Sue Swenson
Forum Replies Created
-
Sue Swenson’s Thriller Map Version 1
3. What I learned is that the previous work that I did to list and layer the Thriller Map with Mystery, Intrigue, Suspense, Twists, Reveals, Betrayals, etc., really paid off. I was able to use these items to flesh out a very basic outline for my thriller.
I have to say that this is one of the two best one month courses that I’ve ever taken through ScreenwritingU. The course was excellent in its guidance and direction toward layering in a logical, organized manner, a lot of complicated elements because a thriller has so many required layers to make it compelling and strong.
EXT. CAMPGROUNDS – DAY
A Sasquatch-looking beast is viciously attacking a camper and beating him to death. Then he tears off the camper’s jacket and shirt and starts taking bites out of the body.
INT. UNIVERSITY PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC DR. SCHNEIDER’S OFFICE – DAY
CARLA is welcomed back to work after a long leave of absence by her mentor, Dr. SCHNEIDER, who believes in her and encourages her to come back to work after her leave of absence.
INT. UNIVERSITY PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC CARLA’S OFFICE – DAY
RICHARD, her supervisor, welcomes her back to work. Initially he seems positive and enthusiastic to have her back and to share the workload. He asks Carla how’s she’d doing after returning from a long leave of absence because she witnessed her former patient violently kill himself resulting in her PTSD.
INT. CARLA’S MOTHER’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Carla attends her nephew, ROBBY’S, birthday party. Her sister, JULES, and Jules’s boyfriend, MARKO, give Robby, 11, a Glock. Robby points it at Carla who freaks. Marko laughs.
SIMON, Carla’s husband, expresses sincere, realistic concerns about how her family is raising Robby, and dangers that Robby and the rest of the family are exposing themselves to with the gift of a Glock. There is a verbal confrontation between Simon and Jules and Marko.
Marko jokes that the Glock is for Sasquatch killings.
EXT. JULES’S BACK DOOR – DAY
Carla chastises her sister, Jules, about the Glock. Jules tells her to mind her own business.
INT. CARLA’S CAR – DAY
While Carla drives to work, she has a tense conversation on the phone with her husband, SIMON, who is separated from her. He reminds her that this is just one more example of why he doesn’t want anything to do with her family. Simon appeals to her to move away from her family and detach from their dysfunction. She argues that her dad, while dying of cancer, begged her to take care of her mother, sister and nephew.
INT. CARLA’S LIVING ROOM – DAY
Carla stands at the living room window looking out at her backyard while sipping a cup of coffee when she hears the loud sound of helicopter rotor blades. Three helicopters, two in camo, one all black, slowly fly over the yard. One stops, hovers. The pilot, wearing a gas mask, looks down and locks eyes with her.
INT. CARLA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Carla, in bed with Simon, wakes up, screaming, from a terrifying nightmare. Simon isn’t sympathetic about her nightmares given that his sleep has been disrupted multiple times because of her issues. He gets angry, breaks a lamp during their fight.
Simon receives a text from a woman. Carla wants to know who she is. Simon refuses to answer, changes the subject, puts his phone away. It’s actually his therapist, but he doesn’t want Carla to know that he’s getting some mental health counseling.
Simon packs a couple of bags, leaves the bedroom as he declares that he can’t take their toxic relationship anymore, especially with Carla’s family, who she can’t seem to distance herself from.
INT. CARLA’S OFFICE – DAY
Carla regresses her patient, PETER, and learns that he’s describing a similar nightmare to the one she had the night before about the helicopters.
Then the patient describes another nightmare about someone being killed by a Sasquatch-like creature.
INT. CARLA’S OFFICE – DAY
Carla calls Simon and tells him about having two similar dreams to a patient that she regressed hypnotherapy on. She thinks the dreams may be precognitive. Simon responds that he thought she was done with all of the crazy dream business. He tells her that he thinks she came back to work too soon.
INT. CARLA’S CAR – NIGHT
While driving home from work, Carla hears on the radio that another body has been found near a previous body and someone reported seeing a Sasquatch looking creature running away from the area. Carla screams and pulls over to the side of the road. She calls Simon and says, “I told you so!”
INT. DR. SCHNEIDER’S OFFICE – DAY
Dr. Schneider encourages Richard to be hard on Carla so Dr. Schneider can play good cop and have Richard play bad cop. Every time Richard is hard on her or judgmental, Dr. Schneider takes her part. But it’s really Dr. Schneider who is the devious one.
Reveal: Dr. Schneider is politically connected to the Sasquatch killer’s father.
INT. RESTAURANT – DAY
To keep them posted on events with Carla, Dr. Schneider takes her out for a meal and introduces her to the dangerous Sasquatch killer’s family. He introduces them as benefactors of the clinic when they are in fact the family of this killer. The family is polite, gracious and very welcoming towards Carla.
INT. RICHARD’S OFFICE – DAY
Richard micromanages her, finds fault with her work and is concerned about her anxiety level. He expresses doubts that maybe she came back to work too soon.
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY
Dr. Schneider takes her part after Richard confronts her at the big staff meeting.
EXT. ROCKY FOREST PATH – NIGHT
Carla is being chased by a mysterious two-legged creature. She loses her footing, trips and falls.
INT. CARLA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
The clock reads three am. Carla thrashes in bed, sits up in a panic.
INT. CARLA’S OFFICE – DAY
Carla’s patient tells her about his nightmare, and it’s disturbingly similar to her most recent nightmare.
INT. UNIVERSITY PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC – RECEPTION DESK – DAY
Carla walks by the reception desk, overhears the receptionist relaying the latest news that a fourth body has been discovered in a remote area of the state involving a Big Foot type creature.
EXT. UNINHABITED WILDERNESS AREA – DAY
A police helicopter slowly hovers over a wilderness area. The occupants appear to be looking intently at the ground below.
INT. DR. SCHNEIDER’S OFFICE – DAY
Dr. Schneider assigns a troubled patient to Carla from the psych ward of the hospital. Carla protests. He claims it’s because they can’t afford to keep her on light duty given staff shortages.
Dr. Schneider purposefully assigns this patient knowing Carla’s history hoping that she will most likely have a relapse into her PTSD and be unable to continue therapy work at the clinic. Schneider realizes that Carla’s success in hypnotherapy could uncover the dark secret with the Sasquatch killings that he doesn’t want exposed. However, he doesn’t want to expose his hand so he presents this as a great opportunity to Carla and that he really needs her insight here.
INT. RICHARD’S OFFICE – DAY
Richard hands Carla the file of her new patient. He cautions her that the new patient has a similar background to the other patient, but he is well medicated and has been approved to work with her.
Carla reviews her current patient’s medical records and complains to Richard that this patient has a history of violence. Given her history with the patient who killed himself, she states she doesn’t want to work with him. Richard reassures her that he’s heavily medicated.
She’s opposed to working with this guy because she’s just come back from a LOA due to her own trauma regarding PTSD.
Flashback
INT. CARLA’S OFFICE – DAY
Carla witnesses a former patient kill himself in front of her.
Reveal: Carla is susceptible to nightmares because a former patient killed himself in front of her.
INT. DR. SCHNEIDER’S OFFICE – DAY
Richard expresses concern that Carla could be in danger if she’s forced to work with the violent patient. Dr. Schneider adamantly disagrees with him.
INT. CARLA’S OFFICE – DAY
Carla tells Dr. Schneider that the sick patient keeps complaining of nightmares that are similar to the nightmares she’s been having, and she’s concerned about her own safety.
Dr. Schneider pressures Carla to work with the sick patient because she’s the most skilled therapist in the field of hypnotherapy.
INT. TREATMENT ROOM – DAY
After Carla regresses the patient, she discovers that both her nightmares and the patient’s nightmares are linked and hold clues to the unsolved murders.
INT. CARLA’S OFFICE – DAY
Carla approaches her desk, notices a note on the desk. She reads it. The note blames her for the fact that her former patient, Mr. Jones, killed himself in front of her and she should have prevented it.
Carla calls her husband, Simon, and indicates she wonders who would have left the note. Simon suggests it could be someone who is attempting to get Carla emotionally distraught enough to take another leave of absence for some nefarious reason.
INT. CARLA’ OFFICE – DAY
Carla treats a patient who appears to be stable and mild mannered. He suddenly gets up, walks to the window and pulls out a gun and kills himself in front of her.
INT. CARLA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Alone in bed, Carla suddenly wakes up, is terrified, and screams in terror. She turns on all the lights in the room and adjacent bathroom.
EXT. DESERTED CAMPGROUNDS – DAY
A group of Sasquatch hunters go out to hunt the Sasquatch. They don’t find the Sasquatch, but they find another mutilated body.
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY
Carla sits at the conference room table with half a dozen department colleagues. Dr. Schneider reveals that another body has been discovered at the campgrounds. The body was Bill Smith, a young intern psychologist who worked for the psychology department. Carla has a panic attack and rushes out of the room.
EXT. ROADSIDE IN NORTHERN ARIZONA – DAY
A hiker is found along the side of a dirt road. He is delirious from heat exhaustion and lack of water. He claims to have witnessed a murder but has been wandering for hours. He witnessed the camper getting killed, and escapes. He describes the murderer as a Sasquatch-type creature.
INT. RICHARD’S OFFICE – DAY
Richard approaches Carla about taking on another highly disturbed patient, the hiker. Carla protests. Richard reminds her that they need her to step up and take this assignment because she’s the only hypnotherapist on staff at this point. She grudgingly agrees to work with this patient.
INT. TREATMENT ROOM – DAY
Carla meets the traumatized hiker who admits that he, too, has been having disturbing nightmares.
