[Steven Nikosey]

Steven Nikosey, 4- Act Transformational Structure

What did I learn?

I learned that the structure does not have to be altogether fleshed out prior to creating and establishing basic plot points and they are not set in stone but are only a
rough blueprint and the quicker they are developed the easier it will be to flesh out
the story in greater detail and further develop the characters.

Create a first draft of your 4 Act Transformational Structure.

1. Give us the following: Yannis Georgiou, Protagonist

Concept – A modern-day Job.
He had everything only to lose it all in the blink of an eye. But
why?

Main
Conflict – Yannis is obsessed in
knowing why this has all happened to him, he needs to know the reasons,
what is actually real, and ultimately find some peace.

Old
Ways –

1. Humanistic, materialist, empiricist, agnostic, avowed anti-religionist

2. Laser-focused on his company’s success

3. Subordinating all other needs, wants, and interests to business demands/goals

New
Ways –

1. Theistic, spiritual, rationalist, and open-minded about religion

2. Laser-focused on searching for truth

3. Subordinates all other needs, wants, and interests to search for reality and truth

2. Fill in each of these with the answers you have right now.

Act 1:

Opening
– Yannis, this former middle-class kid, with
his unicorn just going public has just become a multi-billionaire and he
is reveling a bit in his success. <div>

Inciting
Incident – After overleveraging a bit on a relatively risky, but
cutting edge innovation, that could potentially revolutionize the field of
virtual reality. It blows up in his
face, when the technology is stolen by a foreign hacker and rushed to
market by an international competitor.
This is the beginning and trigger of a chain of events of his fall.

Turning
Point – In the span of forty days, his business is bankrupt, he
is insolvent, destitute, his parents die in a car accident and his sister,
brother-in-law, nieces, nephew, and his two children all die in a plane
crash, he learns his wife has been unfaithful and carrying on an affair
for a year, and she was charged with plagiarism ruining her sterling
reputation, and he is diagnosed with testicular cancer. He is left hanging on to life by his fingernails,
while his wife has decided to blame him for everything, completely turned
on him and make his life a living hell.
They separate and she goes to live her parents and Yannis, his only
friend, Daniel Weismann.

Act 2:

New
plan – He wants answers, answers to why this
happened to him and is prepared to go to the ends of the earth to get them
if he has to. </div><div>

Plan
in action – He
is living off the charity of his only remaining friend, Daniel Weismann. With the help of his friend he searches
every book of human wisdom and philosophy to see if he can find answers,
actual reality, higher truth, and meaning.

Midpoint
Turning Point – Finding no satisfactory answers in books of human
wisdom and as a last resort he turns to find truth in religious writing about
a supernatural being and intelligence.

Act 3:

Rethink
everything – His estranged wife tells him she is pregnant and that
the child has been diagnosed with microencephaly. </div><div>

New
plan – He was ready to walk away from his wife, but he tells
her he wants to raise the child on his own if he has to. But, he would like his wife to raise the
child with him. She tells him she
is going to have an abortion.

Turning
Point: Huge failure / Major shift – She tells him that the baby man not even be his. She contracted Zika virus during her rendezvous
with her paramour in Rio De Janeiro.
It devastates him, but he will not see the child tossed aside. He offers to adopt and raise him as his
own.

Act 4:

Climax/Ultimate
expression of the conflict – After trying to reconcile with Jada, she finally walks
away and abandons him and the child insisting she just wants to be happy. </div>

Resolution
– Yannis finds peace and contentment in the self-less
love shared between him and abandoned child, Simon.

[Steven Nikosey]

Steven, Character Interviews

Questions for my Protagonist: Yannis Georgiou

1. Tell me about yourself. What’s to tell? Ever read the Bible? Familiar with the story of Job? Well, you’re looking at him. I was the Co-Founder and CEO of Simdyne a virtual reality gaming company evaluated over 8 billion dollars at our IPO. I was a billionaire before my 29^th birthday. Married to a brilliant, gorgeous, loving woman, and a highly successful author. My soulmate and life-long partner, or so I thought. We had two beautiful and talented children, the lights of my life. My parents were always there for me, doting parents, but wonderful examples and teachers, so proud of me and my sister and for our accomplishments. I had a tight circle of good supportive successful friends and the respect and admiration of my peers and even my competitors. I was healthy, swam two miles a day, ran 50 miles a week, had a ten handicap, and just got my pilots license and a Leer Jet. I had it all and I was just starting, and within less than two months it was all gone, everything.

