Lesson 13

[Rita Roberts]

Rita’s Max Interest 2
Opening setup with new character traits, a dark streak added.
What I learned:
– It’s a very different tone from my original version. Funny-ish in a darker way. Added elements set up more of the unfolding story. Next scene might be cut.
-All this showing same story can be written multiple ways.
-A future scene is also going to get dark, based on these changes.
-I can pack a lot of ITs into one scene.

Essence: Dawn’s life as a professor is professionally unfulfilling and personally challenging. She is undervalued in her position except for one devoted student she doesn’t indulge and another one who lightens the mood.

LOGLINE for scene: A disrespected psychology professor is rudely interrupted as she wraps up her last class of the semester.

Interest techniques:
1. Hook — what’s with the office guy interrupting with painters plus they have some sort of history.
2,3. Anticipatory Dialogue & Predictions — “I’m going to patch up holes and paint over some demons.” and Zak offers to help.
4. Mystery — “This won’t take long. He’s proven that plenty.”
5, 6, 7. Surprise & Twist & Cliffhanger (mild) — 1st page ends on a paint ladder banging through her lecture hall door to interrupt her class. Makes a reader turn the page and finish the scene.
8. Uncomfortable moment — Dawn’s weird response to sage makes the whole class actually listen because it’s confusing. It makes Sage suspicious.
9. Creating a future — Something will be happening with all these characters and painters.
10. Set up for future surprise — we meet Curtis’s wife later.

INT. UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM – MORNING
Tiered lecture hall with a few fidgety, unenthused students. A large diagram hangs on the wall — psych meds and a brain.

DAWN (30s) scans her less than rapt audience. A small woman in shapeless professor garb, the youthful apathy in this room nearly swallows her.

A young couple makes out, smack in the middle of the rows.

Dawn fast-balls a wad of paper at them.

DAWN
It’s not summer yet, lovebirds.

They barely flinch.

Suit and tie, office guy, CURTIS (40s) slithers through double doors to sit in the back row.

Dawn’s eyes narrow and her lips tighten into a strict line.

SAGE (21) front row, readies her pen as a studious annoyance to most of the room.

SAGE
What will you be reading this summer Ms Dawn?

DAWN
I’m going to patch up holes and paint over some demons.

Dawn squints at Curtis as she says this.

Confused, furrowed brows fill the room in an attempt to analyze her response. Even the lovebirds pause to ponder that one.

Sage turns to see who gets hit by her professor’s nasty glare.

ZAK (21) who looks more like a bronzed surfer than a psychology student volunteers.

ZAK
Need any help? I’m good with a paintbrush. And a hammer.

SMARTASS in the back pipes up.

SMARTASS
Good at getting hammered.

The door BANGS into a wall, pushed open by the padded end of an extension ladder.

Curtis jumps up to hold the door open.

CURTIS
Just in time. Come on in.

DAWN
Excuse me! As noted, it’s not summer yet.

Dawn’s timer chimes.

CURTIS
It is now.

The class bounds out, free at last, but Zak barrels down the steps toward Dawn like a happy puppy.

Zak’s infectious joy can’t derail the daggers in Dawn’s scowl.

DAWN
Hang on, Zak. This won’t take long. He’s proven that plenty.

Sage frowns, a suspicious glance at the teacher/student/office guy exchange. She slips out the side exit.

• This reply was modified 9 hours, 38 minutes ago by  Rita Roberts.

[Mary Albanese]

WHAT I LEARNED: Once you click out of that analytical, linear thinking mode that script reading and writing naturally defaults to, and re-imagine how to push the scene to optimize the essence, you can have a lot of fun revising a script. Revising is no longer a chore, it is literally a funhouse of ways to infuse and elevate the script.

Lesson 13 – Adding Maximum interest techniques into a scene.

OLD SCENE
SCENE ARC/LOGLINE: Elsie, determined to have her baby, argues with her doctor and husband who want to abort it for her health.
ESSENCE: Elsie must fight not only her doctor but her husband to bear this child.
Currently, the scene has uncomfortable moment, anticipatory dialogue, prediction, and creating a future as Elsie argues with her doctor and husband about having this child, and the consequences if she does or doesn’t have it. This scene delivers the plot, but it's a talking scene, which leaves it a little flat. Let’s add some more max interest techniques. And also, let's add some action to see if that might jump-start the interest techniques.

So let’s push it. At start of scene, let’s give us a hint to remind us why it’s so uncomfortable for her to face this doctor (who knows the baby isn’t her husband’s). That will push the uncomfortable moment aspect to start the scene off with more tension. Instead of talking in the doctor’s office, let’s have her be getting an ultrasound by the doctor, and the baby’s face is unclear and fuzzy and missing. Equipment malfunction or is there something drastically wrong with this baby? That gives us something unseen. Let’s start the ultrasound sequence with a dilemma – the doctor has Elsie on the table and as he talks to her, he gets out his ultrasound equipment. Yikes! She didn't agree to that. Will Elsie even allow the ultrasound? She knows she may have consequences if she has the ultrasound, but also consequences if she refuses to have it. That makes us uncomfortable on the doctor’s table for her. For mystery, once she agrees, seeing a fetus with no face gives us that. Let’s push it even farther. In the next scene, the doctor dies. Let’s push that here so this scene ends on a cliffhanger. This faceless fetus starts out having very weak pulse, heartbeat. Barely alive. Then it starts THRASHING in the womb when the doctor comes near it. This makes the doctor say this pregnancy is definitely dangerous and more evidence that it is a risk to Elsie’s health and must be aborted. Elsie can end the scene telling the doctor he’s wrong – the baby just doesn’t like him. That gives us a creepy cliff-hanger to end the scene by way of a foreshadowing of the scene to follow. As for the hook? A baby with no face gives us that.

And for extra kick, let’s have her husband seem supportive of her all the way through, until at the end of the scene, where he makes it clear he’s going to side with the doctor all the way. This gives us betrayal, misdirect, character changes radically, and makes Elsie’s life even harder. Because not only can she not count on him, she can’t even count on him to be honest with her about what he’s thinking.

NEW SCENE ARC: Elsie, determined to have her baby, fights with her doctor and husband who want to abort it for her health. The scene arc overview is basically the same as the old one.
NEW SCENE LOGLINE: Elsie, determined to have her baby, now must fight not only her doctor but her husband to bear her child. (Very similar to the old scene logline.)
ESSENCE: It is the essence that is elevated by this revision to the scene. Now the essense is: Elsie’s fight to have this child no matter what just got way WAY more intense.

• This reply was modified 9 hours, 8 minutes ago by  Mary Albanese.