Lesson 6

[Mark Lynch]

Subject: Marc’s Genre Conventions

My Vision: Win the Nicholl Fellowship and receive a 10 rating on the Black list.
What I learned: The genre conventions help to support the expectations of the viewer.

Title: The Corporation versus Andy Beal: Based on a True Story

High Concept: After a Billionaire, amateur poker player, loses a low-stakes game to a member of a notorious group of Las Vegas professionals known as the Corporation, he challenges them to high-stakes money game winnings over a period of six years.

Genre: Drama/Thriller

Drama:

Emotional/Interpersonal high stakes

Character Driven Internal journey

Intense Emotions

Story grounded in reality

Thriller:
High-stakes plot twist and suspense

Emotional danger

Intrigue by the covert villains’ plan

Resourceful hero

Villain committed to destroying the hero

Main Emotions: Suspense, intrigue, tension, surprise

Main Conflict: The leader of the Corporation, Dole Brunson, recruits six professional players to accept the Billionaire’s challenge. The Billionaire returns back to the Bellagio casino to avenge his previous losses.

Old ways: The Billionaire knows he is a “fish out of water amateur” but he feels the Corporation players are “hicks” and he can outsmart them because he is “educated.”

New ways: The Billionaire, after haven been beaten, unmercifully by the professionals has gained a newfound respect for them and keeps returning to the poker tables to learn their secrets. He is no longer arrogant but has a new spiritual appreciation for the game.

Act 1:

Opening: A vulture flies through the sky and lands on top of the Bellagio Hotel & Casino.

Setup: Phil Ivey versus the Billionaire Andy Beal. This is the last game of the six-year challenge. (Thriller Suspense-Who will win the last game after six years of the challenge)
(Drama-Intense emotions from the Billionaire)

FLASHBACK

Inciting Incident: Unbeknownst to the Billionaire, he loses a low-stakes game to Todd Brunson the son of the Corporation leader. He leaves Las Vegas and returns later to challenge the Corporation to avenge his losses.

Turning Point: The Billionaire contacts the leader of the Corporation and lays down the rules of the challenge. The challenge is on and everyone accepts. The Billionaire speed reads twenty-five books on poker.

Act 2:

New Plan: The Corporation puts up its best players against the Billionaire and he quickly realizes he is out of his element and his knowledge is no match for them. He designs a computer program algorithm to give him an advantage.

Plan in action: The Billionaire creates and studies his computer program and returns back to Las Vegas to continue the challenge.

Midpoint/Turning Point: The Billionaire is winning big. The Corporation brings in its best players and beast the Billionaire out of his new winnings. (Thriller: Villian committed to destroying the Billionaire and taking all of his money)

(Drama: Intense emotions from the Billionaire)

Act 3:

Rethink Everything: The Billionaire seeks a newfound motivation to continue the challenge.

New Plan: He consults a spiritual advisor to tap into a different side of his mental capacity to figure out how the Corporation is beating him.

Turning Point/Lost Point Huge Failure/Major Shift: The Billionaire has lost a large sum of his fortune. His business and family are in jeopardy.

(Thriller-Plot twist for the Billionaire-He has to get more money to complete the challenge)

(Drama- Interpersonal: The Billionaire has to think and be completely introspective to go back to Las Vegas to face the Corporation. )

Act 4:

Climax: Payoff: The Corporation puts up its best player: Phil Ivey vs The Billionaire Andy Beal. The winner takes all. The Billionaire loses the challenge.

Resolution: The Billionaire has transitioned from a fish out of water mature to a professional poker player and reflects on his next ultimate challenge.

[jeffrey jeff glatz glatz]

My Vision: To create commercial studio size films that move people. To create characters that can live forever and bring electrifying memories to those that have watched one of my films.

What I learned from doing this assignment – to use the conventions as almost a “checklist,” to make sure the conventions are being adhered to.

Title: Descendants: Key to the Past

Concept: Descendants of mythical Gods throughout the world secretly live among us today and fight behind the scenes to save mankind from itself.

