[Ann Jordan]

Ann Jordan’s Villain Has a Great Plan!

What I learned is: It’s important to work out the villain’s entire plan as much as possible, because that’s what your hero will be struggling against.

1. The END GOAL of my villain, Bridgid, is to regain youth and extend her life indefinitely by using the magic granted to her by an ancient artifact to pour her life force into one of her female descendants, knocking them out of their own bodies and stealing the rest of their lives. She’s done this twice before, but was stymied by circumstance after the second one. Now she’s desperate to steal a descendant’s life again before she dies of old age.

2. Bridgid can ACCOMPLISH HER GOAL like this:

a) Failed attempt: (This is backstory, for my head canon, not for the page, unless very briefly.) In her earlier attempt to steal the life of the remaining descendant she knew about – Meggie’s mom, Therese – Bridgid screwed up, causing Therese’s death. That was when she lost track of the bloodline, because she didn’t have info on whether Therese had children.

b) Earlier attempt: Bridgid hired an investigator to find Therese’s children. He discovered there was apparently one child, Michael, but was unable to find the current whereabouts because the widowed father had moved. A male child wasn’t useful to Bridgid, so she decided to obtain legal possession of the house she had unwisely sold to her son a few decades before, so that she could rejuvenate herself enough to have another girl child and start the reincarnation process over.

c) Bridgid made offers to her son (under another name) to buy the house but he wouldn’t sell, and he had moved to Europe (renting out the house).

d) Bridgid traveled to Europe “on vacation” where she found and murdered her elderly son.

e) PRESENT DAY: (1st act) Bridgid returns home from her “vacation,” to the house across the street from THE house, and waited to be notified that she had inherited the house, or to buy it from whoever ended up with it. However, her son had willed his house to his great-niece, Michael Margaret – AKA Meggie.

f) When Meggie and her husband decide to move to her newly inherited house, to save money for a few years, this upsets Bridgid’s plan. It takes her a little while to realize that Meggie IS the “Michael” who is Therese’s child, deliberately named a male name, for the most powerful saint, for his protective power. She first wants to take over Meggie immediately, but then decides it’s better to wait until Meggie has the baby, which is known to be a girl. So she bides her time, befriending the family so that when Meggie has the baby, Bridgid will have her choice of taking over either the mom or the baby.

g) After the baby is born, Bridgid preys on Meggie’s own fears about her post-birth mental health by trying to convince both her and her husband that Meggie has postnatal depression and is in fact moving toward psychosis, which would make her a threat to the baby.

3. Bridgid can COVER UP her actions this way:

a) Bridgid maintains the façade of being a kindly, average, middle-aged lady by acting normally around other people.

b) Bridgid makes a point of “befriending” Meggie, Tyler, and Joshie when they first move in. There is another, older, rather odd woman on the block who also brings cookies and befriends the new arrivals. (red herring)

c) Bridgid makes a verbal slip when George, Meggie’s father, is visiting. Bridgid sees from George’s reaction that he realizes she knows way too much about the family, and may know even more than that. George approaches Meggie about it, but he only knows part of the story and it sounds crazy, so she doesn’t believe him. Bridgid covers up her slip by arranging George’s death in an “accident” before he can convince Meggie of the truth.

d) As Meggie fears more and more for her own mental health, Bridgid offers to take care of Meggie and the baby so Tyler can go to work. This makes her look like a hero and also gives her access to do her worst.

e) As Meggie the truth about Bridgid and tries to counter her, Bridgid tries to convince Tyler that Meggie is a threat to the baby and should be hospitalized so she can’t harm the baby.

4. Sequence it to make it as intriguing as possible:

– We will see some of Bridgid’s actions in the opening scene, and then learn about some of her actions in visions and flashbacks in Act I. But because the first incarnation of Bridgid looks different from the present-day incarnation of Bridgid, the viewer will not understand who the present-day Bridgid really is until about midpoint in Act II. Meggie’s realization of who Bridgid is will not hit until Act III.

