Day 7 Assignments

[Linda Anderson]

Linda Anderson’s TV Pitch Bible Investigation

What I learned doing this assignment is how much this exercise improved my TV Pitch Bible.

Rewritten TV Pitch Bible Sections:

Episode Time Length—changed from half-our to one-hour comedy because there was too much story for a half-hour.

Character Descriptions—made most changes on main character to add more intriguing traits and not repeat plot details

Episode Descriptions—came up with more interesting ways to move the lead characters and plot forward consistently

Five Seasons—cut down on repetition and included more interesting layers and twists

Summary—needs more work but made improvements in hooks and open loops

[Timothy Barley]

[currently a work in progress, but question for the group: as you did this assignment and investigated/discovered more and more about your show, did/should you go back and update the changes in previous lessons? Or did you just change in your working bible?]

[Ben Ather]

Make changes in your BW framework and TV Pitch Bible. Every time you discover something new make changes in those two. Don’t worry about the rest.

Well, we don’t have TV Pitch Bible (I mean with everything put together like BW framework) so make changes in your assignments. That’s what I do.

[Ben Ather]

What I learned doing this assignment is

I realized I have been using one of the investigation tools to mine my story. And when I try to use other investigation tools, I find myself coming back to that one investigation tool. I need to get used to using whatever investigation tool is needed for certain situation.

I thought I had come up with everything I needed, but I found loopholes and a few things that will change who goes up against Terra at the end of season five. All I have to do is set up everything across four seasons to get to season five, if it does get to that.

I also realized I can’t think beyond what I have already discovered. Maybe I’m not being intentional enough or I think what I have discovered is enough and not look deeper. So I will leave things like that for future discoveries.

ASSIGNMENT:

Do a complete investigation on your TV Pitch Bible to discover more depth, layers, and intrigue.

3. Evaluate the possibilities and decide what you are going to use in the different parts of your TV Pitch Bible. Divide the answers into three categories:

Use in TV Pitch Bible.

– Reed will be plotting to take control of his father power — this will also go in the BW framework.

– Reed purpose will change to him wanting his father to experience being controlled – this will also go in the BW framework.

– In Season Five, the number of people up against Terra is less. Not the entire underworld of magic anymore. Terra planned everything from the beginning to make sure no one opposes him in the end. He has the entire world in the palm of his hand.

Use in Episodes.

– Terra hands over his position to Mo. To prevent future troubles, Mo will try to kill Terra, but Terra uses their friendship to make Mo spare him.

– Mo discovers Rain is searching for a way to lift curse, so he sends Natchez and Sparrow to investigate Rain.

– Rain turns out cursed. To prevent Rain discovering his conspiracy, Terra executes his plan a head of time — he exposes Rain.

– Strange man turns out to be Terra’s man planning to acquire power, so Terra uses Mo to remove him.

– Rain discovers a sorceress who believes she is meant to accomplish great things cursed her, but the curse can be undone if she accomplishes her mission. A mission which will be reveal to her by following the signs.

Don’t use.

– I haven’t discovered something I wouldn’t use.

[Avi K]

Avi Kapurala’s Investigate Your Show

What I learned doing this assignment is: Once I started digging, my characters and plot changed in a way that made the story more complex. I need to keep digging to mine more nuggets and update my framework to reflect the new elements.

Use in TV Pitch Bible

– Make the lead character’s ethnicity different.

– Make his background and motivation more traumatic.

– Introduce a layer to his wife’s death.

– Introduce a character conflict through a business rival.

– Introduce an added conspiracy.

Use in Episodes

– Make the lead character’s ethnicity different.

– Make his background and motivation more traumatic.

– Introduce a layer to his wife’s death.

– Introduce a character conflict through a business rival.

– Introduce an added conspiracy.

Don’t use

– An FBI angle in Season 1.

– Rival as a long-lost sibling.

[Timothy Barley]

Tim Barley’s Investigation of Show

What I learned from this assignment is that I could go in and change everything if you gave me enough time. And while I did take much longer than I wanted to in doing this assignment, I did settle on a few changes that HAD to be made and some on which I am sitting for a bit.

1. Use in TV pitch Bible

– Changing all episode titles and season titles to more dramatic/thriller themed titles to adjust tone within the Bible

– Create and write better inciting action to launch first episode (also using in episodes)

– Created new “neutral” character of Billy, Alex’s intern, who may have a lot more answers than he is letting on about

– Addition of two new pure human characters as a way to build more “political” intrigue into the storyline

2. Use in episodes

– Change episode titles

– Adding changeover from the world we see and the world that IS more dramatically and…

– …explain it better

3. Don’t use:

– The Dark Men/No Things as an alternate antagonist for Alex and his group of heroes.

[Wendy Weising]

Wendy Weising’s TV Pitch Bible Investigation

What I learned doing this assignment is a deeper meaning to the show.

