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Lesson 14
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DAY 14 Bob ‘Delivers Irony!’
What I learned doing this assignment is that I have been able to come up with examples of irony in my outline that I didn’t even see.
–Malvolio getting what he wants (revenge), but losing what he needs (admiration). (Insight: think long-term before jumping into an angry response; you’ll probably regret it if you don’t.)
–Sir Andrew getting a special deal (a can’t-miss investment), that turns out to be worthless (it was Malvolio’s clever scam). (Insight: you may not be as clever as you thought you were. If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.)
–Sir Toby’s group of five do the wrong thing (humiliate Malvolio) for the right reasons (he does need to be taught a lesson). Which is when Malvolio’s revenge spirals creates misery for all. (Insight: the ends don’t justify the means.)
–Maria is fooled into thinking her new husband, Sir Toby, is married to another woman, which means her baby will be a bastard; but her misery also reveals the truth about how important her bond is with Sir Toby. (Insight: sometimes, the darkest moment shed their own light on something deeper.)
–Fabian is the one who freed Malvolio from captivity and the first to fess up to the group’s dirty tricks, but Malvolio (accidentally) punished him the worst. (Insight: don’t get complacent about your position. Accidents do happen, and the tide could turn against you at any moment.)
–Feste the Jester is known to be wise as well as a joker himself, but he easily falls for Malvolio’s lying trick to get the duke to fire him. (Insight: Don’t get too cocky about your own talents. There’s always someone around who might outplay you.)
–At the end of Act 5, Malvolio the pompous, mean-spirited, egocentric steward, transforms into a far better man, even though he is forced to flee the town. (Insight: sometimes it takes a journey of terrible choices to finally learn the truth about what works to make you a happier person.)
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Bob–I didn’t see my examples of irony either. I guess we are both blind as a bat. (a wooden one.)
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Irony
What I learned: I didn’t see the irony until I looked for it. The audience will probably enjoy these example of irony sprinkled in the screenplay.
1. Selma must give up her want to be self-sufficient to gain her need to be supported by a mother-figure.
2. Elizabeth realizes Mark convinced her that she was delusional. This made her fearful of hurting her newborn. Now that she knows that she is not delusional, she realizes she gave up her baby for no reason. This is so terrible that she wants to be delusional for real.
3. Selma vows not to lie because she wants to keep her clients safe. However, telling a lie is the only way to keep Elizabeth safe.
4. Selma’s need is to save Elizabeth. But Selma can only get that by giving up her want to stay away from men and their feet. Selma fights Mark by holding on to his foot in order to save Elizabeth.
5. Because Jasmine is jealous of Elizabeth, Jasmine tells Elizabeth to go have her own baby. Jasmine has no reason to be jealous of Elizabeth because she did have her own baby but was tricked into giving her up.
6. Mark believes the #MeToo movement destroys good men like him when, in fact, he is a bad man who has been raping his wife.
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Joan- I’m glad we had the same issue with not seeing the irony until we focused on it. But now we can never unsee it. For everything else we write.
Regarding your examples, the one that stood out most for me is: “…she realizes she gave up her baby for no reason. This is so terrible that she wants to be delusional for real.” What a conflict! And what an irony. Well done.
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Vivien’s Delivers Irony!
What I learned doing this assignment is that irony creates intrigue to the story, for instance, things are not what they appear, or characters are not what they seem.
1. Irony 1: REASONS: Doing the wrong thing for the right reason.
Insight: You must support your family in time of crisis.
Opposite experiences: Alicia is honest to a fault. She values integrity above all. When Father wants to keep Mother in the dark about her son Anthony’s death, Alicia must weave a web of lies to make her believe that Anthony is still living.
2. Irony 2: WIN/LOSS: A win that is really a loss.
Insight: Mother is afraid that Anthony is in love with a woman in Vietnam.
Opposite experiences: Alicia pays an actor to pretend to be Anthony’s work colleague from Vietnam to tell Mother how wonderful life is for Anthony in Vietnam. He’s so convincing that Mother suspects that Anthony lives in Vietnam with a woman. Not wanting to lose her son, she is hellbent to go to Vietnam to bring him home.
3. Irony 3: MOTIVATION: Getting your “want” but losing your “need.”
Insight: Love must be earned.
Opposite experiences: Alicia reproaches Mother for thinking obsessively about Anthony. She feels emotionally neglected by Mother and craves her love. Mother admonishes Alicia for being jealous of her brother. She points out that Anthony loves his family and looks after them.
4. Irony 4: CREDIT: Do something amazing but the credit goes to another.
Insight: Love is giving without expectation.
Opposite experiences: Alicia must find a way to keep Anthony’s spirit alive before she reveals the truth to Mother. She works exceptionally hard to win the trust of Anthony’s girlfriend Cindy and convinces her to let her (Alicia’s) family be part of her and Anthony’s son’s life. The unborn grandson alleviates Mother’s suffering and gives her hope for the future. She is thankful to Cindy for keeping Anthony’s spirit alive.
5. Irony 5: WIN/LOSS: A win that is really a loss.
Insight: the family is over-protective of one another.
Opposite experiences: Alicia and Father think that they are successful in making Mother believe that Anthony is still living. But before long, they find out that Mother knew about Anthony not long after his passing. She decided to stay silent because she did not want the family to suffer for her.