• This reply was modified 9 months, 2 weeks ago by  Ann Jordan.

[Ann Jordan]

Ann Jordan’s BOURNE IDENTITY Stacking Suspense (Assignment 4/2)

With permission, I chose to analyze “The Bourne Identity” instead of SOTL because I’m really not into horror at all. It turns out that Bourne was an excellent choice for this exercise. This was the third time I’ve seen this movie, and even though I remembered the basic plot points, I STILL got sucked in emotionally because it’s so well-constructed. Here’s what I learned from doing this exercise.

1. Although, as the audience, we experience films in a flowing state that creates a cohesive mind experience, as writers, we build the audience’s future experience block by block, scene by scene. By also analyzing a film scene by scene, it helps us understand how the screenwriter chose to arrange the available information, not only to create an intellectual experience of the mystery, but also to create a state of mind that draws us further and further into the emotional life of the main characters, thereby creating a “thrilling” experience through the film.

2. Looking at the “stack” in each scene – the Action, Mystery, Intrigue, Suspense, the Stakes, and the MIS of the character/s – points out that all of these components are necessary to build a totally engaging and thrilling story, with characters we care about and a relentless feeling of “What’s next?!”

I intend to use this method going forward as I write pretty much any script, I think, because it translates so well into different genres. A Jane Austen story has the same sort of stacked questions, just with different stakes. Instead of whether characters will live or die, you’re looking at the suspense of whether characters will manage to marry well enough that they can afford to live at least as middle class, whether it will be a love match or not, whether they’re going to shame themselves, perhaps permanently, by doing or saying the wrong thing in public, and finally, whether the guy that the gal wants to propose to her will EVER say anything, because in that social milieu and time period, she could only hint around. It’s a different set of stakes, but they do exist – if the author is doing their job.

So this Thriller method is probably not universal but I do think it’s widely applicable.

3. I learned that you need to actually do the work of analyzing each scene individually, on paper or in a document, and not just mentally run through it and then move on. And it truly is work, if you do it that way. I confess, I only did the scene-by-scene analysis to about the 1:05:00 mark in Bourne because it really is time-consuming. But I also think it’s really beneficial for the writer to do this with their own work, especially.

[Ann Jordan]

Ann Jordan’s BI Stacking Suspense

What I learned about Thrillers:

What I learned by watching Basic Instinct and checking Hal’s Stacking Suspense chart as I watched was that there are literally layers to a well-made thriller. There’s the Mystery layer (what’s going on? Why did that event just happen?). Then there’s the Intrigue layer (what’s the backstory here? What are these characters trying to put over on each other? How are they covering up past history and also what they’re doing now?). Then there’s the Suspense layer (becoming more and more concerned for the characters, and becoming riveted to the scenes as we watch breathlessly to find out what happens next).

This MIS can and should be applied to every single scene in a thriller. Each scene should contain at least one MIS element and preferably all three. In addition, as we apply the MIS model to important characters, we dig deeper into them and find out their secrets, one by one.

• This reply was modified 9 months, 4 weeks ago by  Ann Jordan.

[Ann Jordan]

Ann Jordan – “An Older House”

What I learned doing this assignment is that that it’s mostly very helpful to delineate the various aspects of Mystery, Intrigue and Suspense ahead of actually writing scenes (or even a finished outline) when it comes to your main characters and your story. When you’re forced to really look at things and think, what IS the mystery here, anyway? it gives you a map for where to go with it in the outline, and also helps you think of new things about your characters and story.

1.
– Big Mystery: Is someone actually, in some way, threatening Meggie and her baby daughter, and were they possibly after her mom as well? Or is Meggie suffering from delusional post-partum depression and the remnants of her weird childhood? And if someone is indeed after Meggie, who are they and why are they interested in her?
– Big Intrigue: The covert, clandestine threat to Meggie and her family comes from Bridgid, a very long-lived woman who needs Meggie and/or her daughter in order to continue living her over-extended life in the way she wants to.
– Big Suspense: Meggie may be in danger of death or worse, as will her daughter, from the moment she sets foot in her inherited home.

