Lesson 6

[Karen Christine Angermayer]

Karen Christine Delivering Multiple Layers

What I learned doing this assignment is that I had to define the key message of my story first. After I got this it was easier for me to create the different layers in plot, character and location.

Layers I´ve chosen:

Layer 1:

Surface Layer: Young family goes on vacation.

Beneath That: Maniac
experimenting with crossings of humans and plants.

How Revealed: Family
finding trees in strange positions lying around the cabin. Later discovering
a bunker with notes, outcomes and lab equipment.

Layer 2:

· Surface Layer: Loving couple.

· Beneath That: She has feelings for her life coach/therapist.

· How Revealed: She confesses it to her husband in a moment of fear and pressure.

Layer 3:

· Surface Layer: Mark is an approved scientist as well.

· Beneath That: His partner convinced him to use some false studies to confirm the outcomes of a new vaccination.

· How Revealed: His wife Judy has found a mail and was too scared to talk about this with him until now.

Layer 4

· Surface Layer: Some experiments of the mad biologist are successful.

· Beneath That: Nature has her own plan and doesn´t allow being experimented with.

· How Revealed: The trees around the cabin quickly grow bigger and enclose the cabin and the bunker emitting no more oxygen but carbon dioxide, taking everyone´s breath, until the family manages to stop that horrible experiment.

[Rae Rodgers]

SWU – Contained Movie Class – Lesson #6

Rae’s Delivering Multiple Layers

What I learned was that adding these layers that were not there in the first draft add a mystery that keeps the reader or movie goer intrigued and left wanting more.

1. BRAINSTORM POTENTIAL “PLOT” LAYERS

MAJOR SCHEME REVEALED

Jesi needs a high paying job to pay off her deceased father’s debt.

HIDDEN HISTORY

Jesi is her father’s clone, knows everything there is to know about construction, but very little about the world of commerce and/or commercial real estate.

MISTERY REVEALED

She’s completely at home dressed in coveralls, can set a toilet, plumb a bathroom, but knows very little about how to sell commercial real estate.

2. BRAINSTORM POTENTIAL “CHARACTER” LAYERS

SECRET IDENTITY

A tomboy at heart – happy to work on plumbing.

Commercial real estate is a huge learning curve.

INTRIGUE LAYERS

She can dress up and look stunning but is more at home working beside her Dad, dressed in coveralls.

HIDDEN CHARACTER HISTORY

Somewhere inside Jesi there is a lost and abandoned little girl.

While her mother Sheila Harden, who’s been hiding out in the field of commercial real estate, is forced to surface and explain her past.

Gerard also has a past he must reveal to Jesi – it includes his undisclosed twelve-year-old son.

3. BRAINSTORM POTENTIAL CHARACTER LAYERS

Jesi: Comfortable in her own skin, runs a construction truck, goes crawling under buildings.

Does a one eighty when she dives into real estate knowing heaps about the buildings and very little about closing a deal.

TELL THE LAYERS YOU’VE CHOSEN:

JESI

Jesi is her father’s clone – loves sliding under buildings, crawling over roofs.

SURFACE

She looks just as pretty in coveralls as a stunning evening dress.

BENEATH

Having blocked out her mother since childhood, she has an empty place inside.

HOW REVEALED

Her mother suddenly becomes her boss.