Post Day 11 Assignment Here

[Elizabeth Appell]

Mod 2 Lesson 11 The Edited Pitch Bible

I learned I need to go back and do almost every lesson again!

Title:

Elements of Betrayal

Logline:

A novelist, desperate to keep his family’s heads above water, takes job teaching literature at a posh girl’s boarding school while at the same time franticly searches for an intriguing story to write to so he can fulfil his publisher’s deadline. The story doesn’t show itself until he’s accused of murdering the school’s history teacher.

Tone:

The story’s tone is dark, laced with a thin layer of hope. The Baer family, Lane, the papa bear, Marta, the mama bear, and Paige, the baby bear all have strong surface desires underpinned with concern for each other. The weather is cold and damp. The lighting is dim and shadowy. The sounds are those of winter: wind, the hiss of tires speeding down wet streets, the call of birds, dogs barking, footsteps muffled from the low hanging skies. Now and then the grim is punctuated by shards of metallic music played by Paige.

Characters:

Land Baer – mid-forties, a good-looking man. Think of a young Liam Neesom. He’s tall. Most have to look up to him. He’s bright and clever, but maybe not enough. He sometimes rages at God for passing out just enough talent to keep him slogging away at writing, but not enough to allow him to cross the line of literary success. He’s hungry for awards and financial gains. He loves his wife, Marta, but her aloofness both in their daily routines and well as when it comes to sex, leaves him lonely and vulnerable. Also, she is a very talented editor. When she puts her blue pencil to one of his manuscripts, the subtle changes she makes creates a piece that is elevated beyond what he could imagine. He adores his 16-year-old daughter, Paige, but often is astonished at her brash, impudent, and insolent manner. He tries gently to reign her in.

Marta Baer – late thirties, considers herself a plain jane. Her parents, simple people who ran a butcher shop, expect very little from their daughter. As a young girl she played by herself in a back room of the show. There she made up stories. She carved suet figures from the fat her father trimmed and had them play out her plots. When she reached senior status in high school, she secretly applied to the Stanford University for a scholarship. She won a full ride. Her father was against her going. “You’ll be with people who are above you.” Her mother encouraged her to go. On the day she left for the university, her mother stuffed a pile of one-hundred-dollar bills into her suitcase, money she had been saving for years. Her talent shone at Stanford. When she met Lane Baer in a creative writing seminar she fell in love. She initially attracted him by offering her editing skills to him. They spent a great deal of time together. Lane became attached to her. Finally, one night, they made love. That night she became pregnant.

Paige Baer – a beautiful teenage girl, still a bit gawky. She’s precocious, flippant, presumptuous. She can pick up a book and by the end of the day have it read and understood. She adores her father. In a strange kind of way, she’s jealous of her mother. If someone or something comes along that threatens him, she will step up to do whatever is necessary to protect him. Although young, she has a mature relationship with a boyfriend. She challenges him at every turn. Around her parents, she keeps her relationship with him at arm’s length. She’s a straight A student, a sensitive person and easily picks up what people are thinking or feeling.

Margaret Gilgood, PhD – a small, rather boyish woman, fortyish, has short, spiked hair, delicate feathers and wears herring bone suits, usually with a narrow bow tie at her neck. She runs a right ship. Recently the ship has gotten tighter do to the shooting of one of the students. Gilgood has an innate dislike of Lane Baer. His good looks make her feel insecure. This opens her up to taunting him regarding his teaching techniques. Her loneliness also creates a huge internal need to be appreciated and maybe even loved. She finds herself attracted to Christian Savage, the history teacher. She pushes to have relationship with Savage. He acquiesces but soon cuts it off which leaves Gilgood desperately depressed and angry.

Christian Savage – late forties, a big man, who is on his way to losing his hair. He’s a southern gentleman with an easy way with women. He’s a charmer, even though he suffers from deep sadness. His baby, Lucy, died of SIDS. After the loss, his wife, Naomi, blaming him for the terrible event, divorces him. Savage confides his grief to Baer who invites him to their house for dinner. There he meets Marta and Paige. Marta finds Savage fascinating. Paige finds him disgusting and wants him gone.