2. The Intriguing World of the story:
– Meggie has always been a West Coast girl, but when she and her husband move to Kansas to live in her newly inherited house, everything she knows to be true will come to be questioned. Meggie’s new “world” of the shabby but charming old house itself, the apparently welcoming, leafy old neighborhood and its oddball inhabitants, and even the placid small town itself, over time will become a threatening microcosm that Meggie and her family may never escape.

3. With your top 2 or 3 characters, tell us the role they play and then answer these three questions:
Top three characters: Meggie, Bridgid, Tyler (Meggie’s husband)

MEGGIE:
A. Mystery: Is Meggie mentally ill and possibly a danger to her newborn daughter, or is she a normal new mom, and a reliable witness to the increasingly frightening things going on around her?
B. Suspense: Is Meggie a frail reed, or can she prevail over the dangers proliferating around her? Can she count on her husband Tyler to help her when things get weird and tough? Does Meggie have the mental toughness and emotional fortitude to do what she thinks is right, no matter what everyone around her is saying?
C. Intrigue: Why is Meggie so eager to leave the West Coast, almost at a moment’s notice, and move somewhere else? Why did Meggie’s mother give her a boy’s name and basically disguise her as a boy, which lasted until her mom was killed in a (maybe) accident? Why does Meggie seem withdrawn and untrusting of Tyler, although he appears to be a great husband and father?
BRIDGID:
A. Mystery: Why is this woman who doesn’t know Meggie and her family so interested in them? Is she really trying to hurt them, and if so, why?
B. Suspense: Will Meggie believe her instincts and realize in time that Bridgid wants to dominate and even kill Meggie and her daughter for her own reasons?
C. Intrigue: What is Bridgid’s origin? What is the source of her mysterious power?
TYLER:
A. Mystery: Is Tyler the protective husband and father that he ideally should be? Why is Meggie distrustful of him? Or is she not so much distrustful, as disappointed in him?
B. Suspense: Does Tyler believe Meggie when she tells him what she thinks is going on? If he does believe her, is he brave enough to act on that?
C. Intrigue: Does Tyler have a reason to not support Meggie? Would he be okay with it if she somehow wasn’t around any more?

• This reply was modified 10 months ago by  Ann Jordan.

[Ann Jordan]

Ann Jordan’s Big M.I.S.

What I learned doing this assignment is that it’s helpful to have genre conventions that must be met, as well as the M.I.S. Having a predetermined structure to hang your story on may seem constricting, but it’s actually very useful.

Project: “An Older House”
LOGLINE:
When a young mom inherits a quaint fixer-upper, she has no idea that the house holds restless ghosts from the founding of a cult – or that there are people who will do anything to get her house into their hands.

THRILLER CONVENTIONS:
• Unwitting but Resourceful Hero:
MEGGIE, 28, school librarian. Mom to a four-year-old boy and wife to TYLER, 30, with a new BABY GIRL on the way. Raised in an affectionate but oddly secretive household, Meggie was called by a boy’s name and dressed like a boy in her childhood, and required to learn martial arts. After Meggie’s mom died in an apparent accident, her dad allowed her to change her name and finally dress like a girl. Now she’s happy as a teacher and academic, but wants to be a stay-at-home mom for a few years.
• Dangerous Villain:
BRIDGID, undetermined age, once a beautiful young Irish woman who came to the States to get into “moving pictures.” Rage, greed, and the discovery of a supernatural ancient object led her to find a way to renew her youth, over and over again. But in recent times, lack of the right circumstance has kept Bridgid from restarting that cycle of youth. Now, with Meggie taking possession of the house, Bridgid intends to finally reclaim her arcane powers.
• High stakes:
Meggie and her new baby girl are directly in Bridgid’s crosshairs, once she understands exactly who they are. Bridgid has become a practiced killer over the decades, so anyone else who gets between her and her intended victims is also likely to go down.
• Life and death situations:
The story begins with a life or death situation, and then takes a few pages to introduce us to Meggie and her family’s circumstances. By the end of Act I, we’re seeing life or death situations again, and they become more frequent as the story progresses and what is going on becomes clearer.
• This story is thrilling because?
The story of AN OLDER HOUSE is thrilling because engaging but normal characters that we like and sympathize with – chief among them Meggie and her new baby – are in danger of dying in horrific ways.

