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Lesson 5
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9 Replies
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Michelle’s Villain Has a Great Plan
What I learned: A Villain needs a well thought out backstory that may never make it to screen.
End goal: Use fortune to fund war and find his son.
How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way?
· Blackmail henchmen bidding on his behalf to avoid self-incrimination.
· Money laundering and redirecting stranger’s funds to support opposing war effort.
· Use political connections.
How can they cover it up?
· Enlist henchmen to find son.
· Cover up a murder so it doesn’t interfere with finding son plan.
· Enlist henchmen to cover tracks.
· Open and exploit Peter’s wounds.
· Gain Peter’s trust.
· Pit Peter against Nora.
Sequence
· Cut off ex-wife and stepdaughter financially if stepdaughter fails to find Peter.
· Remove evidence of a murder in the room where it occurred.
· Open a hit on Nora.
· Fund Peter’s start up with dirty money.
· Divert all of Peter’s money to support opposing war effort.
· Lie (continuously) to extortionist and Peter.
· Confess he’s Peter’s father.
· Kill Nora.
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Subject Line: Zachary’s Villain Has a Great Plan!
What I Learned is that I had a lot of conflict and mayhem, but I never really understood my villain. I knew what she was doing but not why. It’s such a simple idea: what do they want? And I couldn’t answer it until I went through this. I’m not 100% I fully have these answered as well as I would like, but I definitely am closer. And things make more sense. There was instantly a significant increase in subtext as a result.
To create your Villain’s plan, answer these four questions:
1. What is the end goal? Longing for control in a chaotic life, April finally has a plan to get the kind of control–the power–she craves. Her thesis project for her master’s degree in Political Science was on the merits of autocracy in capitalism. Her goal is to use her friends in her experiment as a way of impressing her professor. The experiment will be to see how much control she can exert over her friends in a controlled setting (ski trip) and show how everyone should be looking to her for leadership instead of Ellie. Ultimately, it will allow her to get revenge on some for perceived slights. The ultimate goal, even she doesn’t realize, is that Ellie is the thing she needs to crush to feel better about herself.
2. How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way? Mentions a school project to see how things might go if one person made all the choices—a science experiment. She asks if everyone will go along, and they agree. Deliberately invited a large group where not everyone gets along or wants the same thing.
3. How can they cover it up? Everything is set up where they abdicate control to her, and her usual demeanor is sweet and friendly, which is confusing when she pushes them forward on things.
4. Sequence it to make it as intriguing as possible.
-She is pushing for this getaway as a way to get them in a controlled setting for some time to conduct her experiment.
-Asking them moral and philosophical questions to see who is more susceptible to her influence.
-Dismisses Ellie’s suggestions about being safer and more sensible by encouraging fun and spontaneity.
-Presenting a lot of options and having solutions that make everyone happy
-Presents an option where she’ll make the big decisions to keep things moving
-Manipulates some of them through sex.
-Encourages drug and alcohol use to make them more pliant.
-She is guilting them into helping her project when they push back.
-She was regularly dismissing Ellie’s concerns.
-Show them what a great time they had, especially since the didn’t listen to Ellie.
-Learn little secrets about each of them to manipulate further/control them.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by Zachary Hunchar.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by
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Liz Janzen’s Villain Has a Great Plan
What I learned from this exercise is that I needed to change the existing ending – which was Laura combating one of the Villain’s deputies – to having her face off with the Villain himself.
The Villain’s end goal: To exact merciless revenge on Richard Slater whom he blames for the prison sentence he has just served.
How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way: By sending a member of his gang to arrive covertly at the Slaters’ home, kidnap Laura and bring her to Russia where he will kill her in front of her husband.
Secrets covered: Vasily Kornikov, the head of a Russian mafia gang, has been released from a Latvian prison after serving a ten-year sentence for attempting to smuggle stolen European luxury cars into the port of Riga.
Kornikov blames Richard Slater, the black marketeer he had contracted to assist with the job, for the caper having failed. Now, a decade later, Richard has learned through an old black market connection that Kornikov is out of jail and looking to get revenge on him.
