Marianne Post
Forum Replies Created
-
Marianne’s 4 Act Transformational Structure
Vision: To empower myself to smile at today’s writing challenge and have fun solving it. Why? Because that’s how I’ll craft screenplays industry insiders are itching to read and produce. That’s how I’ll get my movies made.
What I learned doing this assignment is work quickly before perfectionism takes over. Just use the lesson as a guide and plug in details, even if they’re not great. This helped me tackle this potentially overwhelming assignment. This isn’t set in stone. I can fix and elevate later.
Concept: Feuding twins must team up to honor their terminally ill father’s wish — finding the family’s treasured time capsule — before his time ends
Main Conflict: Jane challenges her brother to a competition for finding the time capsule, winner takes all
Old Ways: Both siblings work against each other and resent each other
New Ways: The Siblings realize they can’t find the time capsule without each other’s help and don’t want to compete anymore anyway. They find a way to work together and find the treasure.
Act 1:
Opening: Jane celebrates a major win at work
Inciting Incident: The siblings’ father ask them to come see him
Turning Point: Jane tells her brother she can’t work with the guy who stole the love of her life, doesn’t need him and challenges him to the competition — whoever finds the time capsule keeps the prize
Act 2:
New Plan: The siblings ignore their father’s request to work together and each decides to do whatever it takes to find the time capsule and win the competition
Plan in action: Both fail as they ignore friends and family. They turn to sabotage and leave a path of destruction
Midpoint Turning Point: The sabotage leads to injury and causes undo stress on their father
Act 3:
Rethinking everything: John tries to reason with his sister and understand the pain he caused her by engaging in a relationship with a man she thought she loved
New Plan: John chisels away at the armor Jane’s built around herself. Meanwhile she starts to understand the ‘Love of her life” was never hers and the sabotage she’s unleashed on her brother could have grave consequences
Turning Point: Huge Failure / Major Shift: Jane almost kills herself and her brother because of a sabotage scheme that inadvertently levels their childhood home with them almost in it
Act 4:
Climax/Ultimate expression of conflict: Just as the siblings were starting to make up, their childhood house gets leveled with them in it and results in an epic verbal fight
Resolution: Jane coming to terms that her brother didn’t steal the love of her life. They were meant to be together and she refused to hear that. John realizes his sister’s success had nothing to do with better opportunity or education, just unfaltering drive and focus to figure out how to succeed
Siblings make up and find the time capsule before their father passes. It contains not only prized possessions from their childhood, but their inheritance (deed to the house and valuables inside)
-
Marianne’s Subtext Plot
Vision: To empower myself to smile at today’s writing challenge and have fun solving it. Why? Because that’s how I’ll craft screenplays industry insiders are itching to read and produce. That’s how I’ll get my movies made.
What I learned from doing this assignment is how to find a way to add depth to my characters and story
Concept: Feuding twins must team up to honor their terminally ill father’s wish — finding the family’s treasured time capsule — before his time ends
Subtext Plot: Competitive Agendas
Jane wants to find the time capsule to take something her brother loves away from him
John wants to find the time capsule to finally beat her sister at something and feel adequate
On the surface the two siblings sabotage each other and act like they hate each other
Below the surface they really do love and respect each other
On the surface they act like they don’t need each other
Below the surface they won’t find the time capsule without each other’s help and can’t succeed at life without each other’s support
-
Marianne’s Transformational Journey
Vision: To empower myself to smile at today’s writing challenge and have fun solving it. Why? Because that’s how I’ll craft screenplays industry insiders are itching to read and produce. That’s how I’ll get my movies made.
