to clash with one another as their situation becomes more and more dire.
-
Russ Phillips’ Right Characters
What I learned doing this assignment are some great brainstorming questions to get me under my characters’ skin.
-
Peter’s Right Characters!
What I learned through this assignment is that character complexity helps fill out the multiple aspects of thoughts, desires and individual interest within the characters which shows their humanity and flaws and make them relateable to the audience.
The concept of tightening things down to 3 characters really defines whether you have an actual story that can be told. Confinement becomes the exercise to heighten the creative process and practicing this can quickly lead to decisions of continuing the story or drop and start something else. It’s a massive time saver!
-
Heather’s Right Characters
What I learned is that even the supporting roles should be digging their heels into the high concept of my story. My main character is based on a real person and real events, so where I need to do this right is by adding supporting characters that are just as strong.
My hook is: Crazy is in the eye of the beholder.
-
Jay’s Right Characters!
What I learned doing this assignment is that it is a great exercise to help focus your main characters on the concept, hook, setting, conflict, etc.
Compare your concept to your lead characters to find unique ways for them to fulfill the concept.
Think about your
Concept Hook and Contained Setting.HOOK: All sources of antagonism are fueled by events described in the Book of Revelation.
CONTAINED SETTING: Mars
With each of
your main characters, how can they uniquely fit with the Hook?PROTAG: When she was young, her mother passed away. When it happened, feeling forsaken, she gave up on God. She became a loner and a woman of science.
ANTAG: A true scholar, he has degrees in psychology and theology. He ended up becoming a priest – a true man of faith.
Thinking about
the conflict that hook creates, how does each main character enhance or
cause that conflict?ANTAG: Unbeknownst to the rest of the team, the desolation and loneliness of Mars is getting to him (and he’s the one who’s supposed to be counseling the others). As the events of the story unfold, he recognizes the events of the apocalypse, starts drinking, and quoting lines from the Book of Revelation. He feels that they are doomed.
PROTAG: She is thrown into the role of commander and needs to keep her team alive. As the events unfold, she wonders if it is truly the apocalypse. If it is, being faithless, where does she stand?
Tell us what
makes these characters the “right ones” for this story?At the midpoint, the specific conflict between the two of them ratches up. An event leads him to believe that God has selected him to ensure the propagation of our species. She is the only woman remaining. Should she accept faith? Should she become the mother of our future or fight off her aggressor? If the latter, it that the end for us?
-
Stacy’s Right Characters!
What I learned doing this assignment is that my characters have to be able to deliver on the hook and the high concept. Brainstorming with the hook in mind, helps me to develope the layers of character with focus and intention.Hook: On their way to being reincarnated again, a woman’s husband and best friend gets lost “in the system”.
The Right Characters:
Anna (wife): has extreme anxiety, poor self esteem and is a reluctant medium.Her love for Thomas knows no bounds. He has been by her side for centuries.
Thomas(husband & best friend): is selfless and will do anything for Anna. He is her rock, her confidant, her lover and her protector. And now he is missing from her world. -
Linda’s Right Characters
I learned that putting focus on how the characters enhance conflict with the situation and each other forces them to make a case for being in this story.
Contained Setting: a bombed-out, evacuated military base in Iraq
Main Characters:
Tanji: a young black military chaplain
Mario: Tanji’s chaplain assistant and bodyguard
Major Sloan: the base’s commanding officer
Adiba: Camp Wolf’s Iraqi interpreter
-
Jon’s Right Characters!
1. Hook & Setting: What if two old friends had 24 hours to figure out if they were soulmates? / Harsh’s uncle’s dairy barn
2. Characters…
Harsh:
-Is a creative thinker and a romantic who has let the world turn him into a cold nihilist.
-Tends to spiral.
-Is trying to “take it slow” for the first time in his life.
Madeline:
-Has never been too much of a romantic / has always had a low bar for passion
-Is panicking about her lack of enthusiasm because of her age
-She’s a questioner who always thinks about the road not taking (which is why she loved the movie “Sliding Doors” in high school)
3. Thinking about the conflict that hook creates, how does each main character enhance that conflict?
-He’s calmer and she’s activated
-He’s chill and she’s in a bit more of a rush
-She’s looking to him for romance and that flame is dead
4. Tell us what makes these characters the “right ones” for this story?
-They’re strangers in a strange land (a dairy barn that neither of them are super familiar with), which creates a bubble for them
-Their timing with each other is off, per usual in their relationship, but they’re older now so the dance can move more quickly
5. What I learned doing this assignment is…?
-My brain doesn’t quite know how to do this type of “arithmetic” yet.
Log in to reply.