INT. CARLA’S KITCHEN – NIGHT
Simon calls Carla, tells her he has been conducting his own informal investigation and learns that her sister, Jules’s boyfriend, Marko, has been jailed for shooting a firearm at a party while intoxicated. Marko received a suspended sentence, a fine and community service. Simon warns Carla that she needs to stay away from her family because Marko is unstable and doesn’t like her. Simon begs her to move away and watch her back. He tells her he knows she promised her father to take care of her family in good faith, but the circumstances require her to break that promise for her own safely. He adds that the Glock incident is just one of many red flags that she’s in denial about and that he’s concerned.
INT. CARLA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
It is one am, Carla is laying in bed reading when she hears yelling and the sound of a gunshot next door at her mom’s and sister’s house. Carla calls 911.
INT. DORIS’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
The cops are in the living room. Marko and Jules state that there was nothing going on. Doris blames Carla, tells the cops that Carla was imagining things, that Carla is still recovering from a breakdown and she is fragile and is imagining things.
EXT. CAMPGROUNDS – DAY
A group of campers, having breakfast outside their tent, sees a little girl wander out of the brush and approach their campfire.
The girl appears traumatized. She claims to have heard her mother scream and she ran away in fear. She doesn’t know what happened to her mother. She has been wandering in the woods for hours.
INT. RICHARD’S OFFICE – DAY
Carla is called into Richard’s office and informed about a missing female camper and her surviving traumatized little girl. Richard gives Carla an ultimatum. Either she takes this additional hypnotherapy assignment or he’s going to replace her. She grudgingly agrees to take yet another assignment.
INT. RECORDS DEPARTMENT – DAY
While going through archive patient files, Carla discovers that Dr. Schneider is not related to the family she and Dr. Schneider had a meal with. Dr. Schneider has actually been treating one of the members of the family. Dr. Schneider was the killer’s therapist and experimented on him with an unorthodox technique/treatment that went haywire in the boy’s brain leading to violence and murder. Carla looks further at the records, but can’t find any records more recently than two years ago.
Mystery 15: Are these patients’ situations connected? If so, how?
Life Threatening 11: Will working on all of these assignments increase Carla’s danger?
Villain’s Plan 3: Was the mother murdered, and if so, was it by the same killer?
Mystery 16: Will Carla get to the bottom of these mysteries before somebody else gets killed?
Life Threatening 11: Will anybody else be killed?
INT. CASSANDRA CULLEN’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
CASSANDRA CULLEN,
Carla enters a darkened living room lit with candles and a quiet circle of nine people seated on chairs. CASSANDRA CULLEN, 35, dressed in a purple robe and a colorful headdress, stands up, hugs Carla, enthusiastically welcomes her to the last empty chair.
Dream Group attendance – the dream group is Carla’s B story. She’s known these people for years. They are her real family. She goes to them for love, support, acceptance, belonging and peace.
Cassandra invites Carla to share her most disturbing nightmare with the group. Carla describes her dream to a silent group who don’t initially comment on the dream. Cassandra leads the members through a protocol for responding to Carla’s dreams in a supportive and productive way, offering insights and observations regarding the dream and what it means to them.
Reveal: Carla’s dreams and her patient’s dreams are connected.
The group interprets new dreams that serve as a warning for Carla regarding her patient.
Life Threatening 13: Could there be a villain’s co-conspirator connected to the group in some way that would endanger Carla?
a. The remote viewing process in practice.
b. Tracking the dead body.
c. Finding clues and evidence through dream interpretation and remote viewing.
d. The dream group interpreting the clues to find the body.
e. The kid and Carla become a risk because Carla is starting to access information on the killing.
f. The kid knows something that the Villains are aware she knows and they want to silence her.
g. The kid and Carla are in danger.
h. They’re on the run.
EXT. CARLA’S FRONT DOOR – NIGHT
Simon knocks on Carla’s front door. Carla answers the door, surprised.
INT. CARLA’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Simon stands with Carla in the living room. He has dropped by to pick up some of his clothes. Carla is expressing doubt about Dr. Schneider and her nightmares. Simon urges her to drop her plans to get involved in the murder investigation. He tells her to leave it to the professionals. He tells her she’s over her head. She disagrees, leaves the room to collect the rest of his clothes from her bedroom closet.
While Carla is out of the room, Simon quickly grabs her cell phone lying on the coffee table and plants a tracking device on her phone.
EXT. WILDERNESS TRAIL – DAY
The cops find the body of the dazed hiker’s friend. They followed Carla’s information acquired at the dream group meeting.
INT. TREATMENT ROOM – DAY
Carol uses hypnotherapy to regress the little girl who reveals she saw the man under the Sasquatch costume when he thought no one was around. He spotted the girl who ran away. He tried to catch her, but lost track of her.
INT. CASSANDRA CULLEN’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Carla catches the members of the group up on the status of the killings. Carla admits that the little girl saw the Sasquatch killer without the head of his costume on. She can recognize him. But worse, he saw her too, and can recognize her, which puts the little girl in danger.
INT. TREATMENT ROOM – DAY
Carla regresses the hiker who accesses some memories. He is finally able to remember his name and identity.
INT. CARLA’S FRONT DOOR – NIGHT
The little girl’s father knocks on the door. Carla opens it, addresses him and calls the little girl to the door. The little girl approaches. He indicates he wants to take her home. Carla informs him that the child is in danger because the alleged Sasquatch killer saw the little girl and can identify her. Both the little girl and Carla resist having her leave with her father for safety reasons. He is angry, threatens to bring the cops back with him.
INT. CARLA’S CAR – NIGHT
Carla and the little girl drive quickly out of Carla’s driveway and race down the street to get away before the cops arrive.
INT. CASSANDRA CULLEN’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Cassandra serves hot chocolate to Carla and the little girl. Carla appeals to Cassandra for help in keeping the child safe. Carla wants to know who she can trust to protect the child and herself? Cassandra suggests they bring the group together for an emergency dream interpretation session.
Life Threatening 14: How can Carla and the girl stay safe?
Life Threatening 15: Will Carla and the dream group identify the Villain or villains before anybody else gets killed?
Villains’ Plan 4: What will the bad guys do to get to Carla and the girl?
INT. CASSANDRA’S GUEST ROOM – NIGHT
Carla tucks the child into bed in the guest room, reassures her that she’s safe. Carla promises to keep looking for the child’s mother.
INT. CASSANDRA’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
All of the members of the dream group quickly take their seats. Cassandra tells them why she brought them together for this impromptu meeting. They discover that several of them have had the same dream as one of Carla’s. As a result of this discovery, they are able to unearth a clue through their explorations.
EXT. WILDERNESS TRAIL – DAY
Carla and several members of the dream group hike through some brush, looking for clues. Carla finds the little girl’s mother’s jacket.
Twist: A secret identity is revealed when the hiker’s identify is discovered through hypnotherapy with him.
INT. DR. SCHNEIDER’S OFFICE – DAY
The missing woman’s husband angrily confronts Carla, accuses her of kidnapping the child. He wants Carla off the case and his daughter returned to him. He accuses Carla of being unstable, unreliable and ineffective. He accuses her of being dangerous for his daughter. He threatens a lawsuit if Carla isn’t removed from the case.
Carla speaks up, tells Dr. Schneider that the child should have something to say about who she is with, given the stress she’s under. The father demands to see his daughter.
INT. UNIVERITY PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC – DAY
Dr. Schneider, the child’s father and Carla march down to Carla’s office.
INT. CARLA’S OFFICE – DAY
The child is playing with some dolls used in play therapy. Dr. Schneider, the child’s father and Carla enter the office.
The child sees her father and starts to cry. Carla tells her that her father wants to take her home. The child protests and blurts out that Daddy beats Mommy. He protests, but backs off trying to take the child with him.
INT. PALATIAL LIVING ROOM OF KILLER’S FAMILY – DAY
Sensing Carla may be getting too close to the truth, Dr. Schneider and the killer’s parents devise a plan to get close to Carla and find out what she knows. They plan to kill her with the help of a couple of thugs posing as FBI agents with fake ID’s who will pretend that they are her allies. Dr. Schneider says it’s time to involve the FBI.
INT. CARLA’S LIVING ROOM – DAY
Two thugs posing as FBI agents, stand in the living room, ingratiate themselves and pose as her protectors. They tell her that she is in danger from someone who is trying to kill her related to her patient.
They find out what Carla already knows and order her to report any new findings to them asap because lives are at risk.
They will later give her false information that will lead her to the trap where she almost gets killed.
INT. CARLA’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Carla comes home from work and catches her brother-in-law ransacking her house, looking for the Glock. He accuses her of taking it. She denies taking it and orders him out of the house immediately or she’ll call the cops.
We think it’s Carla’s brother-in-law that misplaced the gun when actually it was her nephew that did this to keep it for his protection if he were to need it at a later time. The nephew has come to realize that his mother’s boyfriend is not his friend and is actually dangerous.
INT. CARLA’S OFFICE – DAY
Richard enters, warns Carla that her patient has escaped the hospital and he’s disappeared. The police are looking for him. Be careful.
INT. RICHARD’S OFFICE – DAY
Carla enters Richard’s office. Because of the drama and threats to the town’s clinic, Richard fires Carla on the authority of Dr. Schneider from her hypnotherapy job. Carla has lost her resources. Dr. Schneider doesn’t care. He walks her to her office.
INT. CARLA’S OFFICE – DAY
Carla hurriedly packs her belongings into a shoebox.
INT. ENTRANCE PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC – DAY
Carla gets escorted out of the building by security.
INT. RICHARD’S OFFICE – DAY
Richard receives a phone call. We hear him say, “Yeah, I did it, but I totally disagree with you on this.
Dr. Schneider is actually the one who discharges Carla because he believes her patient is leading her directly to the source of the killings. He has Richard do the dirty work. Put this info into a scene.
INT. CASSANDRA CULLEN’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Carla, really discouraged, meets with the dream group to get help. They help her to interpret her most recent nightmare and compare dream notes to access any clues that they can.