Genre: Action/Thriller

Action Conventions –

Purpose: adrenaline stirring, fast paced, big event

Demand for Action

Escalating Action

Hero

Antagonist

Thriller Conventions –

Purpose: High Stakes, plot twists and suspense

Life and Death Situations

Mystery/Intrigue/Suspense

Hero

Villain

Main Emotions: Suspense, intrigue, tension, mystery, anticipation, uncertainty, surprise

Note: I have just fleshed out the Acts a little further this round of changes and added some more “thriller” conventions so I make sure to cover those during the writing process. Additions to previous 4 act structure are bolded.

Act 1:

Opening:

Introduction to Wind Tribe living undetected in the amazon twenty years ago.

• Evil Descendants attack Tribe looking for a “Key.”
• Villain, Ronin, kills the Queen, her infant child escapes.

Inciting Incident

Chris’ adopted/guardian father is killed; her adopted/guardian mother is severely injured in assault in NYC.

Mystery – Why where they attacked?

Mystery – Who is Chris?

Mystery – Who is James?

Turning Point

Chris and James are the only to escape from an attack by Ronin while in Japan

• Ronin and his team attack Japanese compound from the Sky. A larger battle than first.
  
• Protector tells Chris who she is.
  
• Protector is killed.

Act 2:

New plan

They head to England to meet and learn more about herself, her role, and the Key from a “Librarian” (Franklin, a keeper of the Descendants secrets).

• <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Mystery – Descendants live among us.
• <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Mystery – What does the Key do?

Plan in action

• Go to see Professor at Oxford who is an expert in Mythology.
• Attacked again.
• Escape and travel to Rome.

Midpoint Turning Point

Chris learns where the “Lock” may be hidden and how it could be used, and vows to defend with her life.

She learns the Key “may” be a way for one person to control all four (4) elements; Wind, Water, Earth, and Fire. This is from the ancients. Zeus, split the elements and assigned a “Tribe” to guard and protect their respective element. At the time, these were respected Gods from around the world that understood their Duty.

Additional Turning Point: Huge failure / Major shift

Chris loses the Key to Ronin. James is killed.

• <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Chris and James ambushed by Ronin while on a “date.”
• <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>James Killed, Chris loses key.
• <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Twist – did someone betray them?

Act 3:

Rethink everything

• Chris visits her adopted mother (Mrs. Wentworth) in the hospital. Her mother tells her she must accept the ultimate responsibility and recover the Key. This is the woman who raised her, so she feels that she is her mother.

New plan (crisis/dilemma)

She recruits a small team to help her save the World. Knowing they may have to make the ultimate sacrifice. Her team is made of herself, one Descendant from each; Fire, Earth and Water, and a few from the Amazon.

• Intrigue – is one of the Team an ally of Ronin?

Turning Point: Huge failure / Major shift

• <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>A Descendant tries to kill Chris in her sleep in the Amazon.
• <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>She captures Ronin’s spy among her group.

Act 4:

Climax/Ultimate expression of the conflict

Battle of all battles takes place on an uninhabited island, off the coast of Africa, where all 4 Elements exist. A Volcano for Fire, the pounding Ocean for Water, the fertile lands for Earth and the winds that move the Clouds around the Volcano’s peak for Wind.

Resolution

• Chris regains the Key and strikes down Ronin who is killed. The World is Safe.

[Mark]

Mark’s Genre Conventions

My Vision: I am going to work as hard as I can to be a writer who is sought-after for both spec scripts and writing assignments, because people in the industry know the scripts I write will be entertaining, thought-provoking, and emotionally satisfying.

What I learned from doing this assignment is:
Amplifying the 4-Act Structure outline by making sure it relies on Genre Conventions to tell the story makes the story stronger and insures we are providing a story that will satisfy fans of the genre.

Title: LICENSE TO DREAM
Concept: What if a socially awkward college freshman’s daydreams of being an international spy turned out to be real?
Genre: Spy Comedy

Genre Conventions

Comedy
Incongruence
Mechanics of Comedy
Comedic Protagonist(s)
Strong Story

Spy Movie
Fascinating Protagonist
Friends and Frenemies
Convincing Antagonists
Gadgets/Weapons
Car Chases/Explosions
Intimate Relationships
Spy/Criminal Organizations

Four-Act Structure with Genre Conventions

Act 1:
Opening: Bart is barely coping with college life. His technological skills are highly advanced, but he is socially awkward, especially with women, and buckles under academic pressures, like exams and papers. He escapes from reality by daydreaming about being an international spy, where he is only in training but gaining in confidence. Bart regularly sees a psychiatrist, Simone, who is also his spy handler in his dream life.

