Lesson 4

[Margaret Doner]

Lesson 4: 10 Most Interesting Things

Margaret Doner

What I learned from this assignment: How to break down the script and pull-out important parts.

Answer to questions:

1. The most unique thing about the villain is she is a ghost. The most unique thing about the hero is she is a guardian angel.

2. Major hook of opening scene – Unbeknownst to the humans, angels are messing with their lives.

3. Turning points – Charlie’s bride, Betsy, dies minutes before their weeding.

4. Emotional dilemma – Charlie’s guardian angel, Annabelle, makes the difficult decision to enter Betsy’s body to save Charlie the pain of finding her dead.

5. Major twist – Annabelle goes through the wedding and falls in love with Charlie. Betsy’s ghost seeks revenge on Annabelle and enlist demonic help to accomplish her aim.

6. Reversals – Betsy manages to kick Annabelle out of her body and reclaim it.

7. Character betrayals – Charlie falls in love with Annabelle while she inhabits the body, far more than Betsy, the original owner

8. Big surprises – Betsy is killed in a freak accident and leaves Charlie a widower. With the woman, Ellie’s, permission, Annabelle finds another body to inhabit and finds her way back to Charlie so they can fall in love.

10 most interesting things:

1. The villain is a ghost and the hero is an angel.

2. Angels mess around in human’s lives.

3. Charlie’s bride dies minutes before the wedding.

4. Charlie’s guardian angel inhabits her body

5. Betsy’ ghost seeks revenge and wants her body back.

6. Betsy enlists demonic assistance to accomplish her task.

7. Charlie is more in love when the angel Annabelle is in Betsy’s body.

8. Betsy manages to kick Annabelle out of her body and re-enters it.

9. Betsy is killed once again in a freak accident and Charlie is a widower.

10. Annabelle and Charlie get together in the end when Annabelle (with permission) takes over the body of another woman.

[Vincent Saia]

I learned how interesting my script is.

A – My hero must conquer his inner demons (mostly alcoholism) and not only succeeds but excels in his situation and becomes the stuff of legend.

B – A great dogfight.

C – Just before he is to be sent home to receive accolades for his accomplishments as a fighter pilot he is shot down and sent to a Japanese POW camp where he faces brutal treatment and must use his new-found inner strength to help himself and the other prisoners to survive.

D – Hero’s self-destructive behavior and alcoholism.

E- He is kicked off his squadron then decides to create his own squadron within the Marine Corps from pilots from the replacement pool.

F – Instead of going home to cheering crowds and other accolades he must use his new-found inner strength to help himself and the other prisoners to survive as a result of him being shot down.

G- None

H – Celebrity cameo as Admiral Halsey

TEN MOST INTERESTING THINGS

1. It is a true story

2. It is the story of overcoming personal demons.

3. It is about a man who was his own worst enemy and overcomes it.

4. It is a great adventure story going from Burma, to the northwestern US, to Australia, to the Solomon Islands, et al.

5. It is the story of a man his men called “a born leader.”

6. He is a rebel who goes his own way.

7. He is a charming rebel.

8. It shows man’s inhumanity to man and how those subject to it survive.

9. The first squadron he is in has many interesting characters in the jungle in an Indiana Jones milieu.

10. The Black Sheep Squadron also contains many interesting characters.

[H. Vince]

H. Vince’s 10 Most Interesting Things

Power Players – 2023

Lesson 4: The 10 Most Interesting Things

What I learned from doing this assignment is…

to highlight the best parts of the story to make it marketable to a producer.

1. What is most unique about your villain and hero?

The villain has a monetary successful small business but claims he has severe depression. This boss promised the manager that she will be greatly rewarded if she stays until his retirement, but her delusions are making it hard to last.

2. Major hook of your opening scene?

Celebrating a staff member’s birthday shows the boss’s true colors of narcissism and judgment resulting in an uncomfortable argument where a staff member tells the boss off and quits. Turns out it was all a daydream from the Office Manager.

3. Any turning points?

Things seem to go even more downhill once the boss decided to fire an employee while she was on vacation.

4. Emotional dilemma?

The Office Manager feels stuck and doesn’t have the courage to leave until the boss calls out her weaknesses in the end.

5. Major twists?

An employee plays an April Fool’s joke on the boss requesting he use pronouns. When the boss doesn’t want to comply, the employee gets his cousin and friends to create an elaborate embarrassing protest of the boss in the parking lot for the whole office building to witness.

