Lesson 1

[John Zarzar]

John Zarzar — Transformational Journey

I learned it’s easier to organize my mind by following the character’s arc process.

Internal journey: Naive and afraid to sophisticated and strong.
External journey: A normal obeying citizen to liberating an entire society.

What are the old ways?
* Ignorant of the slaved society
* Accepting old teachings
* Afraid to ask questions
* To thrive to be a normal citizen

What are the new ways?
* He can see one world
* Beliefs he can help people remember their true purpose
* Fearless
* Fighting to tell the truth

[Jan Lloyd]

What I learned doing this assignment… I learned a bit about writing a query letter in a way. I also learned a bit about hooks. Would my descriptions of the internal and external journeys sound exciting to a producer? Probably not at this stage. My idea is great. I just need to write it better.

My heroes are fraternal twins, foster children who manage to get into every conceivable trouble. Their internal journey is to stop being so gullible. They trusted the wrong people and it got them sent to a special university far away from the foster parents they currently live with. Their external journey matches their internal journey. They go to different places. They are sent to an unusual school that will hopefully help them turn their lives around. They meet like minded students.
Their old ways were to go to school and hang with their friends. Their new ways at the new school is to form study groups and learn exciting new things about energy, food production, medicine, and things that could help the world.

[Kenneth Johnson]

Kenneth Johnson – Transformational Journey

1. I listened to the empowerment audio

2. Who is your Hero and what is their Character Arc that represents a transformation?
The hero is Michael Jones, a middle-aged down on his luck writer who is very self-possessed and arrogant, but really despises himself and fundamentally hates who he is. He becomes someone who can care about the needs of others.
– Internal Journey – Michael must learn to love himself and care about others
– External Journey – Michael must learn to love his father and realize that they are the same person, which allows him to love himself.

3. What are the Old Ways and New Ways?
As a child of divorce Michael subconsciously doesn’t want to be anything like his father because he was raised by his mother to loathe everything about his father. He actively avoids doing things the way his father would do them. That’s the old way. The new way is getting to know his father and understanding they actually have the same way of doing things. The same thought processes. Even the same creative approach. And accepting that they are actually the same person at different ages.

4. What I learned doing this assignment…
A different way of looking at the creation of characters. I have long understood the internal and external motivations of a character, but this is a more dynamic way of approaching those aspects of the protagonist.

[Michael Dalby]

I learned that the change in the character has to come out of a do or die event, or the stakes are not high enough.

Internal journey – the main character is a host of a successful high rating tv show. He thinks he is God’s gift to daytime TV. He thinks he is too popular to be fired. He is forced to reassess his life when he is suddenly fired by the new owners of the tv station.

External Journey He is forced to take a lowly position on a community tv station while he tries to clear his name and be re-employed by the tv station