INT. CARLA’S FRONT DOOR – DAY
The missing girl’s father shows up at Carla’s front door, apologizes and tells Carla that he realizes Carla is on his side and he wants to ally himself with her because he’s terrified that his little girl is in terrible danger. He feels that the cops aren’t doing enough. He wants Carla to use all of her talents and abilities, as woo-woo as they may seem, to help him find her.
Twist: We see an unexpected side of someone when Carla and the father team up to push forward.
Mystery 21: How are Carla and the father going to be able to solve this mystery together?
Life Threatening 19: How can Carla and the father stay safe long enough to see the Villain or villains behind bars?
Villain’s Plan 6: To isolate Carla, get her to a remote location and kill her.
The world of synthesis is at hand.
INT. CARLA’S CAR – DAY
As Carla drives with the girl’s father to the remote wilderness area, her phone rings. It’s Simon pleading with Carla to drop her efforts to find the little girl because he feels it’s too dangerous for her.
CUT TO SAME FIVE MINUTES LATER
Carla remembers a detail from one of her dreams that she shares with the father. She thinks it may be a possible clue to where the girl is. The girl’s father shares a dream he had and they analyze the two dreams and think they know where the girl is.
EXT. REMOTE WILDERNESS AREA – NIGHT
Carla, with the girl’s father, follows the clues from their respective dreams and finally find the little girl who’s safe.
INT. FATHER’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Carla, the little girl and her father all celebrate her safe rescue. Just as Carla is taking a swallow of white wine, her phone rings. It’s Dr. Schneider who tells her he’s got a tip on the location of the camper’s body and suggests she meet him at a certain location, alone. She agrees, and leaves the father’s house.
INT. CARLA’S CAR – NIGHT
While driving to meet with Dr. Schneider, Carla receives a call from Simon. He wants to know what she’s doing. She admits that Dr. Schneider just told her to meet him at a remote location because he knows where the camper’s body is.
Simon tells her she’s not going there alone. Carla insists and hangs up on him.
INT. SIMON’S CAR – NIGHT
Simon accesses the tracker app on his phone to locate where Carla’s car is on the road. He hurriedly drives to catch up with her, unbeknownst to Carla.
INT. CARLA’S CAR – NIGHT
Carla calls one of the fake FBI agents, tells him to meet her at the trailhead because she knows where the body of the camper is. Dr. Schneider is going to show her.
EXT. WILDERNESS TRAILHEAD – NIGHT
Carla exits her car, walks across the small parking area at the trailhead, she cautiously approaches Dr. Schneider.
EXT. WILDERNESS TRAILHEAD –NIGHT
A car hurriedly pulls into the parking lot. The two fake FBI agents exit the car, hurry up to Carla, who tells them it’s about time, that Dr. Schneider is about to show her where the body is.
They pull their guns as they approach Carla. Schneider tells Carla, “I told you to get off this case, but you wouldn’t listen. I’m leaving. You guys know what you have to do.”
EXT. WILDERNESS TRAILHEAD – NIGHT
Simon hurriedly pulls into the parking lot, quickly exits the car. He hears a scream, runs up the trail toward the sound.
EXT. WILDERNESS TRAIL – NIGHT
Simon comes upon a makeshift cage with a woman inside of it. There’s no one else around. He frees her, finds out who she is.
EXT. WILDERNESS TRAIL – NIGHT
Dr. Schneider walks toward the parking lot, arrives at his car. The Sasquatch killer attacks him, kills him next to his car.
EXT. WILDERNESS TRAIL – NIGHT
Upon hearing the screams, the two fake FBI agents rush toward the sound in the dark, fall into a deep pit that they can’t get out of.
EXT. WILDERNESS TRAIL – NIGHT
Carla, free from the two fake FBI agents, runs toward the sound of the scream. She hears Simon calling her name.
The Sasquatch appears, begins to chase her. She runs toward the sound of Simon’s voice, trips, her satchel falls onto the ground and her nephew’s Glock falls out. She grabs it just as the Sasquatch killer leaps at her.
She fumbles with the gun, shoots and misses a couple of times. The killer is now on top of her. She fires one more shot and kills the disturbed man dressed as a Sasquatch.
Mystery 27: Did the killer’s family know all along that this was happening?
EXT. WILDERNESS TRAILHEAD – NIGHT
Cop cars are all over the place with their flashing lights. The two fake FBI agents are being read their rights and put into the backseat of a police car.
INT. SIMON’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Carla and Simon share a bottle of champagne and celebrate their reuniting as a couple.
They turn on a scifi horror movie that’s about a Sasquatch terrorizing a community. They laugh at the coincidence and immediately change the channel because enough is enough.
-
What I learned is that it is really difficult to add misdirection information to the Thriller Map because my Thriller Map is so flawed at this point. I have changed and modified so many layers of the map throughout this course as I have completed each of the assignments. Consequently, the whole map is now a bit of a mess. Regardless, I made some attempts to add misdirection in a lot of different ways even though the map is so flawed.
1A. Opening Image (1): (A)
A Sasquatch-looking beast is viciously attacking a camper and beating him to death. Then he tears off the camper’s jacket and shirt and starts taking bites out of the body.
Mystery 1: What is this creature?
Mystery 2: Who is the camper?
Mystery 3: Are Sasquatch for real?
Mystery 4: Where is the killing of this camper taking place?
Trust: Carla is welcomed back to work after a long leave of absence. Carla is grateful to have a mentor, Dr. Schneider, who believes in her and encourages her to come back to work after her leave of absence.
Trust: Richard, her supervisor, welcomes her back to work. Initially he seems positive and enthusiastic to have her back and to share the workload.
Reveal: The “Sasquatch” is actually a deranged man dressed as a bigfoot on a killing spree.
Reveal: Carla was on a long leave of absence because she witnessed her patient violently kill himself and she has PTSD.
2. Theme (5): Is blood thicker than water?
Carla attends her sister’s son’s birthday party. The sister’s husband gives the kid, 11, a Glock. He points it at Carla who freaks.
Clue: Carla attends her sister’s son’s birthday party. The sister’s husband gives the kid, 11, a Glock. He points it at Carla who freaks. The boyfriend laughs. A trust is violated.
Trust: Simon, her husband, expresses sincere, realistic concerns about how her family is raising her nephew and dangers that the nephew and the rest of the family are exposing themselves to with the gift of a Glock to a kid. There is a verbal confrontation between Simon and her family.
Reveal: Carla’s sister’s boyfriend is actually a drug dealer who carries.
Life Threatening 1: Are Carla’s mother, sister, brother in-law and nephew a physical danger to her? (The boy’s father jokes that this Glock is for Sasquatch killings.)
Life Threatening 2: Could Carla get shot by her own nephew?
Life Threatening 3: What kind of family gives an 11 year old kid a gun for his birthday, and it’s not a hunting rifle?
Mystery 5: Is Carla’s family a safe family to associate with?
Mystery 6: What’s wrong with this family?
Twist: A trust is violated when Carla’s nephew is allowed to point a Glock at her in front of his parents and grandmother, even though it’s unloaded.
3. Set-up (1-10):
Scene: Carla is chastising her sister, Jenny, about the Glock. Jenny tells her to mind her own business. Tense conversation on the phone with Carla’s separated husband who tells her this is just one more example of why he doesn’t want anything to do with her family. She hangs up on him.
Clue: In a phone call with Simon, who berates her to move away from her family and detach from their dysfunction, she tells him that her dad, while dying of cancer, begged her to take care of her mother, sister and nephew.
Clue: Carla is chastising her sister, Jenny, about the Glock. Jenny tells her to mind her own business.
Mystery 7: Why is Carla codependent with an obviously dangerous family of origin?
Mystery 8: What power does Carla’s family have over her?
Life Threatening 4: If Carla’s husband abandons her, who is she going to turn to for protection?
Reveal: Carla shares a family tragedy with her mother and sister because when her father died of cancer, he made her promise to take care of her vulnerable, troubled mother and sister.
Carla is sleeping alone and has a violent nightmare. She wakes up terrified and calls her husband who is impatient with her.
Clue: Carla has a nightmare about three helicopters with pilots wearing gas masks who fly over her backyard.
Trust: Simon always takes her calls, regardless of the time of day or night.
Twist: A trust is violated when Carla’s husband gets impatient with her regarding her terror about her nightmare and isn’t supportive of her.
Misdirection#1: Simon receives a text from an unknown woman to Carla. Carla sees this text on his phone and asks who this person is. Simon changes the subject and puts his phone way.
It’s actually his therapist, but only he knows this.
Distrust: Simon demonstrates anger and irresponsible behavior with her when he breaks a lamp when he’s mad at her
Mystery 7: What is this nightmare about?
Mystery 8: Does this nightmare harbor something that’s precognitive that could happen to Carla?
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla starts having nightmares.
Clue: Carla regresses her patient and learns that he’s describing a similar nightmare.
Clue: The patient also describes another nightmare about watching a TV news broadcast that announces a fourth person has been killed by a Sasquatch-like creature. Carla has a similar nightmare and learns that both nightmares were precognitive when she hears the news the following day that indeed, a fourth person was killed by a Sasquatch-like creature.
Scene where Carla is providing a hypnotherapy session to a patient who’s having nightmares.
Reveal: Carla is having the same nightmare as her patient.
Reveal: The nightmare is precognitive. It’s something sh’e going to experience. Possibly her patient as well.
Trust: Dr. Schneider encourages Richard to be hard on Carla so Dr. Schneider can play good cop with Richard and have Richard play bad cop. Every time Richard is hard on her or judgmental, Dr. Schneider takes her part. But it’s really Dr. Schneider who is the devious one.
Reveal: Dr. Schneider is politically connected to the Sasquatch killer’s father.
Misdirection #2: To keep them posted on events with Carla, Dr. Schneider takes her out for a meal and introduces her to the dangerous Sasquatch killer’s family. He introduces himself as an uncle and they are benefactors of the clinic when they are in fact the family of this killer. The family is polite, gracious and very welcoming towards Carla.