6. Reversals?

The boss may just be a spoiled curmudgeon and not mentally ill after all. His office manager may be the one with a mental illness.

7. Character betrayals?

The boss’s wife secretly talks to the office manager not wanting her husband to know.

8. Or any big surprises?

The office manager talks to her daughter on the phone during her lunches. Turns out she doesn’t have a daughter.

Make a list of any other things in your script that could interest a producer.

9. It could possibly be a contained movie since it takes place in one dreary location.

10. Low budget

[Stephanie O'Leary]

Stephanie O’Leary’s 10 Most Interesting Things

What I Learned Doing This Assignment:

Confession: This assignment kind of broke my brain! It’s an entirely different way of assessing key elements, events, and unique character traits that can be used to interest producers and promote your story. Not even sure I did this right, but here goes …

Most Unique Feature of My Heroine:

We meet our protagonist as a toddler. She’s lively and animated, and although she loves the farm, gardening, and her Grandpa, she’s also in love with the stars. She becomes a brilliant but headstrong teen who struggles with having older caregivers (grandparents.) They can’t keep up with her energy or give her the opportunities she needs to blossom. Practical, literal, and impatient, she seems incorrigible but is more of a cuckoo that was put in the wrong nest. A small hometown can’t contain her and even all of Planet Earth ain’t gonna cut it: this girl badly wants to make history by terrafarming space.

Major Hook:

Farm life is cyclical; so are our lives. The seasons change: crops are planted, grown, and harvested, animals are born, raised, and killed. Raw materials are ALWAYS in demand. Where we fall on the food chain determines who is predator and who is prey. Brie ignores the religious tenets she was raised with as well as informed advice, barrels into uncharted territory, and pays a horrific price for it.

The Twist:

Boundaries are non-issues to this girl who dreams big. She aspires to use her gardening talents off planet.

Turning Points:

– Brie is repeatedly arrested for petty crimes and punished for acting out at school.

– Her exhausted grandparents arrange for her to attend a summer Survival Camp where strange and ominous events occur. She’s intrigued by the younger of the two men overseeing the group (or he appears to be a man) and ends up spending much of her time trying to figure him out. Quiet but with a troubled history of his own, he challenges her ideas and changes her emotionally and physically.

Character Betrayals:

The young man awakens Brie sexually, but not by choice. She’s confused, hurt, and torn by his distance the day after.

Emotional Turning Points:

• The death of Grandpa. This seismic shift destroys whatever love remained between Brie and her grandmother.

• The abduction. This was NOT part of the plan.

• A creature that tends to Brie after her abduction is mute, like her grandmother. As she’s her only hope for information and a chance to escape, Brie can’t tell if she can trust her or not.

• Brie’s body begins to change and despite the sympathetic care of the creature, she seems unable to heal her. Brie strikes out against her only ally, believing she is working in alliance with the brutish “caretakers” who oversee and work various plots around the planet.

• Brie comes to realize the creature is also a victim.

• Brie finds evidence that she is not the first astronaut to be abducted. While frightening, the artifacts provide a sliver of hope that she might find allies and still be rescued.

• Brie’s hopes are shattered when her co-pilot is casually killed before her eyes.

Major Twists:

A fatal farm accident indirectly caused by Brie destroys her grandparents and their livelihood but results in a chance for her to embark on the future she always dreamed of.

Reversals:

Brie’s dream comes true – she becomes an astronaut. But the warnings of the young man from Survival Camp turn out to be prophetic: she’s abducted and transformed on a cruel alien world that produces a rare and costly product greatly desired by a higher rank of alien beings.

Big Surprises:

The horrific death of Grandpa

• The abduction in space during a routine satellite check,

• The creature that “scouts” her location during a regular sweep for “materials” looks much like a biblical creature from the Book of Ezekial

• The planet Brie’s brought to intentionally mimics Earth and the environment she grew up in

• The shocking aftermath reveal after Brie’s “harvesting”

• The reveal of Spiritual and Alien beings existing much as we do throughout the cosmos

• The reveal of Space Commerce – what they want and how they source materials

– The young man’s reaction when he learns of Brie’s abduction

– The caretaking creature’s continuing pain may eventually end, thanks to an idea/gift from Brie

– Brie’s grandmother’s reaction when learning of her loss in space

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by  Stephanie O'Leary.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by  Stephanie O'Leary.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by  Stephanie O'Leary.

[Roger Stone]

What I learned most is that I’ve got more interesting things to draw from than I thought.