Sometimes my characters were doing things, and I didn’t know why. This assignment helped me figure some of the reasons out. I knew that one couple was in love, but now I know their history—it goes further back than I thought. My antagonist became more evil when I found out that she was more involved than I had thought. Some answers came to me where there had been questions. I used all the tools. When I ran out of ideas using one, I tried another tool.

[Laurie Brown]

(Laurie Brown’s) TV Pitch Bible Investigation

What I learned doing this assignment is that this process exponentially increased the mystery, intrigue, character conflict, irony, and elevated the show and material for future seasons”

1. Starting with your BW Framework and current draft of the TV Pitch Bible, ASSUME there is something beneath the surface that you absolutely MUST discover. DONE.

2. Investigate by picking situations and characters and asking: DONE.

3. Evaluate the possibilities and decide what you are going to use in the different parts of your TV Pitch Bible.
I just highlighted in yellow what I was going to use in the pitch bible.

4. For any parts where there is a substantial improvement, rewrite those parts of the TV Pitch Bible. Then, tell us what parts you changed and give a quick description of what you did.

I totally filled in the mystery around the death of the main character’s mother . I addressed the cause, claiming it to be an illegal abortion gone bad, where the doctor supposedly has fleed the scene. Set up the mystery of the father’s hat being there and why Geri stole it.

Set up what is underneath Geri’s needing to become a colonel in the Army and the symbolism of her father’s hat. Misled the audience about why Geri’s father took her to that particular military school and why the headmaster took the hat and was out to foil Geri.

Introduced Leo as a young man and misled the audience to think the headmaster was the one raping Marge, when it was Leo, but because he lost and eye and had a limp later in life, Bette and Geri didn’t recognize their commanding officer as the kitchen boy, Leo, at the military school.

I introduced the bigger world of the story, the Department of Interior earlier in the show, as a place Leo would eventually work, and that gave him the power to go after Geri.

I found a home for Marge’s secret son, Mark, at Leo’s sister’s house and made a role for him in the fifth season – a role that that almost complete’s the main character’s character arc.

I expanded Mark’s character into adulthood and built in an attempted rape of Bette’s niece, an armed confrontation of Geri with Mark and Leo and justice being served.

I expanded on Geri’s childhood neighbor and her role in the coverup of Geri’s mom and leading eventually to Geri solving the crime in the last episode of the last season – a total surprise ending. There’s more here, but I don’t know where it all will lead right now.

I misled the audience as to why Geri is being questioned by the Dept of Int and slowly revealed possible causes along the way as misleads, eventually having Geri confess and give up her goal to gain power for a goal for truth and justice.

There is still a lot to work on to make this all work and keep the audience guessing but this was a major piece of work that allowed me to rewrite parts of each episode and all of the seasons. I didn’t change character descriptions but feel complete for this pass.

[Elizabeth Dickinson]

What I learned doing this assignment is how &^@*($# confusing it is working with all the elements (that I’ve done!) that go into a bible when we haven’t actually been directed to turn in the amalgam of all those elements through an draft bible assignment. I never actually started an amalgamated document functioning as a bible so I have to go back and integrate all the assorted documents. I think we should’ve been asked to upload the in-process bible at some point. (It doesn’t help that I had to take time away to go to a separate conference where I had to pitch other projects…)

[P.G. Sundling]

P.G. Sundling’s TV Pitch Bible Investigation

5. Answer the question, “What I learned doing this assignment is…?” and put it at the top of your work.

I used “What’s beneath that?” and “How could this get worse?” extensively before the course. I did use the other three tools already and have a chapter in my book that even talks about “What if?” as a tool!

This would be easier on a less mature project where I hadn’t already done this.

1. Starting with your BW Framework and current draft of the TV Pitch Bible, ASSUME there is something beneath the surface that you absolutely MUST discover.

2. Investigate by picking situations and characters and using the 5 tools

3. Evaluate the possibilities and decide what you are going to use in the different parts of your TV Pitch Bible. Divide the answers into three categories:

Use in TV Pitch Bible.

There are enough layers in my novel already that it makes your head explode. My existing novel already improves after multiple read-throughs because readers see more layers that were there. The layer I added in this class was the simulations from book 1 to make science fiction more visible. This layer gets mentioned in the pitch bible.

There are so many layers just in the villain’s plan alone in various books.

Use in Episodes.

The Simulations layer cascaded into episodes, keeping the existing storyline intact, but exploring deeper implications of even minor changes in their eventual impact. This made even the character’s love life of massive importance.

Don’t use.

I might activate an alien agent in the first book, but right now it doesn’t look like I’m going to use that.

4. For any parts where there is a substantial improvement, rewrite those parts of the TV Pitch Bible. Then, tell us what parts you changed and give a quick description of what you did.

I made the changes before I started this lesson. I listened to the corresponding audio sometime ago. I knew all these techniques but used them subconsciously and without specific intention.

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