Mystery 9: Do the patient’s nightmares have anything to do with her nightmares?
Mystery 10: What’s going on in her life that she’s having nightmares?
Life Threatening 5: Are any of her nightmares or the patient’s nightmares a threat to Carla or her patient?
Twist: Not only is Carla having nightmares, but so is her patient.
Distrust: Richard micromanages her, finds fault with her work and is concerned about her anxiety level. He expresses doubts that maybe she came back to work too soon.
Trust: Dr. Schneider takes her part after Richard confronts her at the big staff meeting.
Clue: Carla has a second nightmare involving being chased by a Sasquatch. She learns during the next time she regresses her patient that he had a similar nightmare.
TV NEWS ANNOUNCEMENTS. This is the fourth killing of people in remote areas of AZ involving a Big Foot type creature.
Clue: Helicopters are flying over the wilderness area looking for the Sasquatch creature or other evidence of a possible killer.
Mystery 9: Are these creatures for real?
Life Threatening 6: Who will get killed next?
Life Threatening 7: What are the authorities doing about it?
Mystery 10: Is Carla going to get pulled into these killings?
Twist: It just got more dangerous.
4. Catalyst (12):
Cover Story: Dr. Schneider assigns a troubled patient to her from the psych ward of the hospital because they can’t afford to keep Carla on light duty given staff shortages.
Misdirection #3: Dr. Schneider purposefully assigns this patient knowing Carla’s history hoping that she will most likely have a relapse into her PTSD and be unable to continue therapy work at the clinic. Schneider realizes that Carla’s success in hypnotherapy could uncover the dark secret with the Sasquatch killings that he doesn’t want exposed. However, he doesn’t want to expose his hand so he presents this as a great opportunity to Carla and that he really needs her insight here.
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla is assigned a troubled patient who also has nightmares. This ups the stress and danger for Carla.
Reveal: Carla has returned from a leave of absence as a result of the trauma she’s been through. She unfortunately witnessed a former patient kill himself in front of her.
Twist: It turns out both Carla and the patient are both having the same nightmares.
Reveal: Carla is susceptible to nightmares because a former patient killed himself in front of her.
Reveal: (re: sick patient’s history) Carla reads his med. Records and complains to Richard that this pt. has a history of violence and she doesn’t want to work with him. Dr. Schneider reassures her that he’s heavily medicated.
She’s opposed to working with this guy because she’s just come back from a LOA due to her own trauma regarding PTSD.
Trust: Richard expresses concern that Carla could be in danger. He expresses this to Dr. Schneider who adamantly disagrees with him.
But Dr. Schneider talks her into doing it because she’s the most skilled at hypnotherapy. This sick patient keeps complaining of these nightmares.
Distrust: Dr. Schneider encourages Carla to work with the sick patient even though he knows she’s fragile, and over her protests.
Reveal: Carla will learn from working with this patient that both her nightmares and the patient’s nightmares are linked and hold clues to the unsolved murders.
Reveal: There is a note on Carla’s desk blaming her for the fact that it’s her fault that her former patient, Mr. Jones, killed himself. She calls her husband who asks her who would leave such a cruel note.
Clue: Carla breaks down in tears when she finds a note on her desk at work blaming her for the fact that her former patient, Mr. Jones, killed himself in front of her and she should have prevented it.
Clue Misdirection #4: Carla suspects that it might have been Richard or some other colleague at work who left the note and knew her patient case files. Actually, it was Dr. Schneider in an attempt to get Carla emotionally distraught and take another leave of absence so he can continue to keep his secret about the killer patient.
Mystery 11: What’s the danger to Carla from working with this sick patient?
Clue: Carla has a nightmare about one of her former patients who appeared to be normal and mild mannered. He suddenly gets up, walks to the window and pulls out a gun and kills himself in front of her.
Twist: This patient has a history of violence which makes things more dangerous for Carla.
Clue: When her boss hands her the file of her new patient, he cautions her that the new patient has a similar background to the other patient, but he is well medicated and has been authorized to work with her.
Mystery 12: Will Carla’s own mental health be threatened by working with a sick patient who’s been traumatized?
Twist: Things get even more dangerous for Carla when the patient is released from the hospital.
Mystery 13: What will Carla learn from working with this patient?
Clue: Another danger is that Carla’s anxiety level increases significantly after she starts working with this patient, and she starts having sleep problems which raise the frequency and intensity of her nightmares.
Clue: Carla is showing her fragility in different ways such as having a panic attack during a staff meeting.
A group of Sasquatch hunters go out to hunt the Sasquatch. They don’t find the Sasquatch, but they find another mutilated body.
Reveal: ID of the body reveals it to be someone connected to the department.
Life Threatening 8: What kind of danger could Carla be facing from working with this new patient?
Life Threatening 9: Is Carla prepared to protect herself in the event that things go south with this patient?
5. Debate (12-25):
A hiker is found along the side of a dirt road. This is in a remote area of northern Arizona or NM. He’s delirious, probably from heat exhaustion and lack of water. He claims to have witnessed a murder but has been wandering for hours. He escapes, but he witnesses the camper getting killed.
Twist: A new problem occurs when a hiker is found along the side of a dirt road and claims that he witnessed a Sasquatch type creature murder a camper.
Carla addresses whether to take this assignment because she’s already working with one highly troubled patient and still feels vulnerable from the trauma regarding the suicide of a previous patient.
Distrust: Simon moves out and declares that he can’t take it anymore regarding his toxic relationship with Carla’s family that she can’t seem to break with.
Also, she’s having marital problems and her husband has just moved out. She’s feeling vulnerable and traumatized.
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla’s husband moves out after an argument.
She then discusses whether to take on a second highly disturbed patient with her boss who tells her that they need her to step up and take this assignment because she’s the only hypnotherapist on staff at this point. She grudgingly agrees to step up to the plate.
Reveal: The hiker admits that he’s been having nightmares.
Reveal: Carla’s husband has been doing some investigation and learns that her sister’s boyfriend has been jailed for shooting a firearm while at a party while he was intoxicated. He received a suspended sentence and a fine and community service. He warns Carla that she needs to stay away from her family because he’s unstable and doesn’t like her. Please move away and watch your back. I know you promised your father but you can only do so much.
Clue: In a tense phone call between Carla and her husband, Simon, on the phone after they separate, he pleads with her to distance herself from her family. He tells her that the Glock incident is just one of many red flags that she’s in denial about and that he’s concerned for her safety.
Reveal: Carla is afraid to sleep because she’s afraid of having nightmares.
Clue: While awake, Carla hears yelling and the sound of a gunshot next door at her mom’s and sister’s house. Carla calls 911 and reports a possible crime. She cautiously goes to her sister’s house to investigate. There was obviously an argument but nothing seems disturbed, nobody injured. The cops arrive and the sister, mother and boyfriend deny her claims. Her mom tells the cops that Carla is still recovering from a breakdown and she is fragile and imagines things.
Mystery 14: What could possibly go wrong?
Mystery 15: Who is this guy and is he trustworthy?
Villain’s Plan 1: Will the Sasquatch killer continue to kill?
Villain’s Plan 2: If so, could she be a target?
Life Threatening 10: How is Carla going to be able to cope with this life threatening situation given her emotional vulnerability?
6. Break into Two (25): Revised.
Twist: A new problem occurs when a traumatized child is found who claims her mother disappeared in a remote area of Arizona. The little girl claims to have heard her mother scream, then the little girl ran away.
Carla is called into her boss’s office and informed about the missing mother and traumatized child. He gives her an ultimatum, either take these assignments or he’s going to replace her. She agrees to take yet another assignment.
Distrust: But what he’s really doing is exposing her to the dangerous family of the Sasquatch killer so they can all find out what she knows and they learn that she’s getting close to finding out who the Sasquatch killer is.
Reveal: Dr Schneider is actually friends with the killer’s family because he was once the killer’s therapist. He is not an uncle as he originally claimed.
Twist: Dr. Schneider was the killer’s therapist and experimented on him with an unorthodox technique/treatment that went haywire in the boy’s brain leading to violence and murder.
Mystery 15: Are these patients’ situations connected? If so, how?
Life Threatening 11: Will working on all of these assignments increase Carla’s danger?
Villain’s Plan 3: Was the mother murdered, and if so, was it by the same killer?
Mystery 16: Will Carla get to the bottom of these mysteries before somebody else gets killed?
Life Threatening 11: Will anybody else be killed?
7. B Story (30):
Dream Group attendance – the dream group is Carla’s B story. She’s known these people for years. They are her real family. She goes to them for love, support, acceptance, belonging and peace.
Reveal: Carla’s dreams and her patient’s dreams are connected.
Twist: New options emerge when Carla meets with her dream group. They take an interest in her nightmares and are supportive when they work to help her interpret them.
Reveal: The group interprets new dreams that serve as a warning for Carla and her patient.
Mystery 17: Will the members of the dream group help Carla to successfully solve these crimes and dangers?
Life Threatening 12: Will Carla continue to be safe in this dream group.
Life Threatening 13: Could there be a villain’s co-conspirator connected to the group in some way that would endanger Carla?
8. Fun and Games (30-55):
a. The remote viewing process in practice.
b. Tracking the dead body.
c. Finding clues and evidence through dream interpretation and remote viewing.
d. The dream group interpreting the clues to find the body.
e. The kid and Carla become a risk because Carla is starting to access information on the killing.
f. The kid knows something that the Villains are aware she knows and they want to silence her.
g. The kid and Carla are in danger.
h. They’re on the run.
Distrust: Simon tells her she’s got a lot of problems, and she needs therapy and to go get help.
Clue: Simon secretly puts a tracking device on Carla’s phone after one of their fights.
Distrust: Simon’s petty and takes some of her stuff out of their house.
Reveal: The cops find the dazed hiker’s friend’s body through the group’s remote viewing.