THE BIG M.I.S. OF THIS STORY
• The Big Mystery: How are Meggie and her family, especially her dead mom and her newborn daughter, connected to the spooky events that seem to happen at first, and then to the life-threatening events? Are the spooky events real, or is Meggie experiencing post-partum psychosis? Was someone after Meggie’s mom, and is that why she died? Or did Meggie’s mom have mental issues, and her death was the result of her own problems? Is someone after Meggie and her daughter right now, and if so, why?
• Big Intrigue: Bridgid’s decades-spanning, relentless plan to reassemble the elements she needs to achieve renewed youth and more-or-less eternal life for herself – regardless of its cost to anyone else.
• Big Suspense: The danger to Meggie and her daughter (and by extension, the rest of her family) originates with Bridgid, but for a good portion of the story it isn’t clear if there truly is a danger, and if so, who or what it is from. At about the midpoint, things escalate, and also become clearer to the audience.

• This reply was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by  Ann Jordan. Reason: I'm editing this so it's not all one huge paragraph!!

[Ann Jordan]

Ann Jordan
GET OUT – 2017, director Jordan Peele
Genre: Horror Thriller
(THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS!)

What I learned from doing this assignment:

– Character is key. We need to care about our protagonist because that makes us worry, and become emotionally invested in what happens to them.
– Scary, startling, or suspenseful moments should be inserted in the story at appropriate intervals, like a leitmotif that calls us back over and over, and keeps us hooked into the story. However, these moments don’t have to be constant (at least until the end) and should be leavened with character development and a little humor here and there.
– The antagonist shouldn’t be so unrealistic that it takes us out of the story. One of the best moments in GET OUT was from the character of Jim Hudson, played by the great Stephen Root, as he matter-of-factly explained what was going on and let Chris know he wasn’t at all concerned what Chris thought about it. Chris was just a tool to Jim, a means to an end, and it was more realistic and chilling seeing that, than any amount of Snidely Whiplash preening.
– Unexpected (but grounded) revelations and reversals are great because they keep us on the edge of our seats.

The Thriller Conventions Used in GET OUT:

Unwitting but Resourceful Hero:
Chris, an attractive black man who is in what he thinks is a promising relationship with his white girlfriend, Rose.
Dangerous Villain:
There’s actually a group of villains, among whom the chief is Rose’s mom, Missy. But Missy turns out to take second place in villainy to her daughter, Rose. Rose could possibly be characterized as a Red Herring, since we think she will help Chris until close to the end.
High stakes: Chris is desperate to escape the evil fate of being turned into a half-aware zombie, able to see and hear, but unable to speak or act for himself.

Life and death situations:
The director skillfully sprinkles life and death situations throughout, keeping up tension until the final act, when the tension explodes.