In the opening scene, Bart takes his seat in a lecture hall where they are about to have a pop quiz. An attractive woman sits next to him, tries to get his attention, and awaits his first move. Under both the academic pressure and social awkwardness, Bart’s phone vibrates with a message from Simone saying they are launching an important spy mission, and he flees the lecture hall.

Inciting Incident: Evil madman Dr. Sometimes escapes from prison and his cellmate reveals to the spy agency the Doctor’s plan to send jamming signals around the world to stop people from dreaming. Bart’s knowledge of signal jamming technologies is especially needed.

Dr. Sometimes’ henchpeople are immensely incompetent, but through a series of bumbling mishaps manage to break him out of prison. Simone and her team chase after Dr. Sometimes, but in the end find that they were fooled by a decoy and Dr. Sometimes took a different path.

Bart is knocked unconscious in the prison break and receives a big gash on his forearm. Simone patches him up with futuristic gadgets that make his wounds disappear, thus preserving Bart’s belief that this spy life is just a daydream.

Turning Point: Simone goes through elaborate charades to keep Bart believing his life as a spy is just daydreaming. But she needs him to commit to the mission to stop Dr. Sometimes.

Simone tells Bart that she can’t help him with his daydreaming. Whatever is causing his need to escape from reality is in his dream world, and he needs to find out what it is before he can return to normality.

Act 2:
New plan: Bart throws himself wholly into his spy dream fantasy life, ignoring his classes and schoolwork and works with Simone and her spy team to try to track down Dr. Sometimes.

Bart undergoes some training to help improve his miserable physical skills, which will be needed when the team attempt to breach Dr. Sometimes’ secret lair and take him down. Bart’s training is, at best, slapstick, and, at worst, a horrible foretelling of how this mission is going to go.

Plan in action: The team narrows in on the madman’s location, while Bart works on a theory of exactly how Dr. Sometimes is going to implement this dream jamming weapon. Bart pays infrequent visits to Simone in her psychiatrist role to keep grounded.

Pursuing a lead on Dr. Sometimes, the team engages in a car chase that seems to be more a version of Whack-A-Mole, with both Simone’s team and the evildoers all disguising themselves as passersby, famous people, inanimate objects, and each other. Like a dazzling exhibit of spycraft, but as if Mardi Gras collided with a Gay Pride Parade.

Midpoint Turning Point: Planning to see Simone in her psychiatrist’s office, Bart finds that his health insurance benefits have run out and he can no longer see her. There’s an explosion in Simone’s office. Bart rushes in to see the outside wall of Simone’s office has been demolished, and Dr. Sometimes and his armed henchpeople are hauling Simone outside and up to a helicopter hovering overhead. Simone tells Bart that his daydreams are real. He really is a spy and his college life is just a cover.

Act 3:
Rethink everything: His mentor now gone, Bart learns that he is part of a team that is so secret that they didn’t even want him to know about it. They recruited him because of his knowledge of high tech, but have been gaslighting him all along so he thought his spy life was just daydreams.

New plan: Bart and the team focus on rescuing Simone, hoping this will lead them to Dr. Sometimes and give them an opportunity to foil the Doctor’s dream jamming plot.

Bart invents a new detector that works over the worldwide network of cell towers and can detect any tests that Dr. Sometimes does of his new jamming technology.

Turning Point–Huge failure/Major shift: In an attempt to rescue Simone from the Doctor’s secret launch facility, the rocket that is supposed to take the jamming satellites to orbit explodes on the launch pad, demolishing a few of the surrounding buildings. Dr. Sometimes tells Bart that Simone was in one of those buildings and is presumed dead.

Act 4:
Climax/Ultimate expression of the conflict: Bart and his team discover that the rocket was just a decoy and Dr. Sometimes has a second rocket at another location.