Reveal: The remote viewers find the child’s mother’s jacket.
Reveal: The child saw the man under the Sasquatch costume when he thought no one was around. He spotted the child who ran away and he couldn’t catch her.
Reveal: The dream group realizes that the kid can recognize the killer and he knows what she looks like too.
Reveal: The hiker’s memories and identity are revealed through Carla’s hypnotherapy treatment of the hiker.
Reveal: The child refuses to go with her daddy when she reveals that he used to beat mommy. The authorities agree to let her stay with Carla.
Mystery 18: Will Carla find out who the Villains are before they can hurt her and the girl?
Life Threatening 14: How can Carla and the girl stay safe?
Life Threatening 15: Will Carla and the dream group identify the Villain or villains before anybody else gets killed?
Villains’ Plan 4: What will the bad guys do to get to Carla and the girl?
Life Threatening 16: Who can Carla trust to protect her and the girl?
Twist: New options emerge when a clue is unearthed through the dream group.
Twist: A secret location is uncovered through the efforts of the remote viewing group.
Twist: A secret identity is revealed when the hiker’s identify is discovered through hypnotherapy with him.
9. Midpoint (55):
Carla starts conducting hypnotherapy on the little girl to help her recall memories of the trauma in the woods.
Twist: A trust is violated when the missing woman’s husband demands that Carla be taken off their daughter’s case. He feels that Carla is unstable, unreliable and ineffective and is dangerous as a consequence. He threatens a lawsuit if Carla isn’t removed from this case.
Twist: The child refuses to go with Daddy because she said he beats Mommy. He backs off pushing Carla to get off the case.
Mystery 19: Who’s going to solve this case if Carla is removed from working with the hiker and girl?
Life Threatening 17: What’s going to happen to Carla if she’s removed from the case?
10. Bad Guys Close In (55-75):
Misdirection #5: Sensing Carla may be getting too close to the truth, Dr. Schneider and the killer family, devise a plan to get close to Carla and find out what she knows. When necessary, they will have her killed. The plan is the killer’s family send over two thugs posing as FBI agents with fake ID’s etc, and act as her ally in a dangerous world. We believe them as does Carla. When they actually meet, they ingratiate themselves and pose as her protectors telling her that she is in danger from someone who is trying to kill her related to her patient. They also find out what Carla knows and to have her report any new findings to them. She can call them day or night. They will later give her false info that will lead her to the trap where she gets killed.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when other bodies are discovered or other people disappear and Carla finds herself in more danger.
Life Threatening 18: Who can Carla trust anymore?
Villains’ Plan 5: Why is the Villain trying to get Carla kicked off this case?
11. All is Lost (75):
Twist: It just got more dangerous when Carla’s house is ransacked.
Clue: Carla comes home from work and catches her brother-in-law ransacking her house, looking for the Glock. He accuses her of taking it. She denies taking it and orders him out of the house immediately or she’ll call the cops.
Misdirection #6: We think it’s Carla’s brother-in-law that misplaced the gun when actually it was her nephew that did this to keep it for his protection if he were to need it at a later time. The nephew has come to realize that the man is not his friend and is actually dangerous.
Twist: New information comes to light when Carla learns that the child didn’t run away. Instead, she was kidnapped. Now they really need remote viewing to solve this crisis.
Mystery 20: How is Carla going to use the remote viewing group to find not only the hiker, but also the child?
Villain’s Plan 5: To kidnap the child to get info from her.
Life Threatening 18: How is Carla going to rescue the child?
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85):
Reveal: Carla’s brother-in-law was the one who ransacked her house looking for the Glock that the boy hid in her purse.
Reveal: Richard calls Carla and warns her that her patient has escaped the hospital and he’s disappeared. The police are looking for him. Be on the lookout.
Twist: Carla has lost her resources when she gets fired from her hypnotherapy job.
Because of the drama and threats to the town’s clinic, she’s fired and walked to the door with her shoebox.
Distrust: Richard fires Carla. She sees him as her adversary over this.
Twist: Dr. Schneider is actually the one who discharges Carla because he believes her patient is leading her directly to the source of the killings. He has Richard do the dirty work.
Carla, really discouraged, meets with the dream group to get help. They encourage her to pay close attention to her dreams.
Twist: Someone changes sides when the father finally realizes that he needs to ally himself with Carla to find his daughter.
Twist: We see an unexpected side of someone when Carla and the father team up to push forward.
Mystery 21: How are Carla and the father going to be able to solve this mystery together?
Life Threatening 19: How can Carla and the father stay safe long enough to see the Villain or villains behind bars?
Villain’s Plan 6: To isolate Carla, get her to a remote location and kill her.
13. Break into Three (85):
The world of synthesis is at hand.
Mystery 22: Will the technique work?
Life Threatening 20: Will Carla and the little girl’s father find the little girl safe?
Trust: Simon calls her and says he’s worried about her and thinks she should get off the case she’s working on because he knows she’s in danger.
Clue: When Carla won’t return his calls, Simon stops by Carla’s mother’s home to find out where she is. She tells him Carla is working late on a project.
Reveal: Carla remembers a detail from one of her dreams that may be a clue to where the girl is. The girl’s father shares a dream he had and they analyze the two dreams and figure out where the girl is. This gives them a clue to where to search for the girl.
14. Finale (85-110):
It’s the battle.
Distrust: Dr. Schneider promises her that she’ll be safe, but in the end, he sets a trap for Carla which results in her having to fight for her life against the Sasquatch killer.
Carla, with the girl’s father, find the location of the girl. They rescue her.
Trust: Simon ends up helping to save Carla during the finale.
Twist: Carla gets a call from Dr. Schneider who tells her he’s got a tip on the location of the camper’s body and suggests she meet him there.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when Carla and Simon arrive at a remote location where they find the remains of the camper’s body and Dr. Schneider.
Reveal: Dr. Schneider has revealed himself to be a villain.
Reveal: Carla’s husband has actually loved her all along and they reconcile.
Clue: Simon drops by Carla’s office and she’s not there. Her boss tells him Carla got a call and raced out of there.
Clue: Simon tries to call her, but Carla still won’t answer.
Clue: Simon drives his car using the tracking device on Carla’s phone to guide him.
Clue: Simon sees Carla’s car at a deserted campground, stops, parks and starts looking for her.
Twist: New options emerge when they also find the child’s mother who is being imprisoned in a makeshift cage.
Twist: It just got even more dangerous when they face the Sasquatch killer directly.
Twist: Secret identity uncovered when a battle ensues. Carla discovers the Glock that her nephew secretly hid in her backpack. She fumbles with the gun, shoots and misses several times. With the killer now on top of her, she fires one more shot and kills the disturbed man dressed as a Sasquatch.
Mystery 23: How is Carla going to out-battle the Villain or villains and survive?
Mystery 24 If so, how?
Mystery 25: Who else will step forward and team up with Carla to defeat the Villain or villains?
Mystery 26: Why did the killer dress up as a Sasquatch and kill people who were in the wilderness?
Mystery 27: Did the killer’s family know all along that this was happening?
Mystery 28: If so, why didn’t they intervene and stop the kid from killing?
Reveal: The cops arrive and arrest Carla’s sister’s boyfriend on charges of breaking and entering and possession of a stolen gun. He also has outstanding warrants for assault.
Reveal: Carla and Simon decide to distance themselves from her family and relocate to another city where Simon has been offered a new job.
15. Final Image (110):
Carla and Simon have reunited. They turn on a scifi horror movie that’s about a Sasquatch terrorizing a community. They laugh at the coincidence and immediately change the station because enough is enough.
-
Sue Swenson Gives Great Clues!
What I learned is that this process of planting clue trails into the map helps to build out the script and is well worth the effort and time.
1A. Opening Image (1): (A)
A Sasquatch-looking beast is viciously attacking a camper and beating him to death. Then he tears off the camper’s jacket and shirt and starts taking bites out of the body.
Mystery 1: What is this creature?
Mystery 2: Who is the camper?
Mystery 3: Are Sasquatch for real?
Mystery 4: Where is the killing of this camper taking place?
Trust: Carla is welcomed back to work after a long leave of absence. Carla is grateful to have a mentor, Dr. Schneider, who believes in her and encourages her to come back to work after her leave of absence.
Trust: Richard, her supervisor, welcomes her back to work. Initially he seems positive and enthusiastic to have her back and to share the workload.
Reveal: The “Sasquatch” is actually a deranged man dressed as a bigfoot on a killing spree.
Reveal: Carla was on a long leave of absence because she witnessed her patient violently kill himself and she has PTSD.
2. Theme (5): Is blood thicker than water?
Carla attends her sister’s son’s birthday party. The sister’s husband gives the kid, 11, a Glock. He points it at Carla who freaks.
Clue: Carla attends her sister’s son’s birthday party. The sister’s husband gives the kid, 11, a Glock. He points it at Carla who freaks. The boyfriend laughs. A trust is violated.
Trust: Simon, her husband, expresses sincere, realistic concerns about how her family is raising her nephew and dangers that the nephew and the rest of the family are exposing themselves to with the gift of a Glock to a kid. There is a verbal confrontation between Simon and her family.
Reveal: Carla’s sister’s boyfriend is actually a drug dealer who carries.
Life Threatening 1: Are Carla’s mother, sister, brother in-law and nephew a physical danger to her? (The boy’s father jokes that this Glock is for Sasquatch killings.)
Life Threatening 2: Could Carla get shot by her own nephew?
Life Threatening 3: What kind of family gives an 11 year old kid a gun for his birthday, and it’s not a hunting rifle?
Mystery 5: Is Carla’s family a safe family to associate with?
Mystery 6: What’s wrong with this family?
Twist: A trust is violated when Carla’s nephew is allowed to point a Glock at her in front of his parents and grandmother, even though it’s unloaded.