– The film opens with a white-on-black kidnapping, and it’s implied that the black man is killed.
– As Rose and Chris are driving to visit her parents, a deer leaps in front of their car, causing a startling accident. (Chris tracks down the deer in the woods, which has died, and we wonder if Chris’s death is being foreshadowed.)
– The police officer that responds to the deer accident scene asks for Chris’s ID, bullying him, and we wonder if we’re going to see a police brutality incident.
– When Missy hypnotizes Chris the first time, he’s psychologically hurled down into a dark, empty space, and it appears that he might die.
– Much of the second act is Chris meeting jovial white people and Stepford Wife black servants who are so friendly that they’re frightening, but not overtly dangerous. The exception is when Chris tries to make friends with the groundskeeper, who is slinging an axe around and clearly trying to intimidate Chris.
– In the third act, after Chris is unwillingly hypnotized again, he awakes, bound hand and foot. Obviously life or death.
– After Chris stops answering his phone, his friend Rod, who works for the TSA and has faith in law enforcement, goes to the police. We think at first that the police are interested in Rod’s story of Chris’s disappearance and will help, but then realize the police are all laughing at Rod. We see that the cops’ indifference could result in Chris’s death.
– Chris is informed to his face that his body is going to be harvested (zombified) and used as a vehicle for an old rich white guy’s brain.
– Chris finds a way to escape his bonds, but then has to fight his way out of the mansion’s basement, past several people who are willing to kill him to shut him up, if they can’t manage to keep him as zombie material. (This consists of several short but great battles.) Lots of life or death.
– At the end, when Chris has finally vanquished or nullified all the people who want to kill him or zombify him, a cop car shows up, and the wounded, duplicitous Rose cries out to the police for help against Chris. We realize that a cop might well shoot the exhausted Chris on the spot, or arrest him (in which case he could possibly be released back to the rest of the zombifying gang, and he might lose his freedom and his brain after all). It’s a scary, tense life-or-death moment. It’s resolved when we see that the cop car is a TSA Police car, and Chris’s friend Rod steps out of the car to rescue Chris.

This movie is thrilling because?
It’s thrilling because we’re introduced to likeable, interesting characters who we quickly begin to care about, and then we're quickly forced to worry about them being horribly abused or dying.

3. What is the BIG Mystery, Intrigue, and Suspense of this story?

Big Mystery: By agreeing to stay with Rose’s family for the weekend, has Chris walked into a dangerous situation? Is he as threatened as he feels? Or is his wariness toward white people making him paranoid?
Big Intrigue: Why are Rose’s family and friends so over-the-top friendly to Chris, and yet also so awkward, odd, and vaguely predatory? What is their plan for him? Can Chris use the other black people on the property and at the party to discover their plans?
Big Suspense: Does Rose know what’s really going on with her family? Is Rose a part of her family’s horrifying machinations? Will Rose defy her family and save the man she loves – if, that is, she actually loves him? Will Chris find a way to survive, with or without Rose’s help?

4. Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great thriller?

– I felt that GET OUT added an enriching emotional layer by delving into Chris’s childhood trauma. The reason that Missy gets Chris to reveal his childhood angst is purely so she can use it against him, but it makes us feel that much more for our protagonist, and really care about whether he makes it out safely.
– GET OUT also had some humorous moments, mostly connected with Chris’s friend Rod, which grew fairly organically from Rod’s personality and his relationship with Chris (as opposed to adding jokes or bits, as such). The addition of humor kept the whole thing from bogging down from the weight of its own paranoia.

• This reply was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by  Ann Jordan. Reason: This forum keeps turning my writing into ONE HUGE paragraph. I have to figure out how to create paragraph breaks so that it's not horrible to read!

[Ann Jordan]

Hi, everyone! I’m Ann Jordan. To date, I've written a number of partial scripts, and finished a total of one. That’s actually part of what I want to get out of this class: Motivation to keep working and finish up my current project! More than that, though, I'm really impressed with this Thriller template, and I want to learn how to use it because it seems broadly applicable to a lot of feature projects.

As for my unique or unusual feature: I realized recently that at least as an adult, I've never voluntarily written any fiction that didn't have some fantastical or science fiction element. I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy from an early age, and I guess it shaped my subconscious. As an example, the thriller project I hope to work on in this class has a supernatural element. It looks like that’s just how I roll!

• This reply was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by  Ann Jordan.
• This reply was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by  Ann Jordan.

[Ann Jordan]

Ann Jordan
“I agree to the terms of this release form.”