2. Why do you think you were called to this journey? Why you? I am talented and highly driven. I started learning about technology before I could walk. I had an intuitive sense of how technology worked. I went into gaming and virtual reality because first, I loved it, I lived it and breathed it, but I truly believe, no, I know through its advancement and discovery, I can change and improve this world. I wanted to do my part to leave this a better world for my children and posterity. I tried. I poured my heart and soul into it. I got to the very top on my talent and through determination. I was on the top of my profession. I was on top of the world. I had the world in my hands and then everything was lost, almost overnight and through no fault of my own. But, why not me? Was I born impervious to bad luck or shielded from the whims of blind chance? I lost everything and I had so very much to lose.

3. Who or what are you are up against? What is it about them that makes this journey even more difficult for you? If I wasn’t such an avowed agnostic and materialist. If I hadn’t made it part of my life mission to remove superstition and ignorance from the human condition and been at the forefront of moving humanity past and beyond the divisiveness of organized religion, I would say I had offended was personally up against an angry and vengeful God. It would make this much easier, like in Thomas Hardy’s poem Hap, if it were in fact some vengeful God, then I could steel myself against the “ire unmerited of one more powerfuller than I.” But, it’s much worse having no enemy, no one or nothing to blame or to appeal to and supplicate for mercy, no reasons, or explanations for my misfortune, no cause and effect, just blind chance and happenstance.

4. In order to survive or accomplish this, you are going to have to step way outside of your box. What changes do you expect to make and which of them will be the most difficult? I need to find meaning and purpose behind these events. I must. I need to know what is real, and find a reason and meaning behind them and for them, as Gaugin sought answers in his painting, “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? And Where Are We Going?” I need to know, no matter where it leads me. Although I have already been laid low, I must humble myself. I must accept that what I thought I know I no longer know. In fact, comparatively, I know nothing. But, I will keep asking, keep knocking, until I know what I must know. Why? Why did this happen to me?

5. What habits or ways of thinking do you think will be the most difficult to let go of? Honestly, I’m afraid, terrified of finding there’s a God that I will need to answer to and who’s standards I haven’t met and unsure if I can or am willing to meet. I hate being told how to live…by anyone. That is not free will to me.

6. What fears, insecurities and wounds have held you back? I am afraid to lose more, to suffer more. Even though I have lost everything, emotionally I can’t lose anymore. It will be the death of me. And, the only way I can’t lose anymore is to stop trying to gain or possess anything in this life to stop trying to do, and resign myself to just being, whatever that means.

7. What skills, background or expertise makes you well-suited to face this conflict or antagonist? Though I am wracked with fears and terrors, once identified, I always force myself to confront and face my fears, I don’t run from them. I don’t know how. If anything, I run towards them, and I am creative, imaginative, and tenacious. I won’t give up until I find the answers I’m seeking. I will find the answers I seek.

8. What are you hiding from the other characters? What don’t you want them to know? I am hiding from them that I have totally lost my belief in and adherence to my agnosticism my fervent espousal and advocacy of anti-religion. I realize now that I considered belief in God and religion an impediment and not believing in a Creator the only and most expedient course to my true and more prescient priorities, goals, and desires.

9. What do you think of? As Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am.” But what of a vegetative state, the brain dead, they still exist, do they not, they are still real. What about insensate life or inanimate matter, it exists, it is real. I must know what is real, what is truly real, and it must begin and end with the Creator, if the Creator is real, then that would be the source of explanations for what is truly real.

10. Tell me your side of this whole conflict / story. I feel I am a good person. But, then who doesn’t? I am sure in their own twisted and distorted brains, Adolph Hitler, Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Osama Bin Laden, Jeffrey Dahmer people most would consider as evil incarnate, thought of themselves as essentially good, albeit maybe sick or deeply flawed human beings. But, yet, we are all flawed, so can anyone of us, be considered categorically and entirely good?I guess it is a sliding scale. But, on that sliding scale, I feel I am on the right side. I am a good and decent human being. I have tried to do good for not only myself but for others, my contemporaries, and even posterity. I am no Albert Schweitzer but I respect and value all living things. I am a humanist, egalitarian, and protector and conservator of the environment. I am a Vegan and a fervent advocate of all environmental causes. I truly want to make and leave this planet world a better place for me and my children and all living things. I know no one is immune to suffering. It pervades the air we breath from our first breath. We all breath the same contagions, hate, violence, greed, evil, sin, etc. But, why? I know it is ego-centric of me, but why, why me? What did I do? Did I bring any of this on my own head? I think my suffering is not commensurate with my sin. Not by a long shot.

11. What does it do for your life is you succeed here? I will have peace, true peace.

12. Ask any other questions about their character profile that will help you. Do you have any tangible, manifest, personified antagonists or forces of antagonism? What is your external Object of Desire and your internal object of desire?