3. Set-up (1-10):
Scene: Carla is chastising her sister, Jenny, about the Glock. Jenny tells her to mind her own business. Tense conversation on the phone with Carla’s separated husband who tells her this is just one more example of why he doesn’t want anything to do with her family. She hangs up on him.
Clue: In a phone call with Simon, who berates her to move away from her family and detach from their dysfunction, she tells him that her dad, while dying of cancer, begged her to take care of her mother, sister and nephew.
Clue: Carla is chastising her sister, Jenny, about the Glock. Jenny tells her to mind her own business.
Mystery 7: Why is Carla codependent with an obviously dangerous family of origin?
Mystery 8: What power does Carla’s family have over her?
Life Threatening 4: If Carla’s husband abandons her, who is she going to turn to for protection?
Reveal: Carla shares a family tragedy with her mother and sister because when her father died of cancer, he made her promise to take care of her vulnerable, troubled mother and sister.
Carla is sleeping alone and has a violent nightmare. She wakes up terrified and calls her husband who is impatient with her.
Clue: Carla has a nightmare about three helicopters with pilots wearing gas masks who fly over her backyard.
Trust: Simon always takes her calls, regardless of the time of day or night.
Twist: A trust is violated when Carla’s husband gets impatient with her regarding her terror about her nightmare and isn’t supportive of her.
Distrust: Simon demonstrates anger and irresponsible behavior with her when he breaks a lamp when he’s mad at her
Mystery 7: What is this nightmare about?
Mystery 8: Does this nightmare harbor something that’s precognitive that could happen to Carla?
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla starts having nightmares.
Clue: Carla regresses her patient and learns that he’s describing a similar nightmare.
Clue: The patient also describes another nightmare about watching a TV news broadcast that announces a fourth person has been killed by a Sasquatch-like creature. Carla has a similar nightmare and learns that both nightmares were precognitive when she hears the news the following day that indeed, a fourth person was killed by a Sasquatch-like creature.
Scene where Carla is providing a hypnotherapy session to a patient who’s having nightmares.
Reveal: Carla is having the same nightmare as her patient.
Reveal: The nightmare is precognitive. It’s something sh’e going to experience. Possibly her patient as well.
Trust: Dr. Schneider encourages Richard to be hard on Carla so Dr. Schneider can play good cop with Richard and have Richard play bad cop. Every time Richard is hard on her or judgmental, Dr. Schneider takes her part. But it’s really Dr. Schneider who is the devious one.
Reveal: Dr. Schneider is politically connected to the Sasquatch killer’s father.
Mystery 9: Do the patient’s nightmares have anything to do with her nightmares?
Mystery 10: What’s going on in her life that she’s having nightmares?
Life Threatening 5: Are any of her nightmares or the patient’s nightmares a threat to Carla or her patient?
Twist: Not only is Carla having nightmares, but so is her patient.
Distrust: Richard micromanages her, finds fault with her work and is concerned about her anxiety level. He expresses doubts that maybe she came back to work too soon.
Trust: Dr. Schneider takes her part after Richard confronts her at the big staff meeting.
Clue: Carla has a second nightmare involving being chased by a Sasquatch. She learns during the next time she regresses her patient that he had a similar nightmare.
TV NEWS ANNOUNCEMENTS. This is the fourth killing of people in remote areas of AZ involving a Big Foot type creature.
Clue: Helicopters are flying over the wilderness area looking for the Sasquatch creature or other evidence of a possible killer.
Mystery 9: Are these creatures for real?
Life Threatening 6: Who will get killed next?
Life Threatening 7: What are the authorities doing about it?
Mystery 10: Is Carla going to get pulled into these killings?
Twist: It just got more dangerous.
4. Catalyst (12):
Carla’s supervisor in the hypnotherapy department assigns a troubled patient to her from the psych ward of the hospital because they can’t afford to keep Carla on light duty given staff shortages.
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla is assigned a troubled patient who also has nightmares. This ups the stress and danger for Carla.
Reveal: Carla has returned from a leave of absence as a result of the trauma she’s been through. She unfortunately witnessed a former patient kill himself in front of her.
Twist: It turns out both Carla and the patient are both having the same nightmares.
Reveal: Carla is susceptible to nightmares because a former patient killed himself in front of her.
Reveal: (re: sick patient’s history) Carla reads his med. Records and complains to Richard that this pt. has a history of violence and she doesn’t want to work with him. Dr. Schneider reassures her that he’s heavily medicated.
She’s opposed to working with this guy because she’s just come back from a LOA due to her own trauma regarding PTSD.
Trust: Richard expresses concern that Carla could be in danger. He expresses this to Dr. Schneider who adamantly disagrees with him.
But Dr. Schneider talks her into doing it because she’s the most skilled at hypnotherapy. This sick patient keeps complaining of these nightmares.
Distrust: Dr. Schneider encourages Carla to work with the sick patient even though he knows she’s fragile, and over her protests.
Reveal: Carla will learn from working with this patient that both her nightmares and the patient’s nightmares are linked and hold clues to the unsolved murders.
Reveal: There is a note on Carla’s desk blaming her for the fact that it’s her fault that her former patient, Mr. Jones, killed himself. She calls her husband who asks her who would leave such a cruel note.
Clue: Carla breaks down in tears when she finds a note on her desk at work blaming her for the fact that her former patient, Mr. Jones, killed himself in front of her and she should have prevented it.
Mystery 11: What’s the danger to Carla from working with this sick patient?
Clue: Carla has a nightmare about one of her former patients who appeared to be normal and mild mannered. He suddenly gets up, walks to the window and pulls out a gun and kills himself in front of her.
Twist: This patient has a history of violence which makes things more dangerous for Carla.
Clue: When her boss hands her the file of her new patient, he cautions her that the new patient has a similar background to the other patient, but he is well medicated and has been authorized to work with her.
Mystery 12: Will Carla’s own mental health be threatened by working with a sick patient who’s been traumatized?
Twist: Things get even more dangerous for Carla when the patient is released from the hospital.
Mystery 13: What will Carla learn from working with this patient?
Clue: Another danger is that Carla’s anxiety level increases significantly after she starts working with this patient, and she starts having sleep problems which raise the frequency and intensity of her nightmares.
Clue: Carla is showing her fragility in different ways such as having a panic attack during a staff meeting.
A group of Sasquatch hunters go out to hunt the Sasquatch. They don’t find the Sasquatch, but they find another mutilated body.
Reveal: ID of the body reveals it to be someone connected to the department.
Life Threatening 8: What kind of danger could Carla be facing from working with this new patient?
Life Threatening 9: Is Carla prepared to protect herself in the event that things go south with this patient?
5. Debate (12-25):
A hiker is found along the side of a dirt road. This is in a remote area of northern Arizona or NM. He’s delirious, probably from heat exhaustion and lack of water. He claims to have witnessed a murder but has been wandering for hours. He escapes, but he witnesses the camper getting killed.
Twist: A new problem occurs when a hiker is found along the side of a dirt road and claims that he witnessed a Sasquatch type creature murder a camper.
Carla addresses whether to take this assignment because she’s already working with one highly troubled patient and still feels vulnerable from the trauma regarding the suicide of a previous patient.
Distrust: Simon moves out and declares that he can’t take it anymore regarding his toxic relationship with Carla’s family that she can’t seem to break with.
Also, she’s having marital problems and her husband has just moved out. She’s feeling vulnerable and traumatized.
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla’s husband moves out after an argument.
She then discusses whether to take on a second highly disturbed patient with her boss who tells her that they need her to step up and take this assignment because she’s the only hypnotherapist on staff at this point. She grudgingly agrees to step up to the plate.
Reveal: The hiker admits that he’s been having nightmares.
Reveal: Carla’s husband has been doing some investigation and learns that her sister’s boyfriend has been jailed for shooting a firearm while at a party while he was intoxicated. He received a suspended sentence and a fine and community service. He warns Carla that she needs to stay away from her family because he’s unstable and doesn’t like her. Please move away and watch your back. I know you promised your father but you can only do so much.
Clue: In a tense phone call between Carla and her husband, Simon, on the phone after they separate, he pleads with her to distance herself from her family. He tells her that the Glock incident is just one of many red flags that she’s in denial about and that he’s concerned for her safety.
Reveal: Carla is afraid to sleep because she’s afraid of having nightmares.
Clue: While awake, Carla hears yelling and the sound of a gunshot next door at her mom’s and sister’s house. Carla calls 911 and reports a possible crime. She cautiously goes to her sister’s house to investigate. There was obviously an argument but nothing seems disturbed, nobody injured. The cops arrive and the sister, mother and boyfriend deny her claims. Her mom tells the cops that Carla is still recovering from a breakdown and she is fragile and imagines things.
Mystery 14: What could possibly go wrong?
Mystery 15: Who is this guy and is he trustworthy?
Villain’s Plan 1: Will the Sasquatch killer continue to kill?
Villain’s Plan 2: If so, could she be a target?
Life Threatening 10: How is Carla going to be able to cope with this life threatening situation given her emotional vulnerability?
6. Break into Two (25): Revised.
Twist: A new problem occurs when a traumatized child is found who claims her mother disappeared in a remote area of Arizona. The little girl claims to have heard her mother scream, then the little girl ran away.
Carla is called into her boss’s office and informed about the missing mother and traumatized child. He gives her an ultimatum, either take these assignments or he’s going to replace her. She agrees to take yet another assignment.
Trust: To assuage her protests, Dr. Schneider takes her out for a meal and introduces her to the dangerous Sasquatch killer’s family.
Distrust: But what he’s really doing is exposing her to the dangerous family of the Sasquatch killer so they can all find out what she knows and they learn that she’s getting close to finding out who the Sasquatch killer is.
Reveal: Dr Schneider is friends with the killer’s family because he was once the killer’s therapist.
Twist: Dr. Schneider was the killer’s therapist and experimented on him with an unorthodox technique/treatment that went haywire in the boy’s brain leading to violence and murder.
