Lesson 5

[Rick Whitney]

R Whitney

Title: Apricot Cyanide

Written by: R.H. Whitney

The good news is your fiancé will get the chance to meet your parents. The bad news is you find out your farm parents have been poisoning homeless people and burying them in the orchard.

Before meeting her parents, Jenny informs her fiancé Jim that her parents are odd. When she arrives at the farmhouse ahead of Jim, she discovers her parents have been poisoning homeless people and burying them in their orchard all in the cause of being their civic duty.

She also finds out her ex-con brother Louis, has been pimping and he has been brining his murdered whores to the farm for burial along with her insane cousin’s murder of her boyfriends.

Given the decision of either turning them in and facing jail time or trying to convince them it’s wrong, she confides in Jim and they hatch a plan to convince her parents to retire in town and sell the farm.

Their plan goes into process when the Police show up looking for her cousin who had escaped from the mental hospital.

With the Police there, her cousin informs them about all the bodies. Able to convince the police she’s crazy, they proceed with their plan. It looks like the plan works, or does it?

What I learned: This is like reading or watching the highlights of sports game. The highlights show scoring plays, plays that turn the game, and moments of decisions.

[John Chabot]

John Chabot’s High Concept/Elevator Pitch

1. A Medieval comedian is injected with
a wizard’s semen and ordered to seduce and impregnate an enemy
princess.

2. DILEMMA

JESTER: Your survival depends on you
making a woman pregnant with a wizard’s semen that has been injected
inside you.

MAIN CONFLICT

JESTER: Imagine you’re a simple
Medieval man in battle with a rock star for the affections of the
same woman, with two wizards breathing down your neck.

WHAT’S AT STAKE?

JESTER: Unless a Medieval comedian
impregnates an enemy princess, a wizard will kill him and his family.

GOAL/UNIQUE OPPOSITION

JESTER: Who will impregnate the enemy
princess first, a rock star or, our hero, an aspiring court jester?

3. ELEVATOR PITCH

I’m working on a rewrite of a comedy
called Jester: An aspiring court jester is injected with a wizard’s
sperm and told to go impregnate an enemy princess.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  John Chabot.

[Jane Alcala]

Jane Alcala Synopsis Hooks

What I learned from this assignment: This assignment KICKED MY ASS. It took me a long time to finally complete this, but it helped me think of changes I might want to make in my screenplay to improve the story. Extremely helpful! I’m not yet sure the synopsis makes sense, but it helped me to get to the most concise summary of story I can think of.

1. Take your list of 10 COM and 10 MIT for your story.

2. Select 6 – 10 hooks that could give an overview of your story and organize those hooks into a sequence that makes sense for the story:

1. Popularity of roast battle competitions

2. Unlikely duo

3. A comedic journey

3. The healing power of humor

4. Tension inherent in duo’s past relationship that causes conflicts and roller-coaster ride

5. Characters switch roles

6. Change that can result from resolving conflict

4. Using those hooks as an outline, write a first draft of your synopsis.

First Draft of New Synopsis:

Great news! You scored a career-making spot on a popular TV roast battle show. Bad news: You’ve got to battle your ex-parole agent.

As an ex-parolee turned struggling comedian, Dara Chea finally lands the break she needs to supercharge her stand-up career–but only if she can convince her “dream-killing” nemesis and ex-parole agent, Patricia “Pat” McCarthy that Pat can kill onstage.

Dara’s solution? Suck up to Pat and train her for battle.

In the midst of trading barbs and bonding over laugther with Dara, Pat lets down her guard and reveals more about her past than Dara can handle–leading Dara to swear off the TV roast.

But now it’s Pat’s turn to seek redemption, switch things up and lead Dara back into a battle that proves it’s best to roast the ones we love.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  Jane Alcala.

[Christi Falk]

I’m right there with you Jane! I don’t know if I’m particularly dense but he used the word Synopsis in the assignment and nowhere above. Lol, master class indeed!