Bart is chosen to impersonate one of Dr. Sometimes’ female assistants and scam his way into the madman’s facilities to shut down the security system and let the rest of the team in. It turns out to be the female assistant’s birthday and so Bart has to continue the masquerade longer than he wanted and has to endure a performance for the birthday woman by a male stripper.

Bart’s team converges on this new site and take Dr. Sometimes and his henchpeople down.

Resolution: Simone is discovered to be alive at the second launch site. Bart decides that the spy life is not for him and he wants to rededicate himself to his college studies.

[Cameron Martin]

Cameron Martin’s Genre Conventions

Vision: Write a story – scratch that – write a movie that connects with audiences on a deep, spiritual level, regardless of background, while prioritizing quality time with my family.

(TL/DR: Original concept’s too expensive for the market I’d have access to. Brainstorming a new concept based on what’s been developed so far, so efforts are focused on writing a business minded screenplay. Having a better understanding of genre conventions and taking them seriously enough to specialize in one helps to hone the writing effort into something producers can trust beyond simply the quality of the writing. I want to market myself as an action writer with a sci-fi edge at times, so those conventions are what I need to emphasize the most.)

What I learned doing this assignment is…Real quick, I had an epiphany yesterday since the mastery call and realized THE BATMAN is not an action movie first. I mean, it has action in it, and the major genre it most closely falls under is action, but the heart beat of any good Batman movie is its detective story. BATMAN BEGINS is a bit of an exception as a globe trotting adventure, but the title lets the writer, producer, and distribution get away with more than if it were BILLIONAIRE EMO VIGILANTE BEGINS. So when I look instead at new IP (JOHN WICK, NOBODY, DRAGON, THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD, TOP GUN, 65, THE MATRIX), what is the heartbeat of those movies? It’s the action. Some have sub-genres attached (DRAGON has a detective story, THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD is also a comedy), but at their core they’re action movies first, and everything else is an extension (random thought, but THE RAID and THE RAID 2 are probably better examples of recent martial arts action movies to reference). All of that said, I continue to go back to my concept, how it’s changed since I first started workshopping a cyberpunk action noir back in 2014, where it is today, and finally asking the right question: Do I want to write a movie, or a novel? I mean, sure. I can adapt my script into a novel, no problem. But that’s not the point. My script shouldn’t serve as an outline for an expanded novel, and I should be trying to write something that is…well…affordable to most producers. That means writing a two hour narrative plot (not a philosophical debate), with a max budget of 10mil. I’ve trimmed a lot of fat from that original script way back when for this concept, but it’s still not “a movie.” What I need to do is draw a line in the sand here and not just “write a story that connects with audiences on a deep, spiritual level,” but “write a movie.” Hopefully I can still weave a theme through the action that is inspired and connects with *viewers* (reference THE MATRIX for revolutionizing the action genre by complimenting its wire-fu and special effects with its themes of reality; both support and give an excuse for the other to exist in the film), but for the sake of having this script produced in the first place, it must first honor the conventions.

Okay, self ridicule aside, there is still a place for my original concept as a Sci-Fi with action, just not the other way around (at least not with an ending that focuses so heavily on forgiveness and healing). Action at it’s core is power fantasy, while Sci-Fi can be more explorative. However, the second part of that discussion still comes down to budget and what’s producible. I took UPGRADE (3 mil budget) and CARTEL 2045 (1 mil budget) as references for very low budget sci-fi action movies to get an idea of what we’re shooting for special effects and setting wise. I’d like to use 65 for reference, but somehow the makers of that film found a way to spend 90 mil on a contained movie with only five actors and fake dinosaurs. The lesson is you can make what should be an inexpensive film really expensive, but you can’t make an expensive treatment cheap. Anyways, I’m reworking my concept to cut the budget as much as possible, while keeping the core action and conceptual elements that drew me to this in the first place. This is what I have so far, but I’ll keep brainstorming each element. I still hope to write the original concept as a novel or a long-form narrative poem. We’ll see.