Mystery 15: Are these patients’ situations connected? If so, how?
Life Threatening 11: Will working on all of these assignments increase Carla’s danger?
Villain’s Plan 3: Was the mother murdered, and if so, was it by the same killer?
Mystery 16: Will Carla get to the bottom of these mysteries before somebody else gets killed?
Life Threatening 11: Will anybody else be killed?
7. B Story (30):
Dream Group attendance – the dream group is Carla’s B story. She’s known these people for years. They are her real family. She goes to them for love, support, acceptance, belonging and peace.
Reveal: Carla’s dreams and her patient’s dreams are connected.
Twist: New options emerge when Carla meets with her dream group. They take an interest in her nightmares and are supportive when they work to help her interpret them.
Reveal: The group interprets new dreams that serve as a warning for Carla and her patient.
Mystery 17: Will the members of the dream group help Carla to successfully solve these crimes and dangers?
Life Threatening 12: Will Carla continue to be safe in this dream group.
Life Threatening 13: Could there be a villain’s co-conspirator connected to the group in some way that would endanger Carla?
8. Fun and Games (30-55):
a. The remote viewing process in practice.
b. Tracking the dead body.
c. Finding clues and evidence through dream interpretation and remote viewing.
d. The dream group interpreting the clues to find the body.
e. The kid and Carla become a risk because Carla is starting to access information on the killing.
f. The kid knows something that the Villains are aware she knows and they want to silence her.
g. The kid and Carla are in danger.
h. They’re on the run.
Distrust: Simon tells her she’s got a lot of problems, and she needs therapy and to go get help.
Clue: Simon secretly puts a tracking device on Carla’s phone after one of their fights.
Distrust: Simon’s petty and takes some of her stuff out of their house.
Reveal: The cops find the dazed hiker’s friend’s body through the group’s remote viewing.
Reveal: The remote viewers find the child’s mother’s jacket.
Reveal: The child saw the man under the Sasquatch costume when he thought no one was around. He spotted the child who ran away and he couldn’t catch her.
Reveal: The dream group realizes that the kid can recognize the killer and he knows what she looks like too.
Reveal: The hiker’s memories and identity are revealed through Carla’s hypnotherapy treatment of the hiker.
Reveal: The child refuses to go with her daddy when she reveals that he used to beat mommy. The authorities agree to let her stay with Carla.
Mystery 18: Will Carla find out who the Villains are before they can hurt her and the girl?
Life Threatening 14: How can Carla and the girl stay safe?
Life Threatening 15: Will Carla and the dream group identify the Villain or villains before anybody else gets killed?
Villains’ Plan 4: What will the bad guys do to get to Carla and the girl?
Life Threatening 16: Who can Carla trust to protect her and the girl?
Twist: New options emerge when a clue is unearthed through the dream group.
Twist: A secret location is uncovered through the efforts of the remote viewing group.
Twist: A secret identity is revealed when the hiker’s identify is discovered through hypnotherapy with him.
9. Midpoint (55):
Carla starts conducting hypnotherapy on the little girl to help her recall memories of the trauma in the woods.
Twist: A trust is violated when the missing woman’s husband demands that Carla be taken off their daughter’s case. He feels that Carla is unstable, unreliable and ineffective and is dangerous as a consequence. He threatens a lawsuit if Carla isn’t removed from this case.
Twist: The child refuses to go with Daddy because she said he beats Mommy. He backs off pushing Carla to get off the case.
Mystery 19: Who’s going to solve this case if Carla is removed from working with the hiker and girl?
Life Threatening 17: What’s going to happen to Carla if she’s removed from the case?
10. Bad Guys Close In (55-75):
Reveal: The killer’s family has sent over two thugs posing as FBI agents to find out what Carla knows and to have her report any new findings to them.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when other bodies are discovered or other people disappear and Carla finds herself in more danger.
Life Threatening 18: Who can Carla trust anymore?
Villains’ Plan 5: Why is the Villain trying to get Carla kicked off this case?
11. All is Lost (75):
Twist: It just got more dangerous when Carla’s house is ransacked.
Clue: Carla comes home from work and catches her brother-in-law ransacking her house, looking for the Glock. He accuses her of taking it. She denies taking it and orders him out of the house immediately or she’ll call the cops.
Twist: New information comes to light when Carla learns that the child didn’t run away. Instead, she was kidnapped. Now they really need remote viewing to solve this crisis.
Mystery 20: How is Carla going to use the remote viewing group to find not only the hiker, but also the child?
Villain’s Plan 5: To kidnap the child to get info from her.
Life Threatening 18: How is Carla going to rescue the child?
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85):
Reveal: Carla’s brother-in-law was the one who ransacked her house looking for the Glock that the boy hid in her purse.
Reveal: Richard calls Carla and warns her that her patient has escaped the hospital and he’s disappeared. The police are looking for him. Be on the lookout.
Twist: Carla has lost her resources when she gets fired from her hypnotherapy job.
Because of the drama and threats to the town’s clinic, she’s fired and walked to the door with her shoebox.
Distrust: Richard fires Carla. She sees him as her adversary over this.
Trust: Richard is actually trying to protect her because he believes her patient is dangerous to her.
Carla, really discouraged, meets with the dream group to get help. They encourage her to pay close attention to her dreams.
Twist: Someone changes sides when the father finally realizes that he needs to ally himself with Carla to find his daughter.
Twist: We see an unexpected side of someone when Carla and the father team up to push forward.
Mystery 21: How are Carla and the father going to be able to solve this mystery together?
Life Threatening 19: How can Carla and the father stay safe long enough to see the Villain or villains behind bars?
Villain’s Plan 6: To isolate Carla, get her to a remote location and kill her.
13. Break into Three (85):
The world of synthesis is at hand.
Mystery 22: Will the technique work?
Life Threatening 20: Will Carla and the little girl’s father find the little girl safe?
Trust: Simon calls her and says he’s worried about her and thinks she should get off the case she’s working on because he knows she’s in danger.
Clue: When Carla won’t return his calls, Simon stops by Carla’s mother’s home to find out where she is. She tells him Carla is working late on a project.
Reveal: Carla remembers a detail from one of her dreams that may be a clue to where the girl is. The girl’s father shares a dream he had and they analyze the two dreams and figure out where the girl is. This gives them a clue to where to search for the girl.
14. Finale (85-110):
It’s the battle.
Distrust: Dr. Schneider promises her that she’ll be safe, but in the end, he sets a trap for Carla which results in her having to fight for her life against the Sasquatch killer.
Carla, with the girl’s father, find the location of the girl. They rescue her.
Trust: Simon ends up helping to save Carla during the finale.
Twist: Carla gets a call from Dr. Schneider who tells her he’s got a tip on the location of the camper’s body and suggests she meet him there.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when Carla and Simon arrive at a remote location where they find the remains of the camper’s body and Dr. Schneider.
Reveal: Dr. Schneider has revealed himself to be a villain.
Reveal: Carla’s husband has actually loved her all along and they reconcile.
Clue: Simon drops by Carla’s office and she’s not there. Her boss tells him Carla got a call and raced out of there.
Clue: Simon tries to call her, but Carla still won’t answer.
Clue: Simon drives his car using the tracking device on Carla’s phone to guide him.
Clue: Simon sees Carla’s car at a deserted campground, stops, parks and starts looking for her.
Twist: New options emerge when they also find the child’s mother who is being imprisoned in a makeshift cage.
Twist: It just got even more dangerous when they face the Sasquatch killer directly.
Twist: Secret identify uncovered when a battle ensues. Carla pulls out the Glock that she found in her purse and kills a man dressed as a Sasquatch.
Mystery 23: How is Carla going to out-battle the Villain or villains and survive?
Mystery 24 If so, how?
Mystery 25: Who else will step forward and team up with Carla to defeat the Villain or villains?
Mystery 26: Why did the killer dress up as a Sasquatch and kill people who were in the wilderness?
Mystery 27: Did the killer’s family know all along that this was happening?
Mystery 28: If so, why didn’t they intervene and stop the kid from killing?
Reveal: The cops arrive and arrest Carla’s sister’s boyfriend on charges of breaking and entering and possession of a stolen gun. He also has outstanding warrants for assault.
Reveal: Carla and Simon decide to distance themselves from her family and relocate to another city where Simon has been offered a new job.
15. Final Image (110):
Carla and Simon have reunited. They turn on a scifi horror movie that’s about a Sasquatch terrorizing a community. They laugh at the coincidence and immediately change the station because enough is enough.
-
Sue Swenson’s Dramatic Reveals
What I learned is that this is a lot of hard work and detail. However, I developed some insights and ideas for expanding the story, adding new suspense elements and heightening the intrigue. The process actually helps to build out the story, and I saw this for myself. So the time, labor and frustration were all worth it.
1. Make a list of the important reveals that you want the audience to experience.
2. Sequence them to fit into your Thriller Map.
3. With each reveal, make sure the following are in place:
A. What is the reveal?
B. How did it get covered up?
C. What M.I.S. can be used to create demand to know the
truth?
D. When you reveal the truth, it must have dramatic
impact.4. Build any improvements into your Thriller Map.
5. Tell us about the reveals you built into your Thriller Map.
1A. Opening Image (1): (A)
A Sasquatch-looking beast is viciously attacking a camper and beating him to death. Then he tears off the camper’s jacket and shirt and starts taking bites out of the body.
Mystery 1: What is this creature?
Mystery 2: Who is the camper?
Mystery 3: Are Sasquatch for real?
Mystery 4: Where is the killing of this camper taking place?
Trust: Carla is welcomed back to work after a long leave of absence. Carla is grateful to have a mentor, Dr. Schneider, who believes in her and encourages her to come back to work after her leave of absence.
Trust: Richard, her supervisor, welcomes her back to work. Initially he seems positive and enthusiastic to have her back and to share the workload.