Questions for my Antagonist: Jada Leterneau-Georgiou

1. Tell me about yourself. I am a
realist, some would say a cynic, but I was once a dyed-in-wool optimist,
until I saw and came to intimately know the darker side of humanity and of
life. It stains you indelibly. It
changes you. It changed me
immutably, the transformation is complete.
I feel like a different species entirely, like something out of
Kafka’s Metamorphosis, a hideous, grotesque insect, something most humans
don’t want to look at and will shoo away upon sight. I lost all my friends, even the life-long
ones. Where once my husband and I
had what other’s called the Midas touch, we became Medusas and our coterie
of friends who once championed and fawned over us, after we fell head
first off the pedestal they themselves had put us on, they turned from us
en masse, in abject horror. Oh,
they feigned sympathy, for their own benefit and conscience, but words
quickly failed them, and when there were no more words there was no more
pretense of sympathy or commiseration.
And, I blame my husband for the lion’s share of it, why because
someone has to shoulder the blame.
He loved to boast, the buck stopped with him and that come what
may, his shoulders were broad and strong enough to bear the weight of the world
like Atlas. So, like a nice little
wife, I allowed him prove it. And, he
has proved he can’t bear the load, that he is finally just a macho windbag,
full of his own excrement. The
final straw, is he proved he does not have the courage of his own
convictions and has turned to the last bastion of the weak-minded, the
opiate of the huddled masses, religion and escape into mysticism.

2. Having to do with this journey, what are your strengths
and weaknesses? My strength is knowing I am weak. I never boasted that I was super human
like Nietzsche’s strength Superman, that I was somehow beyond good and
evil. I am beyond nothing, except
cowering in fear, chasing after ghosts, or seeking answers to ultimately
unanswerable questions. I am just a
speck of dust adrift in this cold, dark, cosmos. I accept my and revel in my own insignificance,
the utter meaningless of my very existence. My acceptance of this is what makes me
strong, because I no longer dream, aspire, or seek any sense of purpose or
meaning from my life. I live minute to minute, breath to breath, know my
first inhalation is not all the far from final exhalation. I am here today but will be gone tomorrow. I rose from the oblivion a momentary spark
and flash of atomic light to soon to return to the black void and vacuum of
perpetual darkness.

3. Why are you committed to making the Protagonist fail?
Or for a relationship movie, why are you committed to making them change? I
have no respect for what he is doing of who and what he has become. He is shirking and evading his responsibility,
he is escaping, he turned his back on me and abandoned me emotionally. I want him to be the man he once was, to
take stock of himself, and not be afraid to face his fears and start
over. He has given up and thrown in
the towel, he has raised the white flag of surrender as far as I can see
and I have no respect for that. I
have lost all respect for him, all my deep tender love and affection for
him, has completely drained and dissipated. I feel nothing for him anymore except
antipathy and revulsion.

4. What do you get out of winning this fight / succeeding
in your plan / taking down your competition? Nothing
really. I guess it is for some expiation
of the guilt my husband and I bear for not being able to save our children,
or us, or ourselves, for not being stronger people. We are better than this. I want to deter him from his decent into
weakness. But, ultimately, I think
I just want to hurt him in hopes it will somehow purge or extinguish the animosity
I have for him.

5. What drives you toward your mission / agenda, even in
the face of danger, ruin, or death? I
am an atheist, unlike my weak, indecisive, and ultimately cowering husband,
I have picked a side and will not switch due to personal tragedy or
misfortune. I refuse to get on my
knees even if I find out when I die that I was in fact one hundred percent
wrong about the existence of God and I am being judged adversely, condigned
to eternal damnation and consigned
to hell. I will accept such a fate rather than
live a lie. That is my personal
ethos. It is what I live my life by. It is all I have and all that keeps me
together and I will not alter it out of fear of being wrong.

6. What secrets must you keep to succeed? What other
secrets do you keep out of fear or insecurity? That for all I know I may be wrong, dead wrong. But, I don’t care. If there is a God, I still want nothing
to do with any of it. I didn’t ask
to be born. I didn’t ask for
anything other than to give my children the best life possible and see
them outlive me and hopefully beget life beyond themselves, to endure a
long time on the earth. But, I am intellectually honest and it is impossible
to deny or refute there are many things in the observable universe that
scream design.

7. Compared to other people like you, what makes you
special? I can’t change a thing about this life, but I can take
this confused, chaotic, crap storm called life and turn it into a work of
art, something out of which someone can make sense.