__________

For reference:

STAR WARS

“Magic” mechanics – The Force

Allows – manipulation of physical objects and the minds of weak. Can use intuition with pinpoint accuracy, because everything is connected with The Force

THE MATRIX

“Magic” mechanics – Artificial reality through a computer program

Allows – anything to happen, depending on the belief and skill of The One

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

“Magic” mechanics – Bending the elements, The spirit world

Allows – manipulation of fire, water, air, and earth, depending on the practioner

(Note: There is ONE magic mechanic for each of these IP. The only exception is AVATAR, but that second mechanic is abandoned as a plot component after season 1, and is only referenced to from then on. Also worth noting that AVATAR is a tv series, and that it could afford a season with two mechanics before honing in on one for what came to be a MUCH better 2nd and 3rd season. The bottom line, is that you only get one magic mechanic. You can do a lot with it, but there are limits. Leia surviving in the vacuum of space because “the force” is a betrayal of the established mechanics of what the force can reasonably do. There still have to be some limits. Only Neo, The One, can manipulate The Matrix to the degree that he can, though this did lead to the Wachowzkis writing themselves into a corner and thus introducing new mechanics that overcomplicated the narrative for most audiences.)

__________

Streamlining Workshop…

What I like and want to keep: Action of “possessing” machines, the duality of the protagonist against herself (a visual depiction of inner-voice versus self),

What’s redundant: Judeo-Christian iconography and concepts

What can be recycled for a later project: Adam as a digital deity in rebellion with his creator, an augmentation that allows vocal dominance over mechanized beasts

“Magic” mechanic – computer virus implant

Allows – hacking any machine, copying oneself

(Note: just keep repeating to myself, “this is a movie,” not the Silmarillion or The Chronicles of Narnia. Yes I know Narnia was made into a movie, but be honest with yourself; you know that thing would’ve never gotten off the ground if it weren’t first and foremost a successful novel for kids.)

World – a techno-purgatory

Question: Why does it exist?

Answer:

A rogue AI made it
It’s a military prison
It’s a simulation designed to preserve human life

It’s a means for people to hit the restart button and become someone else

Why is the woman there?

She killed herself so she could come back as a new and better person. But the AI interpreting her request malfunctioned and created two of her, both with augmentations, and only the “best” version can escape.

__________

Title:

AFTERKNIFE

Concept (Revised):

• A young woman wakes up and is in the fight of her life – an android copy of her wants to pressure her to kill herself.
• A young woman wakes up and before she can respond, she’s in the fight of her life, not realizing that she’s dead, is in a technological purgatory, and that she killed herself to get there, and an artificial copy of her is fighting to replace her.
• A woman who’s killed herself fights for the chance to come back to life – her most dangerous opponent is another, better version of herself and one only of them can come back.

Genre:

• Action/Sci-Fi

Purpose:

• Keep the audience on the edge of their seats through fast-paced, aggressive, and brutal action, as they watch someone rediscover their worth.

Demand for Action:

• An AI tests the young woman in a series of trials that reflect her mistakes, ultimately culminating in a reflection of her suicide, where she must battle a hundred copies of herself.
• An AI fulfills its client’s request to be reborn “better” by subjecting her to a death match with herself

Mission:

• To discover where she is, why she’s there, and whether she can move past her old life and discover a new one, by physically overcoming her greatest past traumas.
• To return back to life.
• To escape her purgatory prison

Escalating Action:

• Bigger and badder machines
• More challenging obstacles
• Loss of augmentation
• Psychological manipulation
• AI changing the stakes
• From Training to the real world

Hero:

• Though having no memory of her past, she is highly skilled and augmented with the ability to copy herself and control any machine…like a computer virus

Antagonist:

• A glitched copy of the young woman that wants to murder and replace her.
  An AI that subjects her to past trauma and a death battle with herself to decide if she came back “better.”

__________

Main Conflict:

The AI’s trials, and her own copy’s desire to live

Old Ways:

A nobody (no sense of self), runs from danger, follows blindly, doesn’t believe in anything

New Ways:

A survivor (knows her past), runs toward danger, trusts herself, believes in a higher calling

__________

Act 1:

• Opening: A no-name wakes up — and is in the fight for her life! Before she has time to breathe, anthropomorphic robots are trying to kill her while she’s still strapped in her bed. She finds that she has an augmentation that allows her to cut through her straps and “possess” the machines by having their exoskeleton wrap around her. Where is she and what the hell is this ability.
• Inciting Incident: The woman leaves the room and starts the trial. She must discover who she is and why she’s in a prison.
• Turning Point: An AI tells her that she must free her copy in order to escape – it’s a lie, though. The unnamed woman frees her copy.