Sequence of events:
Kornikov learns Richard is in Europe and coming for him as a pre-emptive move before Kornikov can come for him in Canada, which would put Laura’s life in jeopardy.
Kornikov turns the tables on Richard, employing his resources to find and capture him.
Kornikov sends one of his deputies to Canada to kidnap Laura and bring her to Russia.
Kornikov realizes the kidnapping plan has failed after contact with the deputy goes cold.
Kornikov makes the journey to Canada to get Laura himself.
Alone at the house when he arrives, Laura must save herself in a final showdown that pits her against the Villain himself.
Fyi as in Basic Instinct, much of the MIS in The
Maze derives from a Red Herring – Laura’s protector Steve. He is the one
whose covert actions, lies and deception impact Laura non-stop. None of that
however would have been set in motion if it weren’t for the Villain’s revenge plan. -
Rebecca’s Villain Has A Great Plan
Perfect Pitch
A reclusive security expert finds a young singing sensation hiding in his garden and offers her refuge from an abusive manager unaware that his help includes evading detection from bounty hunters, government agents, and hired assassins involved in a nationwide search to find her.
What I learned: Using my logline as a guide and using the reverse engineering helped me to design the immediate plan to find the girl and give me ideas as to her importance, other than income from her concerts, to go to extreme efforts and her role in an even greater end goal.
Four Questions And Answers:
End Goal? The abusive manager wants to get back his singing sensation who escaped just before a planned world tour and will go to great lengths to find her.
How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way?
The manager first claims the escaped singer suffered a nervous breakdown and wondered off and when the concert security agents fail to find her, he enlists the local police.
The manager later claims he received a ransom note for 5 million dollars and turns to the FBI and the kidnapping gets attention from all the news and social media.How can he cover it up?
When the girl and her helper manage to evade all their pursuers, the manager covertly involves bounty hunters to track her down and bring her back unscathed.
He then must cover up the real reason she escaped and protect his boss by using professional assassins to kill the singer’s accomplice and arrange fatal accidents for anyone else she may have contacted or spoken to.
The manager’s boss, a billionaire oligarch and arms dealer, is prepared to permanently silence the manager should he fail to locate the girl.
The oligarch must, at all costs, cover up the actual role of the singer in his overall plan. -
Carmen’s villain has a great plan (albeit in the early stages!)
What I’ve learned from this assignment: Keep the goal simple and straightforward and concentrate on stacking suspense through devious actions and twists.
To create your Villain’s plan, answer these four questions:
What is the end goal? The villain wants to uncover corrupt agents
How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way?
He sets a trap – an encrypted drive which will supposedly allow accents to millions on dark money – and sees who goes after it once it’s stolen, using all the surveillance systems at his command.
How can they cover it up? Nobody asks the boss any questions – he can even help his target stay on our innocent heroes
Sequence it to make it as intriguing as possible.A few “trusted” agents are informed about the drive.
One is tasked with retrieving it from the safe room of a third party and told not to trust anyone. The agent is suspicious, talks to his friend Wyatt.
Wyatt hires Laney and One Take, to get the code for the safe room. They succeed.
The agent retrieves the drive and mails it to Wyatt before Turner kills the agent.
Wyatt goes on the run, with Laney and One-Take, because their payment might be traced back. But he contacts the boss, who now casually gives him away. The hunt is on.
Laney and One-Take come up with a plan and disguises to reach their destination – the one man who can open the drive – but Turner is never far away, thanks to a few blunders (Laney contacts her agent because of a role), and his knowledge of Wyatt’s training and thinking.
Only Laney and One-Take’s skills as actor and writer allow them to escape and finally, flip the script.
Once they figure out that Wyatt’s boss set them up and sacrificed his friend, they come up with a plan to let the boss catch Turner and his cronies and expose the boss.
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Pat Jasin’s villain has a great plan. What I learned is you have to have a backstory first.
What is the end goal? To maintain her luxury lifestyle and keep her drug selling past hidden. A jockey is her illegitimate son; kill him. To kill her husband and take over the racehorse business. To payoff the drug dealer selling her heroin.