The World of the Story:

Elements of Betrayal unfolds in a posh girl’s boarding school, the Caroline Russell Brown Boarding School for Girls. It was built in 1905. Encompassing an entire city block. Three of its four three-story buildings create a rectangle with a quad at the center. The buildings are shingled and gabled and heavily draped with wisteria. One building, the Chapel, stands separately. One wing is dedicated to classrooms. One wing to administrative offices which houses Margaret Gilgood’s office. She is the Head Mistress. One is the boarding department in which the girls live and includes a library that serves as a study hall, a dining room, and a small office known as the “Fainting Room” which is Lane Baer’s office. The interior is dark even during high summer as the windows made of original glass, are small and the gables cast dark shadows. The floorboards creak and the floors are not even due to age. Stairs connect the floors. The third floor leads to the roof.

Future Episodes:

TEASER:

A worn man hears his doorbell. Drowning in scotch he staggers to the door, without looking who’s on the other side, throws the door open. It’s clear he knows who has entered his apartment. He moves to sit on the couch. When he looks up, he sees the eye of a pistol come toward him until it presses into his forehead and then…CRACK of sound…BLACKNESS.

SEASON 1:

Baer suffers from depression. He can’t find his way into the new book and the deadline is breathing down his back. Also he needs a job to keep the family going. He hears about a job at the Catherine Russell Brown Boarding School for Girls. After going to the interview with Margaret Gilgood, Head mistress of the school and being offered a job, his spirits lift, and he dives more enthusiastically into his new book. Baer meets Leylah Hafez in his class. She’s exotically beautiful and immediately obsessed with him. He discovers they have a strange bond. When she sits in his office, he is able to access more idea and he can barely stop himself from filling page after page, which at the moment seems brilliant.

He soon meets and befriends the history teacher, Christian Savage. Savage becomes a personal guide, warning Baer to stay away from the girls who are all starving for affection. He also warns that Gilgood can be authoritative and stern. Keep you head down when it comes to her. Savage is lonely. His baby died and his wife divorced him. Baer invites him to dinner a couple of times. Marta clearly is attracted to him which infuriates Paige, the 16-year-old daughter. She deeply loves her father and wants to protect him from being hurt by her mother if she did something destructive with Savage. She will see that this never happens.

SEASON 2: IT’S HARD BEING A HUMAN BEING

Christian Savage coms to the Baer home for dinner. Marta, flushed with make-up, is attracted to him. Paige picks up on this and is angry. She will do what needs to be done to keep this man out of the house and away from her mother.

Paige finds her way to Savage’s. She threatens him that if he comes to their house again, she’ll make life very difficult for him. On the bus ride home, she decides she can’t trust him. She’s going to make life hard for him.

She announces to her parents that Savage raped her. The stakes go sky high. Baer tracks Savage down and threatens him in public. Marta takes Baer’s gun and the latex gloves she used to dye her hair “autumn flash,” and she goes to Savage’s

Paige follows her mother. Hears a gun shot, then sees her mother leave.

Soon after, Savage is found dead.

SEASON 3 – MUSICAL MURDERER CHAIRS

The police begin a homicide investigation. Detective Otto Pearl, a man who often pulls a lolly pops from a pocket, an addiction like cigarettes. Sergeant Virginia Rand joins in the interrogation of Baer and then Marta. Then Margaret Gilgood. At home, Baer and Marta have private arguments over Paige’s accusation. The girl is so complicated, it’s difficult to sort through her emotions. Everyone is feeling like they are a suspect.

In the meantime, Baer continues to work on his book with Leylah sitting in his office at school. Leylah wants to get physical. Baer tries to hold off, but finally he succumbs, and they fall into a deep kiss. Leylah begs him to leave his family so the two of them can sneak away. He says emphatically, no. Hysterical, Leylah runs up to the third-floor roof and threatens him if he doesn’t leave his family, she’ll jump.