Act 2:

• New plan: Rely on her copy to lead the way.
• Plan in action: The copy of her tries to kill the woman /or/ The copy is unsuccessful against a new machine obstacle, requiring the no-name to get involved.
• Midpoint Turning Point: They reach the end – but the copy turns on the no-name, leaving her for dead /or/ The no-name gets her memories back – and realizes she’s there because she killed herself to be reborn “better”

Act 3:

• Rethink everything: The no-name assesses her memories in virtual, piecing together her past /or/ The no-name is in competition with her copy, and fights her to survive
• New plan: Lure her copy into a trap /or/ Copy herself repeatedly /or/ Possess her copy to assimilate
• Turning Point: Huge failure / Major shift: The copy wins and kills the no-name/herself again, and walks free into the new world

Act 4:

• Climax/Ultimate expression of the conflict: The no-name has successfully possessed her copy, creating a split personality in the host.

  The two fight with each other, one trying to prevent the other from exacting revenge? Was there a reason besides vanity to come back “better” (Second layer, the original wanted to come back better to seek vengeance?)

• Resolution: The no-name assumes total control of the host. The original got her wish to come back better as a new person.

[Heather Hood]

Heather’s Genre Conventions

Genre: Horror

Vision statement: I want to see my scripts optioned this year and turned into movies that the audience will remember long after they leave the theatre.

What I learned from doing this assignment: To focus on each step of the
outline and visualize the movie so I could see where I might add little scenes
that would fit in with the genre to make the movie scarier. I’m sure there will
be more opportunities going forward, adding red herrings along the way like moose
or bears that could be mistaken in dark lighting for something frightening.

Act 1:

Opening
– Sarah doing laundry: a perfectionist marathon. She’s even ironing the
sheets and underwear. Ok it’s 1958 but still… On the radio story plays about the Chilliwack
Lake Sasquatch throwing rocks at some local fishermen. Becky
wants to paint. Sarah says no. Becky has a hissy fit and pulls out the
paints anyways. Lila spills paint all over her dress and the clean sheets.
Sarah goes ballistic and throws the kids outside telling them to stay out
of the woods. Becky wants payback. She drags Lila into the woods to see
her “secret” place: a dark hollow where Becky leaves trinkets, and something
leaves gifts in return. The ‘shadow man’ watches, a dark blurry figure
following behind them.

· Inciting Incident – Lila disappears. Searchers find a long clump of black hair at the hollow. Becky tells her mother it was the “Shadow Man”, hours later, happy her sister is gone.

Turning Point – Sarah has to find Lila before she needs
her next dose of Phenobarbital. They’ve got 20 hours.

Act 2:

New
plan – Sherriff Harper thinks the hair belongs to Joe Green. He hates
Indians and sets a plan in motion to capture the drifter. He loads his
truck with weapons, ammunition, and a bear trap.
Plan
in action – Sarah hates his condescending attitude towards her and decides
to find Lila on her own, despite her terror of the forest.
Midpoint
Turning Point – Sarah gets hopelessly lost. She didn’t bring food or water. Not even a
compass or map. The shadows all look threatening and she’s having panic
attacks.
By nightfall everyone’s
looking for her. The shadows come alive.
She spends the night in a tree. She thinks she’s safe until something
attacks it.
The next morning, she stumbles across a creek where she runs into a cougar that attacks. Joe
Green tracks her down and kills it.

Act 3:

Rethink
everything – Joe teaches Sarah how to read the forest. How to be safe in
it.
New
plan – Joe finds a long clump of hair and tracks a three-toed
creature to Forbidden Pass. Sarah is sure Lila is with it. There are small
footprints like her daughters there beside it.
Sarah catches a glimpse of Joe’s feet. They have three toes. Maybe
Harper was right after all.
Turning
Point: Huge failure / Major shift – Harper catches up with them. He tries
to kill Joe, but something comes out
of the forest and attacks the Sherriff. Harper gets caught in his own
bear trap.