[Christi Falk]

Christi Falk’s Synopsis Works

What I learned from doing this assignment is the story is average but it’s provenance is the biggest hook.

Hooks:

1. The story starts with a bang- Carton accidentally dies in front of Anne. Was it an accident? Suicide? Murder? We can’t be sure.

2. Anne quickly meets eccentric characters, including a cross dressing soldier of fortune who seamlessly weaves in and out of the narrative.

3. Anne realizes Carton gave her the ticket meant for a murdered Russian dancer, placing her in grave danger.

4. Anne finds an unlikely ally in Harry, a handsome stranger who always seems to happen along when she’s in danger.

5. With no purpose or home, Anne fixates on the mysteries around her- Who killed the Russian dancer? Who stole the diamonds? Why is someone trying their best to get her out of the way?

6. After finally finding a semblance of human connection, Anne is crushed to discover the man she’s connected to as a surrogate father is actually, the Colonel, a world sought criminal mastermind.

Draft 1:

Imagine this: You have no money, no home, no family. A man you’ve just met at a bus stop gives you a ticket to a world cruise before falling to his death.

What would you do?

For Anne Beddingfeld, the solution was simple. Take the cruise to Greece, maybe meet up with her late father’s friends and find someone to take her in.

On her way, she collects an odd assortment of friends: An overbearing southern belle, a handsome but brooding stranger, a Reverend/Stewardess/Secretary/Soldier of fortune and a kindly British millionaire who offers to adopt her.

Now imagine the adventure you chose is perilous, lonely and a one way ticket?

From the mind of Agatha Christie, a tale of love, loss and belonging from 1921 that is still powerfully relevant today.

[Isti Madarasz]

Isti Madarasz High Concept/Elevator Pitch

What I learned doing this assignment is that the most important thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. I tend to get lost in the more minor details of the story, when it’s the hero’s changes and how and why they happen that matter most.

1. Lead character’s journey: My protagonist lives in a world where everything is controlled by contracts. He himself is a contract maker, one of the most powerful in the country. When a new contract takes him to an opposing country, his daughter is seriously injured. With only his enemies to turn to for help, he must go against his original mandate and listen to his heart instead of contracts.

2. Dilemma – What if you can do almost anything with your special skills, but the only way to save your daughter is to give up your powers.

Main Conflict – In a world where everything is governed by contracts, even the very laws of nature, one of the state’s leading lawyers must learn to follow the laws of the heart in order to save his daughter.

3. Elevator Pitch – My story takes place in a world you’ve probably never heard of: a world where everything is governed by treaties, where even the laws of nature can be rewritten, but only by contractors with special skills. This story is an adaptation of an award-winning novel, in which a powerful treaty-maker arrives in a hostile country to negotiate the most brutal pact ever, which effectively leaves the locals crippled. But when his daughter is seriously injured in a spectacular but devastating anti-gravity terrorist attack, he has only his enemies to rely on. But to do so, he must break every treaty ever written and venture into new territory, following his heart.

[Gregory Kiernan]

Gregory’s High Concept/Elevator pitch

What I learned from doing this assignment is that I need a few more scenes were Sinclair is trying to case the house/plan the robbery and Gertrude and her circumstances keep creating opposition in addition to the opposition by Issac.

1) Lead character’s journey: Going from not trusting anyone and always looking to scam others to developing a genuine friendship and appreciating honest work.

In other words an eighty-year-old woman who acts like a twenty-year-old most of the time is his change agent. And he sticks his neck out for her at one point.

2) Interesting ways to express main hook:

Dilemma – Would you abandon a sweet old lady for $1 million dollars cash?

Main Conflict – What if you were put in a home in your golden years by your only child, and then he tried to have you killed for a rich inheritance?

What’s a stake? A robber and an elderly woman must steal back a will from the woman’s son before they get killed by him

Goal/unique position – How do you plan an elaborate house robbery with a slow and delicate elderly woman with creaky joints?

3) Elevator pitch:

I’m finishing up a story that answers the question do eighty-year-old women make good thieves?