SEASON 4 – THE POLICE QUESTION BABY BEAR

Detective Pearl brings in Paige for questioning. It’s very tense. Paige must figure out how to move through this. She easily gets flummoxed. She begins with lies. Finally, the questions lead her to a story closer to the truth. In this process, Paige explains how her mother took the latex gloves and her father’s gun to Savage’s. The outcome points the guilty finger at her mother. Pearl sends Sergeant Rand home with Paige to pick up the gloves as evidence.

Paige tells her parents how the interview went. When they hear, they’re angry. Baer had made Paige to keep it to herself that she had followed her mother to Savage’s. Now they knew what was coming.

A few days later, Pearl arrives at their door.

SEASON 5 – LIFE UNDER THE BUS

Baer still suffers from depression. Disappointed in the manuscript he’s deep into. He burns the pages. The deadline now just weeks away.

Leylah awakens from the coma. She can prove Baer was with her when Savage was murdered. This exonerates him. All eyes turn to Marta and or Paige. Marta still believes Paige somehow could have shot Savage. Marta understands that Paige threw her under the bus.

Marta tries to cheer Baer up. Puts on the make-up and the sexy red dress and seduces him. The doorbell rings. Marta suggests Baer answer it. She says it’s Pearl. He want to know how would she know. She says she called him. She confesses to the murder.

[Tracy Cheney]

Mod 2 Lesson 11 The Edited Pitch Bible

I learned that it’s taken me over a week to work on this. Since my series deals with the beginning of racial profiling in colonial times, I felt I should add a new section that outlines the specific racial categories of the era. I don’t know if this adds too much bulk, but I think the reader needs it for context. Otherwise, reading certain descriptions doesn’t have as much impact. It also helped me put my characters on the hierarchy to see how they would be allowed to interact with each other.

[Janeen Johnson]

Janeen’s Edited TV Pitch Bible

What I learned doing this assignment is that It’s still a struggle to pare down (and retain meaning) in this document. I went from 11 to 8 pages, strengthened the characters a bit and cut more of the text.

As someone else said, this took me a long time to do — much longer than I thought it would.

Since I’m writing a dramedy, I have 3 main live characters, 3 that are dead when the series starts and 4 “kid” characters (one 15 yo and three 11 yos). The younger kids have largely disappeared from the Bible except in the last few seasons where they are nearly of age.

[r. reid jr]

R. REID JR’S Edited TV Pitch Bible EPISODES 1-10 of Season one and summaries of seasons 1-5

(ORIGINALLY FROM LESSON 2)

Episode 1 Fish out of water

Episode 2 Nothing left to find

Episode 3 Here come the Agents, watch out!

Episode 4 Hello, I rep the insurance company

Episode 5 Let’s work together!

Episode 6 Don’t I know you from somewhere?

Episode 7 Sacrifice for that promotion

Episode 8 Memories coming back

Episode 9 Have I seen this before?

Episode 10 My enemy is now my best friend

Summaries of Shows Seasons:

<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Summary: SEASON ONE Bruce an alien is sent to earth called SIGMA 2619 to find a technology that ravaged his planet and now arrived on Earth. Bruce upon entering earth is following the emissions from THE TECH that has been used to alter stranger’s minds that rob a bank. Bruce finds himself lost on earth and is given advice by an elderly men to blend into culture to get what he wants. Bruce enrolls in a school while posing as an insurance adjuster for a private company to investigate the robbery. Bruce’s journey parallels that of a new immigrant only instead of the American dream he is hunting deadly Alien technology while battling a lost memory that comes in bits and pieces rendering it hard to know who to trust from he is forced to work with, those he is trying to save ( the first victim of THE TECH, the agents he is working with (one who wants to kill anyone in the path of their promotion and the other a possible bad-ass woman whom’s path you stay out of or you end of up being loved by).