How can the villain accomplish that in a devious way? Seduce the racehorse barn manager to help her destroy some racehorses for the insurance. To enlist the racehorse veterinary to give drugs to her husband’s horses to win. To drug a horse that her illegitimate son now a jockey, is riding. Payoff the racetrack owners to look the other way.
How can they cover it up? Blackmail the racetrack veterinarian and track owners. Have an alibi when her husband is killed.
Sequence it to make it intriguing. Longshot horse wins the Kentucky Derby. Horse is disqualified. Horse mysteriously dies. Owner employs a young jockey to train his horses. Barn assistant, who can read horses’ minds, befriends the new jockey. Jockey has no parents; both died. Jockey see villain doing drugs. Villain over hears jockey telling barn assistant. Jockey is training a horse and falls off- seriously hurt. Barn assistant loses brakes on her car going to the hospital. Villain drugs her husband. Villain kills jockey with drugs in hospital. Villain confronts husband; he drops dead. Villain and barn manager/lover move body.Drug dealer confronts villain for money. Villain sets barn on fire for insurance. Barn assistant saves horses. Police arrest villain.
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I got all jammed up with this assignment. It revealed the problem I’ve been missing: I think my story is more horror than Thriller. My villain is less a villain and more of an antagonist. That’s caused me to realize that the mystery is with the Red Herring. I mean, I guess the villain has a mystery, but the mystery is about her and not driven by her. Though, I suppose, she adds to it.
The best I could come up with is something that just doesn’t seem compelling other than through interpersonal drama. Even then, it seems like it will be too omnipresent and just slow things down. So, I’m going back to the drawing board. I have another project, and I’m going to apply these to it. Sorry in advance for multiple posts in these boards.
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I like what I’ve read so far – it sounds like a Psychothriller to me.
I also have another idea but I’m saving that for after this class, when I’ll be able to do it full justice. Happy creating!
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Agnes’s Villain has a great Plan
What I learned doing this assignment is that we have to work backwards in discovering the layers of my thriller and it has to be done by starting with the Villain’ s true agenda. The Villain is the writer of the hero’s demise. The Villain has a plan that he must be executed for this purpose. We look at examples of different criteria for the Villain to execute their plan, Goal, Intrigue, and Covers Secrets. It is suggested that to do this we have to Reverse Engineer it.
1. What is the end goal?
To permanently remove the unwanted and unpopular son-in-law, John Roberts, from his daughter’s and his business forever, whatever it takes.
2. How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way?
Accuse John Roberts of murdering and burying his daughter’s body when she goes missing, because he is a popular town banker and sits on the town council. He has a lot of sway with the authorities and the townspeople. They believe him when he says that his son-in-law did away with his daughter when she cannot be found anywhere after a picnic in the park and she goes missing without a trace.
3. How can they cover it up?
Mike Deans, the banker, is keeping household secrets from everyone in town and the authorities. He knows his daughter, Helen better than anyone in town. He knows what is going on in his household and the secrets he is keeping from everyone. They never find a body. John Roberts had a very violent childhood, so they easily believe, that the son is like the father.
4. Sequence it to make it as intriguing as possible.
Where does Helen Roberts disappear?
Why does Helen Roberts disappear?
How does she disappear?
Who knows her history better than her own father as to her disappearance?
Why did she insist on marrying John Roberts and getting him a job at her father’s bank, so they can marry sooner?
What is wrong with their 3-month marriage that John Roberts had not noticed all these years about Helen as they went to school together?
How did he not see that his father-in-law hates him so much?
Why are they so quick to accuse him of murdering Helen?
What’s really going on that they are quick to accuse, convict and jail John Roberts for murdering his wife without any concrete evidence?
What is the reason that this is happening to John Roberts and what does Mike Deans know about the situation that he does not share with anyone?
Why does Mike Deans allow all to go forward and have John Roberts declared as the murderer of his missing daughter, Helen and sent to a penitentiary to serve 20 years for killing his daughter?
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