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Ashley Delivers Irony
I learned about the importance of irony and how it works. This is a new area for me, and I’m still integrating irony into my story.
New Way: Malinche owns her strange ability to use her voice and communicate with birds.
Malinche owns her voice and superpower, giving the speech of a lifetime to the people of Tenochtitlan. As she finishes, the Mexica authorities arrest her and the next Aztec emperor in line finishes the speech and gets the credit.
New Way: Everyone is a ‘foreigner’, as each person has a unique gift. Insight: ‘Foreigners’ make the collective stronger.
She is seen as “special” and terrifying for her unique ability to communicate with birds, but then they throw her in the bird cage with all the pigeons.
New Way: Playing “small” is a slow death and living in fear doesn’t serve yourself or the world.
At the Midpoint, the Mexica emissaries demand the semi-annual tribute from Cempoala. As punishment for hosting the Spaniards, they demand 20 men and women as a suitable sacrifice to the gods. Instead, Malinche offers herself to the emperor as a human sacrifice instead of the 20 people (she is the woman he is looking for). In a way, she courageously sends herself to her death bed.
New Way: Malinche courageously opens up to new love with Hernando.
After the love scene, Malinche sits on the beach and watches the ships burn (her only chance of sending the Spaniards back to Spain or Cuba).
Malinche gets her need for love, but loses her want to save her people, herself, and her son.
New Way: Malinche doesn’t fear death and destruction. She understands that the end of a cycle offers healing, purification, and integration.
She doesn’t prevent the massacre at the Festival of Toxcatl, because she knows that it will lead to the Spaniards demise. She does the wrong thing for the right reason.
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Brenda Boddy. Delivers Irony!
What I learned doing this assignment: This was a hard one for me. I found several instances that I had put irony in and didn’t realize it, but I had trouble adding more.
1). Karma is attacked and doesn’t want her nana to know she’s a stripper.
NANA
Huh…I didn’t hear any. Was the restaurant busy?
Karma stands up. Leans over to kiss Nana.
KARMA
Quiet. Just a few regulars.
2). When Karma is on Mount Olympus, she is arguing with Zeus about her being capable of getting the Godstone. In the background, the cherubs are eating cake and having a party.
3). Zeus is pushing Karma to go after the stone. Karma remarks, “No pressure, huh?”. Zeus goes on to tell her a metaphor of what will happen if she doesn’t get the stone.
4). Karma is attracted to Sobin but she tells him she’s not the kind of girl he’d want to date. She bases this off her own job and self-esteem.
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Tom Delivers Irony!
What I learned is that I had irony built into the story already, and that with intention I could connect that irony to the new ways and profound insights escalated the overall quality of the story. I still struggle with the second option for building irony. I will be returning to this lesson to devote more time here.
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Chhimed Delivers Irony!
What I learned doing this assignment is that there is a level of depth and complexity that I was not reaching before. This is like all of my favorite stories where the hero doesn’t just follow the steps set out for them 1, 2, 3 – success! Sometimes everything fails. Sometimes they get exactly what they want and it’s shit! Life lessons are learned via difficult, complicated, and unforeseen circumstances.
With your list of the New Ways / Insights you want audiences to experience, go through these steps:
Step 1. What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver?
NEW WAY: Sharing yourself with others instead of dealing with everything on your own is good.
INSIGHT TO DELIVER: The more you let people in, the more you are seen, known, loved, and have a sense of belonging.Step 2. How could you deliver that insight through opposite experiences?
Right thing, wrong reasons: A.V. shares something of a deeply personal nature with crew members in order to complete a job, figures they won’t pay attention anyway, but instead they all crowd around her and give her love. She is shocked and flabbergasted.
ORStep 1. Where could you build opposite experiences into your screenplay?
During a job that can only be completed by virtue of crew members knowing each other very well (like a Newlywed Game scenario), A.V. prides herself on how much she loves her crew and how much she knows every little detail about them. Then it turns out that someone will die unless A.V.’s crew know things about her, too. Through a tech that shares memories, her memories are downloaded into the crew. She is so ashamed, but they are shocked at everything she’s been through and love her more.Step 2. What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver through them?
Vulnerability creates intimacy.Come up with at least five (5) different ways you can create IRONY in your screenplay and deliver an insight.
1. WIN/LOSS: Losing bio parents brings adoptive family. Leaving adoptive family allows space to create another just-right-for-her family on her ship.
2. WRONG/RIGHT REASONS: A.V. is forced to share with her crew at last minute, telling herself she will reverse the tech later and take her memories back so people don’t know them, but when the scenario is over, her crew’s response is so positive that she hesitates.
3. GETTING WANT/LOSING NEED: Desperate to have one final conversation with her parents which she can do through magic, even though the magic’s price is that she’ll lose something very important to her. A.V. does it and then finds that she’s lost her new connection to Source which means more to her than she realized and leaves her feeling bereft.
4. DEALS: Searches and searches for her holy grail/magic pill that she’s heard about for years. When she gets ahold of it, it turns out it only works for some people and it doesn’t work for her at all. She’s back at square one.
5. IDENTITY: At some point, A.V. becomes the community-centric person she thinks her s.o. wants, only to realize that without her lone wolf nature, she’s become boring and devoid of life.
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