Day 5 Assignments

[Julia Keefer]

What I learned is that despite years of planning and writing and researching my trilogy, it helps to write automatically like this in a forum without notes to release a shorter pitch from my unconscious.

1. What is the Emotional Gradient you’ll use? In my last seismic seesaw novel of my trilogy, Jake was originally a Candide-like optimist in contrast with the Magma Monsters’ ruthless rush to death and destruction, but one note character equals satire, not drama, so I am giving him more dimensions since I have had so much trouble with this project. But he oscillates between desired and forced change because he wants to spring back to the exclamation marks of the wellness/fitness lifestyle!!!

2. For each emotion of that gradient, tell us the following:

A. Emotion: Excitement
B. Action: Jake develops more medical training and dimensions to his fitness career because he wants people to listen to him as they confront more serious health challenges.
C. Challenge / Weakness: Jake’s weaknesses are narcissism and inability to listen to others patiently and carefully in part because of ADHD etc. He wants to jump from excitement to triumph without the stages of doubt, hope, discouragement, although he has courage. He is the opposite of Hal’s methodical approach to the gradients of emotion. He sings and screams and falls off the ladder!!! Then he picks himself up, smiles, and winks.

A. Emotion: Depression about COVID diseases and deaths
B. Action: Jake successfully developed COVID therapy for his mom but failed performing CPR on his buddy’s parents and then his buddy Rodney died despite his efforts.
C. Challenge / Weakness: Jake cannot stand the depression of mourning so he marries his buddy’s widow and has the baby he always wanted, an action that came in part out of weakness and circled back to excitement, his modus operandi. To survive, he must keep forgetting and forgiving and forging ahead before he is dead, something he won’t let himself imagine.

A. Emotion: Denial
B. Action: Although Jake could accept his dad’s ALS and his mom’s Alzheimer’s because he could care for them and they are older, he denies his Parkinson’s when he first gets symptoms of tremors, vertigo, and balance issues, making excuses, but also accelerating his fitness, something that exhausts him and gives him more symptoms as if he were spinning tires in a ditch.
C. Challenge / Weakness: He cannot stand going through the Kubler-Ross gradients but he learns to sublimate rage into kickbox, albeit in a chair or the pool, bargains with the Magma Monsters that he can now access via his Native American wife Litonya Lenape, and exults in the achievements of his kids, but is still frustrated. The Levodopa PD drug temporarily brings him back to his excitement phase with his renewed sexual potency (it can activate men in their eighties but he is only in his seventies). However, the symptoms get worse, the drug less potent, and he is faced with depression. At the end he must get help from his Sufi friend Orhan to release his energy into the cosmos. The main thing is not to get glued to depression like a roach in a roach motel. At the end of the trilogy, he, Litonya, and others of their generation die in 2060 but this loss is a legacy for their offspring who experience some degree of triumph in their battle against climate crises and painful, endless geriatric diseases.

Etc..

3. Answer the question “What I learned doing this assignment is…?” (place at top of your work).

[Heather Hood]

Act 1

What learned from this assignment: I had to break the screenplay down into each of its four acts. Because I’m going to have to work on act two and three to add a Judas in there somewhere I only did act 1 for this assignment.

Andrew’s Forced Action Scenario – broken down in each scene. Most of this encompasses SHOCK/DENIAL, but scene 5 and 6 encompass ANGER

Scene 1

Emotion: Shock

Action: Captain
Andrew McKinnon, about to retire from service aboard the <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>HMS Reliant spies
his nephew being loaded onto a ship of indentured servants

Weakness: He looses his temper. Hobbs
drowns.

Scene 2

Emotion: Despair

Action: Andrew
mocks British justice. He is exiled from Ireland for murder

Weakness: Deep
down inside he doesn’t believe he deserves happiness (Core issue)

Scene 3

Emotion: Shame

Action: The Proud Captain is forced to walk through the town in chains

Weakness: Cannot show humility Because …

Scene 4

Emotion: Frustration

Action: Defies
the Captain of the <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>SS Sarmation, his brother-in-law

Weakness: He
can’t remember a thing that happened

Scene 5

Emotion: Rage

Action: Discovers
Big Dan, the man from the worst moment of his past, is the head of the Black
Gang (The Coal Gang) in the engine room. Stops him from hurting a crew member.

Weakness: He
hasn’t dealt with past issues, just pushed them aside

Scene 6

Emotion: Calculation

Action: Big
Dan Wants to take things up where they left off. Andrew starts to think about a
way to get even.

Weakness: lets other people push his buttons.

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Three Gradients

What I learned:

· There’s a different journey for forced or chosen change, with different emotional sequences

· Challenges bring out weaknesses – natural/obvious ones as well as weaknesses they (we) didn’t know about

· The bigger the challenge, the bigger the weakness it evokes

· Old Ways first half…New Ways second half

· To build in steps of the emotional gradient

This model is incredible!!