8. What do you think of ? I
think this life is cruel, downright cruel.
Is it any surprise then that people are also cruel and that I myself can
be so cruel, unmercifully so, and without remorse.

9. Tell me your side of this whole conflict / story. Life did me
wrong, it has done many wrong much worse than even than me. But, I will not say thank you sir, may I
have another. And, I am not about
to roll over and die. I will not go
quietly into that good night. I am
going to exact my pound of flesh from my weak husband for not doing more for his children, for his wife, and our life together, for not fighting harder, for submitting and for surrendering to life and the universe.

<div></div>

[Steven Nikosey]

Steven Nikosey, Character Profile Part 2

“What I learned doing this assignment is…?”

There are no wrong answers. Not at the inception stage. It is a part of the process of story development and it must happen organically as the character forms and develops in conjunction with plot development.

2. Character Profile for Protagonist, Yannis Georgiou:

What draws us to him?
Sympathy/empathy for what he lost and the suffering he is enduring <div>

<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>

<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Traits:
<i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Brilliant, Obsessive, Visionary, Creative

<div><div>

Subtext: Leans
on human philosophy, especially Greek, personal philosophy, Socractic Method,
and mantras when confused or highly challenged, his favorite is KISS, which
he always tells himself, “Keep it Simple Stupid” when stuck or getting in
his own way.

Flaw: Hubris and mildly OCD

Values: Above all else, Yannis values truth,
especially as concerns meaning and purpose

Irony:
He is highly self-absorbed but yet cares deeply about humanity

What makes Yannis the right character for this role? He has the desire and will power to take this story to
the end of the line.

Character Profile for Lead Supporting Character, Daniel Weismann:

What draws us to him?
Primarily his loyalty and support
of his friend </div>

Traits:
Integrity, Honest, Brilliant, and
Compassion

Subtext: Always positive and upbuilding, so speaks
euphemistically and never says anything unkind about anyone…but speaks hard
truths, albeit tactfully, when they must be spoken

Flaw: Kind and generous to a fault

Values: He’s a humanist, human life and its meaning
and value

Irony:
Angry with God for the incredible suffering and has chosen to disavow and reject religion, while still upholding Godly Laws and Standards and is still
searching for God.

What makes Daniel the right character for this role? His
loyalty, honesty, and wisdom, and Daniel thinks of Yannis like his deceased son.

</div></div>

[Steven Nikosey]

Steven Nikosey, Character Profiles, Part 1

1. What I learned doing this assignment is? How enjoyable character creation can be when you let go of the need for perfection…still a work in progress.

2. Type of role for Protagonist: Victim – Yannis Georgiou, Tech Savant, becomes a victim of blind chance. Was on top of the world but was laid low.

3. Type of role for Antagonist: Change Agent – Blind chance, although will seem like there is some supernatural agency causing these successive tidal waves of misfortune.

4. Other necessary characters:

Supporting
characters: – Daniel Weisman,
Yannis’s one true and wise friend who helps him figure things out and his fair-weather,
adulterous, bi-polar, and estranged wife, Jada Georgiou, a constant thorn
in his side.
Minor
roles: Wally Neighbors, James Strickland, and Rena Martinez, three
false friends who try to pin the
blame on Yannis for his incredible misfortune
Background
characters: His deceased father and
mother, Nikolas and Leona, deceased son and daughter, Tomas, and Milana

5. Genre: Primarily Drama with some Sci-Fi elements.

6. Character Profiles of Main and Supporting Characters:

Yannis Georgiou

Role
in the story: Protagonist – Yannis was on top
of the world and had everything a man could want but then he loses it all
in the seeming blink of an eye.

Age
range and Description: Yannis is 29 years old, tall, fit, healthy,
movie star good looks, charismatic, and brimming with self-confidence. A born leader.

Internal
Journey: Yannis feels he has the world in his
hands and is in complete control but in the end sees that he has so little
control

External
Journey: He is the CEO of a Fortune 500
company possessing everything a man could possibly want, but then loses it
all.

Motivation: He wants to
figure out what has happened and why his life was turned upside down, and
what is actually, finally real.

Wound: Losing
everything he loved most of all his parents and children

Mission/Agenda: Figure out
the purpose to life and what is truly real

Secret: He believes
in a Creator and an afterlife, although he presents himself as an avowed
atheist.

What
makes him special? A Tech Savaant, Genius, and Pied
Piper of VR Gaming

Jada Georgiou

Role in the story:
“Love interest” – Yannis’s fair-weather, adulterous, bi-polar, and
estranged wife, at thorn in his side.

Age range and Description: Mid 20’s,
gorgeous, glamorous, brilliant novelist, bitter satirist and linguist. A cynical nihilist, communist, existentialist.