Roger Stone’s 10 Most Interesting Things

1A. Unique Villain– corrupt County Sheriff who is the father of the star quarterback on school football team and big bully.

Unique Hero– 14 year-old girl who hates football players and calls them Moronics.

B. Major Hook– Hero’s new neighbor, a mildly autistic Special Needs Latino boy, thinks his missing dad is the pilot of a UFO that got shot down.

C. Turning Point– an earthquake hits the school just as the bully is threatening the hero and the bully disappears into thin air.

D. Emotional Dilemma– the bully’s dad, the Sheriff, thinks the hero is somehow responsible for his son gone missing, but the hero thinks it’s really her new neighbor whom she suspects is an alien with the power to make people disappear. She’s torn about ratting him out to the corrupt Sheriff.

E. Major Twists– County Sheriff is corrupt, known for arresting foreigners in order to rent them out as slave labor.

F. Reversals– Ageing Army Colonel is in cahoots with corrupt Sheriff in plot to build a fleet of UFOs and become commander of future Space Force.

G. Character Betrayals–

H. Big Surprises– Hero discovers she was adopted and parents didn’t tell her.

2. Other Things of Interest– Hero is just turning 14 and decides not to be a wimp anymore.

[Elizabeth Cochrell]

Elizabeth Cochrell 10 most interesting things. By finding the 10 most interesting things I learned what I can do to raise the stakes and make it more exciting.

1) Michelle is a beautiful pole dancer stripper who refuses to have sex for money and is also a talented MMA fighter who hates chauvinistic men. She’s determined to be a good mother to Rebecca.

2) Emily the stepmother is a draconian politician’s wife, once beautiful now jealous of all who steal her limelight and will do anything to maintain control of Rebecca including drugging and kidnapping her to keep her at home.

3) Mayor Frank is a devious pedophile who has bribed his son for years to keep silent about the fact that he raped Michelle while she was under the influence of a date rape drug when she was 14 years old and maintains the lie that Rebecca is his son Bradley’s daughter.

4) In the opening scene Michelle has just finished a glamorous pole dance performance and kicks the strip club patron and his two bodyguard’s asses when they follow her into her dressing room.

5) At first Michelle is afraid to let her daughter know that she is a stripper but realizes that Rebecca doesn’t hold it against her after they experience fun times training and dancing together.

6) Soon after Michelle and Rebecca make up after a fight, Emily the stepmother tricks Rebecca into the limo where the detectives help her kidnap Rebecca back to Beverly Hills. Emily then sends a text from Rebecca’s phone to make Michelle believe that Rebecca changed her mind about running away. This causes Michelle to not want to do the MMA event anymore.

7.) Michelle doesn’t feel like doing the MMA event after Rebecca disappears, her old self would have shirked her responsibility for the sponsor’s money she was paid but after feeling good about herself as a mother to Rebecca, her friends convince her to keep training for the fight even though Rebecca is out of the picture.

8.) A major twist happens when just before Michelle’s MMA fight Bradley confesses that Michelle was raped by his dad Mayor Frank and that Rebecca is actually his father’s daughter and that Frank may be going after Rebecca sometime soon.

9.) Michelle and Rebecca have been tricked by Emily to think they don’t want to be with each other anymore.

10.) Another interesting element is that Rebecca is a dog whisperer and is beloved by every dog she encounters. She also befriends a stray ex-fighting Pit Bull who is amazingly intelligent, rescues Rebecca from traffickers, and rips Mayor Franks’s crotch to shreds in the final fight scene.

[Edward Etzkorn]

Ed’s Ten Most Interesting Things

1. Major hooks of opening: a) Realtor specializes in homes with a history of some awful event

b) As she enters the home, Azuri is enveloped by a vision of burning and destruction

2. Both Azuri and the Entity are teens – does the Entity want to kill her or bond with her?

3. Entity’s multiple violent or cryptic ways of communicating

4. Azuri’s recurrent episodes of “becoming” children in their dying moments

5. Azuri predicts where they will find long-dead and disappeared child

6. Reveal: Azuri’s mom believed Azuri as a two-year-old “felt” her younger brother’s crib death

7. Entity pushes Azuri’s mom down basement stairs. Azuri’s parents blame Azuri.

8. Teen friends believe Azuri is a witch; parents believe she’s psychotic

9. Entity at last communicates via computer. She’s a girl, and Azuri’s age!

10. Home burns, with only Azuri and the Entity inside