And I have a long way to go with my concept. These assignments are helping me to see some of the pieces.

1. What is the Emotional Gradient you’ll use? forced change

2. For each emotion of that gradient, tell us the following:
A. Emotion: denial
B. Action: Maddie calls in a favor to get community service hours reduced/deleted – fails
C. Challenge / Weakness:

C: Maddie has to stay back in town where she was vacationing & do service work – missing big event in NY

W: Doesn’t have the power she thought she had

A. Emotion: anger
B. Action: belittles the students, tries to slip out
C. Challenge / Weakness:

C: Students don’t let her leave – they keep watch/hold her hostage

W: Doesn’t have the control she thought she had

A. Emotion: bargaining
B. Action: make deals with students to help them finish unfinished business that came out in the writing; tries to get this business done too quickly through the wrong means; steals a student’s story; loses job when she tries to un-steal it
C. Challenge / Weakness:

C: How can she help others with unfinished business when she has so much of her own?

W: unwillingness to deal with unfinished business

A. Emotion: depression
B. Action: the group kicks her out & she tries to go back to old life

C. Challenge / Weakness: She is not wanted either place

C: the old life is undesirable

W: loneliness

A. Emotion: acceptance
B. Action: returns, makes amends, helps others with unfinished business
C. Challenge / Weakness:

C: She’s still out of a day job

W: She needs to learn to accept love (romantic and friendship)

[Christopher Carlson]

Christopher Carlson’s Three Gradients

What I learned doing this assignment is an awareness that the character must be in constant movement, either via upward gradient or downward gradient. I’m finding it difficult sometimes to differentiate between the action and the challenge elements of the gradient – how are they different?

What is the Emotional Gradient you’ll use?

Desired Change Emotional Gradient

2. For each emotion of that gradient, tell us the following: A. Emotion: B. Action: C. Challenge / Weakness: A. Emotion: B. Action: C. Challenge / Weakness: A. Emotion: B. Action: C. Challenge / Weakness: Etc..

3. A: Emotion: Excitement
B. Action Gradient: Helen goes to Hollywood to participate in a movie about her life.
C: Challenge Gradient: Film director and producer challenge Helen’s sense of self by wanting to add romance and adventure to her story
Weakness: ignorance of such things in her own life

4. A: Emotion: Doubt
B. Action: Helen and Peter get to know each other, he showing great deference which is exactly what she hates
C: Challenge Gradient: a man expresses his love for her
Weakness: Her great yearning, coupled with fear of doing something forbidden

5. A: Emotion: Hope
B. Action Gradient: Helen makes love with Peter
C: Challenge Gradient: Being in a physical relationship
Weakness: no experience in the realm of love

6. A: Emotion: Discouragement
B: Action Gradient: The people closest to her – her mother Kate and Teacher – denigrate Peter’s character and reject him
C: Challenge Gradient: Helen compelled to lie in order to protect and defend her lover
D: Weakness: self doubt

7. A: Emotion: Courage
B: Action Gradient: Helen conspires with Peter to continue their relationship in secret – they plan elopement
C: Challenge Gradient: mother Kate exiles Peter from the house
Weakness: impossible choice

8. A: Emotion: Triumph
B: Action Gradient: Helen acts as a fully liberated woman and embraces the experience of loving another, despite being betrayed by Peter
C: Challenge Gradient: planning everything alone, and in the dark, something never done before by a handicapped woman
Weakness: no support

[Cara Rogers]

Cara Rogers’ 3 Gradients:

The 3 Gradients: Desired Change

Emotions:

Excitement

Shoe reads article, cash prize for flying machine. Decides he can do this.

Challenge – creating a successful design. Weakness – No experience or plan.

Doubt

At potluck, can’t overcome The Devil Wind. It is destroying everything, including his dreams.

Challenge – way to utilize the wind, control it, to fly. Weakness – small, young, inexperienced.

Hope

Creates 2 different designs and attempts to fly.

Challenge – designs are unsuccessful. Weakness – still being impulsive, poor planning.

Discouragement

Dedicates time to helping father instead of flying (Jackrabbit Hunt).

Challenge – can’t focus on work, doesn’t enjoy it. Weakness – poor self-image as weak, too small and young.

Courage

Attempts a 3rd design despite injuries.

Challenge – injured, can’t do it alone. Weakness – won’t ask for help. Stubborn

Triumph

Allows help from family. Designs a successful contraption. Uses the wind to fly.

Challenge – storm, deadly conditions. Weakness – lack of caution or correct priorities.

3. What I learned is that following the natural stages of grief we go through can guide our character’s arc, when using the Forced Change Gradient. That’s easy for me to grasp and apply, so thank you for clarity.