WEEK 1 DAY 2 — What did you learn?

[A J Ferrara]

Dialogue needs to push the story forward, either through direct action or subtext. Sara ‘s overt reluctance barely hides her sense that she coming to grips with her life changing in a dramatic way, whether she likes it or not. Characters needs to be functioning on more than just a superficial level.

[Steven Delisi]

What I learned rewriting my scene/character is that thinking about my character’s future condition (how their journey will end), has led to discovering an idea for their wound & a correlating trigger. So, writing them to live into the future informs their present.

the idea: my protagonist Darby (a rookie cop) is over protective with a much older cop she hardly knows and is irritated with early on since they become partners. But, she jumps to his defense in an over the top way. So, the wound I discovered is about over compensating (I think for a sense of loss) … this is triggered by teasing they both get from fellow cops who are insensitive and tribal.

[Neil Werenskjold]

What have I learned? Certain aspects of each character are essential, like their traits and future, and need to show up in the character’s actions and dialogue. This is what producers are looking for right up front when they read a script.

[C Holmes]

I am writing on Terminator and its application to my scene. What it taught me was about was how when one character knows more than another, the story moves forward based on sharing that information. Because one person is in the dark, the other illuminates the future for them. They could not see as far, because they do not have that light. The unknown, the unknowable is still the issue but relationships between characters, as in life, we are all the unknown for each other, shining a light on things differently.

Also, I liked that the terminator scene had darkness, an actual flashlight. She illuminates his wound, just as he illuminates her unknown future. So inner and outer realities collide. In my scene I am dealing with a very sophisticated person who deals in antiquities, but underneath that there is raw history, the past before it’s captured and put in a museum, tamed down for general consumption.

[jeffrey jeff glatz glatz]

Thinking about the future the character will encounter (live in) can help develop the entire arc and allow the writer to weave clues throughout the earlier story that resolve throughout their journey and make them the character they become. To me, this scene helped outline Sarah’s entire journey.

[Pat Fitzgerald]

I learned that it’s important to consider that future of my characters, rather than just having her living in the present. I feel that I need to show what that future may entail, rather than simply have a conversation happen in which is would be mentioned.

[Judith Resell]

I learned the importance of setting up characters with an eye to their arc. How much and how will they change over the course of the story–what would be the best choices for this?

[Elizabeth Corinth]

Continuing the insight from yesterday’s lesson, which was about contradictions and their power to intrigue an audience and propel them forwards with the urge to solve the mystery — another way to introduce contradictions is to have the action undercut the dialogue. In this scene, there is a contradiction between the lack of confidence Sarah expresses in her ability to become “the legend,” and the innate skills and instincts that she displays through dressing Kyle’s wounds. There is also a contradiction between the way Sarah views herself and the way Kyle views her. Both of these contradictions plants the seed of wanting to know — how does Sarah get from her first field dressing to training the person who saves the world? how has she already become a person who dives into creating a field dressing without realizing that she is a survivor and the kind of person who can handle unexpected and difficult circumstances?

[David Wywialowski]

I learned that having characters share / speculate where they think their future direction is taking them, gives the scene more depth and makes it more intriguing.