Internal Journey: A
hopeful, optimistic, sweet and tender-hearted woman, enamored with her
husband into a disillusioned, embittered, and estranged, hypercritical
wife.

External Journey: A successful novelist, and an optimist, who
sees world and envisions future with rose-colored glasses into a bitter, minimally
successful, obscure writer, and cynical satirist, nihilist and
misanthrope.

Motivation:
She wants what they had, but she knows it’s forever gone with her husband,
so she is trying to find love, passion, success and happiness again on her
own or with someone else.

Wound: Loss
of their children, youthful looks, and loss of wealth, success

Mission/Agenda: To recoup what she’s lost and punish her husband

Secret: She
has carried multiple adulterous affairs with men and women and is in the
midst of one now.

What makes her special? She’s an exceptional ice sculptor

Daniel Weismann

Role
in the story: Best Friend – Loyal and most trusted
friend. Tells Yannis like it is,
but is a true supporter, admirer, who genuinely cares about him. A Dutch Uncle of sorts.

Age
range and Description: 49 years old Corporate lawyer and venture
capitalist, father of three, stout, thick-bodied, florid, ruddy complected,
with reddish, and gray hair, avuncular, erudite, sophisticated, cosmopolitan,

Internal
Journey: Once believed in the Law,
but has seen it abused and exploited and misapplied and now searches for
higher truth and meaning

External
Journey: Achieved the pinnacle of success in
his profession and lost a great deal of his fortune but has found greater
meaning in his life.

Motivation: Wants to save another soul in his close friend and
make amends for his son

Wound: His adopted
son, Simon Weismann, died of fentanyl overdose.

Mission/Agenda: Search for
truth and meaning

Secret: He is a functional
alcoholic.

What
makes him special? He has a photographic memory and
encyclopedic knowledge of the Law and is a voracious speed reader, who
reads a dozen books a week. He is
also a scratch golfer.

[Steven Nikosey]

Assignment #1

“What I learned doing this assignment is…?

I still have a long way to go to release the hold the internal critic has on me. I need to write much more freely and excitedly at this creative stage.

But, I like this assignment as a good jumping off point for the story-creation process.

My anti-hero is Yannis Georgiou, a highly successful CEO and Lead Game Designer of a virtual reality gaming company. He has it all, youth, vibrant health and fitness, movie-star good looks, a beautiful, brilliant, wife who’s his partner and soulmate, sweet adoring talented children, and a close circle of good friends, loyal family, and a sterling reputation among his peers and competitors tabut… now the company he founded is in his garage less than three years earlier is on the verge of its IPO which will make him a twenty-something billionaire. Yet, here he is just beginning to conquer the world, insatiable, ever-aspiring and striving for more of everything, more wealth, more prestige, greater challenges, higher accomplishments, more fame, greater accolades…only to, suddenly, inexplicably…lose everything he thought he possessed almost overnight. In the end, he learns, that it is only when a man has nothing left to lose, that he has actually gained and possesses something of true lasting value, his essence and finally finds contentment in just being.

ARC Beginning: A Tech Giant on top-of-the world and in full-control of his life in a sensible reality

ARC Ending: A tiny entity adrift in a random, chaotic cosmos, in an utterly incomprehensible reality.

<div>
</div>

Internal
Journey: Feeling in-control of his understandable
reality to no control over an incomprehensible new reality.

<div>

External
Journey: A CEO and embodiment of
the American Dream to a cautionary tale.

<div>

Old Ways:

– Supremely confident

– Certain of what success is and achieving it

– Rushing towards his clear goals

– Good fortune is his birthright and reward

– Elitist and feels like one Rand’s Atlas’s.

– His perception of reality is the true reality

New Ways:

– Unsure of himself

– Uncertain of what success is

– Drifting through life

– New-found appreciation for the less fortunate

– Egalitarian and believes in intrinsic human value

– Does not know what is truly real any more

</div></div>

[Steven Nikosey]

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for my belated introduction courtesy of COVID-19. My name is Steven Nikosey and this will be my third script. I am a painfully slow writer and really looking forward to applying what I learn in this class to greatly speed up my process. I am confident that will also make screenwriting more enjoyable and remunerative for me.

I grew up the youngest of a combined step-family of eleven children. It was not quite like the Brady Bunch, but nonetheless, the experience supplied me with abundant story material.

I look forward to working with you all!

[Steven Nikosey]

Steven Nikosey

I agree to the terms of this release form.

As a member of this group, 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, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, 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.

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by  Steven Nikosey. Reason: Forgot to include text of release form