What I learned from doing this assignment is using this simple formula to plug in the transformational journey is helping me clearly see the movie start to end and help me elevate the script
Concept: Feuding twins must team up to honor their terminally ill father’s wish — finding the family’s treasured time capsule — before his time ends
JANE
Arc Beginning: She irrationally believes her brother stole the love of her life and lets this sabotage her love life
Arc Ending: She forgives her brother and is ready for a healthy romantic relationship
Internal Journey: From hating her brother for stealing her one true love to understanding the guy was never into her
External Journey: From doing whatever it takes to find the time capsule first to teaming up with her brother to find it
Old Ways:
Negative attitude toward love
Doesn’t trust guys
Relies on work to succeed
Success driven by doing better than the men in her field
Lets competitive nature drive the treasure hunt
Pretends she doesn’t need her family thrive
New Ways:
Open to love
“Forgives” her brother
Decides to trust the new guy in her life
Partners with her brother to find the time capsule
Enlists her family to help her patch up the damage she caused with her soulmate
JOHN
Arc Beginning: Lacks confidence to run a successful business out of fear he can’t live up to his sister’s success
Arc End: Embraces his success as a family man and gets out from under his sister’s shadow to mold his version of business success
Internal Journey: From feeling like a disappointment to his father to empowering himself to run his business
External Journey: From wanting to finally beat his sister at something to partnering with her to find the time capsule and ask for business advice
Old Ways:
Blames his failed business on not having the same educational opportunities as his sister
Avoided contact with his sister because she blames him for stealing her boyfriend, who’s his husband
Feels he’s not enough because he just wants to be a family-man in the hometown he loves
New Ways:
Embraces his successes — building a successful family in the hometown he loves
Uses his realization that an ivy league education doesn’t equal business success to fix his business
Confides in his sister for business help
Initiates the conversation that mends her broken heart
-
Marianne’s Intentional Lead Characters
Vision: To empower myself to smile at today’s writing challenge and have fun solving it. Why? Because that’s how I’ll craft screenplays industry insiders are itching to read and produce. That’s how I’ll get my movies made.
What I learned from doing this assignment is how to set aside all the tiny details and just focus on how these characters honor the concept.
Concept: Feuding twins must team up to honor their terminally ill father’s wish — finding the family’s treasured time capsule — before his time ends
Protagonist: Jane
Logline: Sibling #1: A rising star in tech returns home after 10 years to see her dying father and turns the time capsule hunt into a competition
Unique: Rising star in a male-dominated field but positions herself as a victim in terms of love and blames her brother for “stealing” the love of her life
Protagonist: John
Logline: A struggling local business owner who accepts his sister’s challenge, so he can finally beat her at something and show his father he can succeed, too.
Unique: Successful family man who fails at business as he lives in the shadow of his sister’s professional success.
Triangle Character: Dad
Logline: Terminally ill patriarch who tries to re-unite his feuding kids with a hunt for the family’s treasured time capsule.
Unique: Designs a treasure hunt that requires his kids to work together but Inadvertently initiates the competition
-
Marianne’s Title, Concept, and Character Structure!
Vision: To empower myself to smile at today’s writing challenge and have fun solving it. Why? Because that’s how I’ll craft screenplays industry insiders are itching to read and produce. That’s how I’ll get my movies made.
What I learned doing this assignment… How to have both siblings own the story. And just take this one step at a time.
Title: Ticking Time Capsule
Concept: Feuding twins must team up to honor their terminally ill father’s wish — finding the family’s treasured time capsule — before his time ends
Character Structure: Buddy Movie
-
Hey there,
My name’s Marianne Post. I’ve written 2 feature screenplays and countless voice-over scripts for my day job.
I hope to walk away from this class with a marketable screenplay and the tools to confidently repeat the process while having fun doing it. That second part is key. Anything I create that I don’t have some fun with turns out “blah” at best.
My background is post production. In my current role, I leverage that to create training materials and present webinars at Avid Technology (Media Composer). Yep, I get paid to support editors’ post-production dreams while pursuing my screenwriting dream:)
I look forward to working with this talented crew.
Cheers,
Marianne
-
Marianne Post
I agree to the terms of this release form.
GROUP RELEASE FORM
As a member of Writing Incredible Movies, I agree to the following:
1. That I will keep the processes, strategies, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class confidential, and that I will NOT share any of this program either privately, with a group, posting online, writing articles, through video or computer programming, through social media, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, videos, communications, lessons, and models of the class available to anyone who is not a member of this class.
2. That each writer’s work here is copyrighted and that writer is the sole owner of that work. That includes this program which is copyrighted by Hal Croasmun. I acknowledge that submission of an idea to this group constitutes a claim of and the recognition of ownership of that idea.
I will keep the other writer’s ideas and writing confidential and will not share this information with anyone without the express written permission of the writer/owner. I will not market or even discuss this information with anyone outside this group.
3. I also understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes and from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.
4. If I have an idea that is the same as or very similar to another group member’s idea, I’ll immediately contact Hal and present proof that I had this idea prior to the beginning of the class. If Hal deems them to be the same idea or close enough to cause harm to either party, he’ll request both parties to present another concept for the class.
5. If you don’t present proof to Hal that you have the same idea as another person, you agree that all ideas presented to this group are the sole ownership of the person who presented them and you will not write or market another group member’s ideas.
6. Finally, I agree not to bring suit against anyone in this group for any reason, unless they use a substantial portion of my copyrighted work in a manner that is public and/or that prevents me from marketing my script by shopping it to production companies, agents, managers, actors, networks, studios or any other entertainment industry organizations or people.