Lesson 4

[Donna Donna Hoke Hoke]

ACT 1 — SET UP FOR HORROR

Atmosphere of Evil established – Kenny Keller, an attorney, gets in an argument with a deli clerk and later learns they committed suicide. Kenny receives a note saying it wasn’t a suicide and it won’t be the first if Kenny isn’t careful.

Connect with the characters—Kenny is freaked out. We feel for her. She wants to go to the police. She does but the cop doesn’t feel there’s much to go on. That night, the cop is found dead.

The characters are warned not to do it. —

Denial of Horror – Kenny is convinced it’s a coincidence, but at the same time… she can’t really go back to the cops can she?

Safety taken away – She’s learned she can’t talk to anybody about this or who knows what will happen? she asks what she needs to do?

Monster: The nature of the beast. – the killer tells her she needs to kill someone herself.

ACT 2 — THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Isolated / Trapped / Abducted –now she can’t talk to anyone but needs to figure this out herself.

One of us killed – Freaked out and on edge, Kenny fires her assistant—who is later found dead.

MIDPOINT: The monster is worse than we thought!

Full pursuit by the killer – what do they want?! They told her: kill someone. Kenny can’t do it and when she has a fight with her husband, she totally freaks out and sends him out of town for his own safety. But the killer knows where he is, so she fake kills someone

Terrorized – and her husband is killed.

ACT 3 — FULL OUT HORROR

Fight to the death – Kenny knows nobody in her life is safe. What can she do? She sneaks into the hospital and pulls the plug on a terminal patient.

Hysteria – She’s told she cheated, and now the killer has her daughter. And Kenny has one hour or she’ll never see her again.

The thrilling escape from death – She finally kills a homelss person on the street out of terror, fear, and rage.

Death returns to take one or more – she is arrested.

Resolution: Her daughter visits her as she awaits trial.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Laree Griffith. Reason: Removed HTML tags so others can post

[Leslie Danon]

This is great. Is Kenny the actual killer? She’s mentally insane?

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Horror Plot

What I learned doing this assignment is that the simple act of filling in plot points will help you start to hammer out a story in a big way. I had no real idea what to do with the concept, but then I started working to meet the criteria of the plot points and before I knew it, I had the skeleton of a story. Such an easy process and rather amazing. It was painless.

1. Knowing your concept, fill in one or two sentences for each of the plot points.

ACT 1 — SET UP FOR HORROR

• Atmosphere of Evil established – A young girl, traveling at night, gets gas at a lonely station in a woodsy area.

• Connect with the characters – The young girl chats to her mom as she puts gas at the unmanned station.

• The characters are warned not to do it. – Her mom warns her to stop at a motel and not drive all alone by herself at night.

• Denial of Horror – The girl assures her mom she’ll be fine.

• Safety taken away – She’s run off the road by a serial killer that has been stalking her and flees from him on foot. She flags down a fan of thuggie guys that won’t help her because she doesn’t have anything to give them. She says she’ll haunt them if they don’t help her and they leave her on the side of the road.

• Monster: The serial killer dismembers her.

ACT 2 — THE POINT OF NO RETURN

• Isolated / Trapped / Abducted – The group of thuggie guys experience paranormal activity.

• One of us killed – One of the members dies by running into the street after encountering a phantom. Then the head thugs berates the group for letting some bitch ghost scare them into doing “stupid shit” and points out that her scare tactics are actually harmless.

MIDPOINT: The monster is worse than we thought!

• Full pursuit by the killer – A serial killer starts to stalk the members of the group

• Terrorized – The serial branches out to members of the group’s family that fit his MO. The group realizes that the serial killer killed the girl they failed to rescue and she is the one guiding the serial killer to go after them.

ACT 3 — FULL OUT HORROR

• Fight to the death – They try to find the serial killer to stop him.

• Hysteria – The serial killer picks off more of the group.

• The thrilling escape from death – They find a serial killer and do a ritual to sacrifice him to the vengeful spirit in order to appease her and get her to cross over.

• Death returns to take one or more. – The ritual actually imbues the vengeful spirit with demonic powers and she kills the innocent Nikki as her act of vengeance.

• Resolution – Kade is left to more his friends, but the spirit of Nikki needs her revenge.