In season one he runs across the first victim who helps him piece together how THE TECH affects a person. And near the end of season one Bruce’s AI spots a woman who the Agents call, the mysterious woman who has been spotted near the “incidents” where people have lost their memory and even robbed a bank with other strangers who lost their memory. Bruce as he gets closer to finding out who the Mysterious Woman is has his life almost lost and it is the Mysterious woman who saves him as she tells him they they know each other and she can help him fill in the gaps of his memory.

Summary: SEASON 2 Bruce is getting his earth knowledge by trial-and-error, who to trust: possibly the agents but it comes with a price: exposure of his TECH or who he maybe or at least whom he is working for. The earth advisor, aka the blind old man guides Bruce to take some extra courses at a community college a few nights a week. In the class he meets Snowy who he met in the first season. Going back to school, even for an advanced alien proves its difficulties as Bruce feels drained he is introduced to everything from energy bars, smart classmates, coffee pills (after coffee) and even marijuana ( which has a hilarious effect on Bruce). During the day time Bruce is dealing with the Mysterious woman who is only leaving slight clues about her moves or none at all. And the agents go from clueless to hostile toward anyone working with them and making them look like fools. Bruce at the end of the season finds the lead agent is almost willing to risk the lives of those around him and maybe even his partner to catch the Mysterious woman as the season ends.

Summary: SEASON 3 Bruce opens the season with deciding not to help the agent catch the Mysterious woman at the risk of the female agent. The female agent instead of turning on her fellow agent secretly starts to like Bruce, even though she is not sure his actual identity. They strike up a conversation at a coffee shop and meet there almost every 2nd day as they start their days. It is lite conversation. She does notice Bruce is studying for a class and offers to help him indirectly. Meanwhile, Snowy and Bruce get closer until Snowy sees Bruce talking to the female agent and it look flirtatious to her. So Bruce is involved in what can be described as a love triangle, only Bruce never had one before. At the end of the season it seems the old man might not be so naive as he seems. And Bruce may have to show his TECH in trying to save Snowy who suddenly gets in some danger.

Summary: SEASON 4 Snowy is saved and Bruce is able to do it with the help of the Agent and both of them don’t realize it. But a big surprise happens and it is the form of a 2nd collector. This one is like Bruce but he has all his memory in-tact. He also seems to be more familiar with Sigma 2619/Earth than Bruce was when he arrives. And at the same time the other agent who seems very uncooperative with getting outside help. Namely Bruce’s help directly or indirectly turns out to be a bit of difficult person so much Bruce might have to use his TECH to put him down. And to end the season with the Mysterious woman who comes to Bruce and proposes to finish off the collector and or the agent and show Bruce who he really is as he gets more and more of pieces of his memory.

Summary: SEASON 5 Bruce doesn’t take the offer of the Mysterious wholly to finish off the 2nd collector cause that will bring the Empire’s people in full force upon Sigma 2619. Bruce is seeing almost no choice but to work with the Mysterious woman as she offers to tell Bruce who he really was before he lost his memory and asked for this assignment to show the Empire he is worthy. Meanwhile, the agents might have made a big breakthrough just as the female agent is on the verge of quitting the “agency” and telling Bruce how she really feels Snowy surprises Bruce at the coffee shop and is already sitting with Bruce for a last-minute cram session before his test. Bruce finds out who the old man is who has been helping him. He is an ex agent who was sent over 50 years ago but decided to retire on Earth then go back and even raised a family. The final blow to this final season is when the Mysterious woman says it is a waste for Bruce to get his memory back fully because the people that sent him are really his enemy and he in fact is responsible for the TECH be stolen and sent to earth to keep it ‘out of the hands’ of bad people.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by  r. reid jr.

[Sharon Scherle]

Jean’s Edited TV Pitch Bible

What I learned doing this assignment is that having specific lists to work with helped make the job of editing my pitch bible goal-oriented. I went through my document with each step one at a time. Concentrating on the one edit step kept me concentrating on fixing one item and it made a difference to the overall bible, especially when I’m reading it over and over again and can’t see the problems anymore. This process took longer than I expected but taking the extra here is very important – to get it right.