Day 6 Assignment

[Sharon Scherle]

Jean’s Completed P/S Grid #1

What I learned doing this assignment is that fixing the problems now is so much easier than trying to do it in a later draft. With the goal of looking for the problems, or being mindful of the problems when I went through the first draft, helped to find them and work on them.

Some of the problems:

1) Connect Jaden to the USB stick – missing the setup #12

INT. COFFEE SHOP – DAY

In this scene, Sharra meets Jaden. He thinks it’s a date until she lays on the real reason – their boss is embezzling clients’ money. AT the end of the scene, she reveals the USB Stick. This is the setup.

The payoff:

INT. WAREHOUSE – DAY

Earlier, Sharra tells Jaden she needs to leave town. He’s already offered her a job in Chicago. He arranges the meetup. Sharra arrives at the warehouse and grows suspicious. Her mugger and her boss with half a dozen gunmen want Sharra. Her boss wants the USP stick. Sharra now connects that it was Jaden who set her up, but it’s a double-cross because both the mugger and her boss, with different motivations, don’t know that Jaden is behind both. He’s the one who wants Sharra dead.

2) Tie in the mugger with Vault Agency: missing the setup #12

EXT. VAULT AGENCY OFFICE BUILDING – NIGHT

Sharra gets mugged by Conner. We don’t know it at this point, but it’s not random. I needed to make that clearer. So, I added Conner giving Sharra a message right after he stabs her, “I have a message for you: Stay away from the V–” He gets interrupted by Tanner and runs off.

INT. WAREHOUSE – DAY

The same scene as above. Conner is there first and gets Sharra in a chokehold. He’s there to deliver her to someone but we don’t find out because her boss shows up with his goons and takes over. Before that happens, Sharra questions, “Deliver me?” This is still part of the setup for the season. We still don’t connect that Jaden is the one who is trying to stop her from joining Vault Agency and that he is a rogue agent with an agenda of his own.

[Janeen Johnson]

Janeen Completed P/S Grid #1

What I learned doing this assignment is to focus on the task at hand. I deliberately didn’t worry about the quality of the dialogue and how much personality it contained (or didn’t contain) as I know we’ll fix that later. I had spent a lot of time plotting, motivating and adding mystery and intrigue to the outline and I think that came through in the draft.

I had a lack of subtext in many areas as I wrote dialogue and pictured the action, but didn’t write it. I went back to add it in 12 scenes.

My teaser works well for 2 characters, but not as well for the 3rd. I need to pump up her introduction and haven’t decided how to do so yet. I was getting stalled on it, so just left a note for myself and moved on.

There are a few setups I missed that I’ve added as well.

[Tracy Cheney]

Tracy El Pueblo

What I learned I already knew — I’m struggling to find the story of my 5th character for Act 5. It’s too long and boring. So my “What if”…became a brother. He appeared and I don’t know anything about him! I’ve tried writing now about him. Maybe he’s comic relief in a pretty serious drama. I’ll find out…

[Rob Sutherland]

Rob’s Completed PS Grid 1

Shuffled some scenes around in Act 5 to make it work better.