Act 4:

Climax/Ultimate
expression of the conflict – Sarah and Joe are forced into the Pass by the fight.
they
find a cave where they find Lila. They are confronted by the “Shadow Man”, Joe’s psychopath father – a sacred Holy Man to the
First Nation’s people. He’s taken the girl because she’s epileptic and
therefore Holy. Sarah tries to negotiate for her daughter.
Harper
drags himself to the cave and shoots the “beast” before dying.

Resolution
– Joe takes his father’s place. Sarah returns home, no longer afraid of
the forest and driven to be perfect.

[Pam Ewing]

Pam Ewing’s Genre Conventions

My Vision: Professional. Produced. Prolific. Popular.

What I learned: Personally, how easily I derail my writing for daily life. I really like lists of conventions especially since we are just plugging in and can swap out what isn’t working as a new option comes to us.

Concept: Staking Claims – Divorcing couple try to claim an inheritance in Transylvania

Main Concept: What’s worth risking your life for? Money, Love, Power, Purpose, etc.?

Genre: Rom-Com

Conventions for Rom-Com

· Purpose: Feeling of falling in love

· The Journey of Love: From the meet-cute at the attorney’s office where they argue, it is all over except the signing and continued jabs.

· Relationship Set-Up: Meet-cute at the attorney’s office – everyone is bickering and maybe lying

· Issues:

o Her issues include breaking from her mother/heritage, risk taking to trust/love, gaining self-confidence based on something other than money.

o His issues include going after what he wants, trusting someone else, deciding if he has a price or not, being honest

· Separation: Although they form an alliance to get the inheritance, they maintain emotionally distant and then once they almost reunite, they are physically separated

· Comedy: Besides the verbal sparing there are mysterious and scary things around them that they should acknowledge and address but apparently don’t see.

Updated Structure with Genre Improvements

Act 1:

Opening –
Bickering marriage on the rocks, secrets. Divorce settlement meeting with
lies and attorneys to increase the bickering. Even though they seem to
enjoy the verbal sparring.
Inciting Incident
– Mother’s controlling even in death, foreboding incident with mother’s
necklace. Soon
to be ex- husband overhears claiming about inheritance at the funeral.
Turning Point: She sets off to
Transylvania to claim inheritance in First Class. Ex struggles into next
flight, a supply flight replete with goats.

Act 2:

New Plan – Husband shows up to
“help” which ruins the candlelit dinner she was
having with villainous Vlad. Local bar turns into Armageddon-style second
meet-cute, which is very much enjoyed by the blood thirsty locals.
Plan in Action – Finding typical
American bureaucratic plan won’t work, many strange encounters. The next day she’s off with Vlad trying to do the
paperwork route while the ex shows up suspicious, maybe jealous, and again
screws everything up. Although later we will see that the ex’s
interference thwarted Vlad’s plan, made her wonder if the ex was
trustworthy, and committed her to working with ex.
MidPoint Turning Point – Realizes
that she is fighting pure evil. Together they discover
that nothing is as innocent as it seems and that maybe she’s a decedent of
Dracula. Now they are fighting pure evil and trust issues.

Act 3:

Rethinking everything – what she
thought were mishaps might actually be new powers.
New Plan – try to work together
and employ new skills. Ex is actually encouraging
and her trust walls might be breaking down a little as her self-confidence
grows. Ex is actually enjoying the thrill ride and wondering if he is really
only there for the money – maybe he actually loved her once – maybe he
still does.
Turning Point: Huge
Failure/Major Shift – While stuck in a well discovers that husband had
once loved her. Since they are doomed to die at
the bottom of this empty well they confess their love and then she is
gone. Her powers have lifted her away while he is rescued by Vlad’s me and
put in the castle’s torture chamber.

Act 4:

Climax/Ultimate expression of
the conflict – Faces off with evil to save husband and claim her powers.
Resolution – Releasing ancient
control and recommitting to marriage/life with new objectives. They recommit with evidence of trust and openly enjoying
bickering.