Reveal: The “Sasquatch” is actually a deranged man dressed as a bigfoot on a killing spree.
Reveal: Carla was on a long leave of absence because she witnessed her patient violently kill himself and she has PTSD.
2. Theme (5): Is blood thicker than water?
Carla attends her sister’s son’s birthday party. The sister’s husband gives the kid, 11, a Glock. He points it at Carla who freaks.
Trust: Simon, her husband, expresses sincere, realistic concerns about how her family is raising her nephew and dangers that the nephew and the rest of the family are exposing themselves to with the gift of a Glock to a kid. There is a verbal confrontation between Simon and her family.
Reveal: Carla’s sister’s boyfriend is actually a drug dealer who carries.
Life Threatening 1: Are Carla’s mother, sister, brother in-law and nephew a physical danger to her? (The boy’s father jokes that this Glock is for Sasquatch killings.)
Life Threatening 2: Could Carla get shot by her own nephew?
Life Threatening 3: What kind of family gives an 11 year old kid a gun for his birthday, and it’s not a hunting rifle?
Mystery 5: Is Carla’s family a safe family to associate with?
Mystery 6: What’s wrong with this family?
Twist: A trust is violated when Carla’s nephew is allowed to point a Glock at her in front of his parents and grandmother, even though it’s unloaded.
3. Set-up (1-10):
Scene: Carla is chastising her sister, Jenny, about the Glock. Jenny tells her to mind her own business. Tense conversation on the phone with Carla’s separated husband who tells her this is just one more example of why he doesn’t want anything to do with her family. She hangs up on him.
Mystery 7: Why is Carla codependent with an obviously dangerous family of origin?
Mystery 8: What power does Carla’s family have over her?
Life Threatening 4: If Carla’s husband abandons her, who is she going to turn to for protection?
Reveal: Carla shares a family tragedy with her mother and sister because when her father died of cancer, he made her promise to take care of her vulnerable, troubled mother and sister.
Carla is sleeping alone and has a violent nightmare. She wakes up terrified and calls her husband who is impatient with her.
Trust: Simon always takes her calls, regardless of the time of day or night.
Twist: A trust is violated when Carla’s husband gets impatient with her regarding her terror about her nightmare and isn’t supportive of her.
Distrust: Simon demonstrates anger and irresponsible behavior with her when he breaks a lamp when he’s mad at her
Mystery 7: What is this nightmare about?
Mystery 8: Does this nightmare harbor something that’s precognitive that could happen to Carla?
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla starts having nightmares.
Reveal: Carla is having the same nightmare as her patient.
Reveal: The nightmare is precognitive. It’s something sh’e going to experience. Possibly her patient as well.
Scene where Carla is providing a hypnotherapy session to a patient who’s having nightmares.
Trust: Dr. Schneider encourages Richard to be hard on Carla so Dr. Schneider can play good cop with Richard and have Richard play bad cop. Every time Richard is hard on her or judgmental, Dr. Schneider takes her part. But it’s really Dr. Schneider who is the devious one.
Reveal: Dr. Schneider is politically connected to the Sasquatch killer’s father.
Mystery 9: Do the patient’s nightmares have anything to do with her nightmares?
Mystery 10: What’s going on in her life that she’s having nightmares?
Life Threatening 5: Are any of her nightmares or the patient’s nightmares a threat to Carla or her patient?
Twist: Not only is Carla having nightmares, but so is her patient.
Distrust: Richard micromanages her, finds fault with her work and is concerned about her anxiety level. He expresses doubts that maybe she came back to work too soon.
Trust: Dr. Schneider takes her part after Richard confronts her at the big staff meeting.
TV NEWS ANNOUNCEMENTS. This is the fourth killing of people in remote areas of AZ involving a Big Foot type creature.
Mystery 9: Are these creatures for real?
Life Threatening 6: Who will get killed next?
Life Threatening 7: What are the authorities doing about it?
Mystery 10: Is Carla going to get pulled into these killings?
Twist: It just got more dangerous.
4. Catalyst (12):
Carla’s supervisor in the hypnotherapy department assigns a troubled patient to her from the psych ward of the hospital because they can’t afford to keep Carla on light duty given staff shortages.
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla is assigned a troubled patient who also has nightmares. This ups the stress and danger for Carla.
Reveal: Carla has returned from a leave of absence as a result of the trauma she’s been through. She unfortunately witnessed a former patient kill himself in front of her.
Twist: It turns out both Carla and the patient are both having the same nightmares.
Reveal: Carla is susceptible to nightmares because a former patient killed himself in front of her.
Reveal: (re: sick patient’s history) Carla reads his med. Records and complains to Richard that this pt. has a history of violence and she doesn’t want to work with him. Dr. Schneider reassures her that he’s heavily medicated.
She’s opposed to working with this guy because she’s just come back from a LOA due to her own trauma regarding PTSD.
Trust: Richard expresses concern that Carla could be in danger. He expresses this to Dr. Schneider who adamantly disagrees with him.
But Dr. Schneider talks her into doing it because she’s the most skilled at hypnotherapy. This sick patient keeps complaining of these nightmares.
Distrust: Dr. Schneider encourages Carla to work with the sick patient even though he knows she’s fragile, and over her protests.
Reveal: Carla will learn from working with this patient that both her nightmares and the patient’s nightmares are linked and hold clues to the unsolved murders.
Reveal: There is a note on Carla’s desk blaming her for the fact that it’s her fault that her former patient, Mr. Jones, killed himself. She calls her husband who asks her who would leave such a cruel note.
Mystery 11: What’s the danger to Carla from working with this sick patient?
Twist: This patient has a history of violence which makes things more dangerous for Carla.
Mystery 12: Will Carla’s own mental health be threatened by working with a sick patient who’s been traumatized?
Twist: Things get even more dangerous for Carla when the patient is released from the hospital.
Mystery 13: What will Carla learn from working with this patient?
A group of Sasquatch hunters go out to hunt the Sasquatch. They don’t find the Sasquatch, but they find another mutilated body.
Reveal: ID of the body reveals it to be someone connected to the department.
Life Threatening 8: What kind of danger could Carla be facing from working with this new patient?
Life Threatening 9: Is Carla prepared to protect herself in the event that things go south with this patient?
5. Debate (12-25):
A hiker is found along the side of a dirt road. This is in a remote area of northern Arizona or NM. He’s delirious, probably from heat exhaustion and lack of water. He claims to have witnessed a murder but has been wandering for hours. He escapes, but he witnesses the camper getting killed.
Twist: A new problem occurs when a hiker is found along the side of a dirt road and claims that he witnessed a Sasquatch type creature murder a camper.
Carla addresses whether to take this assignment because she’s already working with one highly troubled patient and still feels vulnerable from the trauma regarding the suicide of a previous patient.
Distrust: Simon moves out and declares that he can’t take it anymore regarding his toxic relationship with Carla’s family that she can’t seem to break with.
Also, she’s having marital problems and her husband has just moved out. She’s feeling vulnerable and traumatized.
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla’s husband moves out after an argument.
She then discusses whether to take on a second highly disturbed patient with her boss who tells her that they need her to step up and take this assignment because she’s the only hypnotherapist on staff at this point. She grudgingly agrees to step up to the plate.
Reveal: The hiker admits that he’s been having nightmares.
Reveal: Carla’s husband has been doing some investigation and learns that her sister’s boyfriend has been jailed for shooting a firearm while at a party while he was intoxicated. He received a suspended sentence and a fine and community service. He warns Carla that she needs to stay away from her family because he’s unstable and doesn’t like her. Please move away and watch your back. I know you promised your father but you can only do so much.
Reveal: Carla is afraid to sleep because she’s afraid of having nightmares.
While awake, Carla hears yelling and the sound of a gunshot next door at her mom’s and sister’s house. Carla calls 911 and report a possible crime. She cautiously goes to her sister’s house to investigate. There was obviously and argument but nothing seems disturbed, nobody injured. The cops arrive and the sister, mother and boyfriend deny her claims. Her mom tells the cops that Carla is still recovering from a breakdown and she is fragile and imagines things.
Mystery 14: What could possibly go wrong?
Mystery 15: Who is this guy and is he trustworthy?
Villain’s Plan 1: Will the Sasquatch killer continue to kill?
Villain’s Plan 2: If so, could she be a target?
Life Threatening 10: How is Carla going to be able to cope with this life threatening situation given her emotional vulnerability?
6. Break into Two (25): Revised.
Twist: A new problem occurs when a traumatized child is found who claims her mother disappeared in a remote area of Arizona. The little girl claims to have heard her mother scream, then the little girl ran away.
Carla is called into her boss’s office and informed about the missing mother and traumatized child. He gives her an ultimatum, either take these assignments or he’s going to replace her. She agrees to take yet another assignment.
Trust: To assuage her protests, Dr. Schneider takes her out for a meal and introduces her to the dangerous Sasquatch killer’s family.
Distrust: But what he’s really doing is exposing her to the dangerous family of the Sasquatch killer so they can all find out what she knows and they learn that she’s getting close to finding out who the Sasquatch killer is.
Reveal: Dr Schneider is friends with the killer’s family because he was once the killer’s therapist.
Twist: Dr. Schneider was the killer’s therapist and experimented on him with an unorthodox technique/treatment that went haywire in the boy’s brain leading to violence and murder.
Mystery 15: Are these patients’ situations connected? If so, how?
Life Threatening 11: Will working on all of these assignments increase Carla’s danger?
Villain’s Plan 3: Was the mother murdered, and if so, was it by the same killer?
Mystery 16: Will Carla get to the bottom of these mysteries before somebody else gets killed?
Life Threatening 11: Will anybody else be killed?
7. B Story (30):
Dream Group attendance – the dream group is Carla’s B story. She’s known these people for years. They are her real family. She goes to them for love, support, acceptance, belonging and peace.
Reveal: Carla’s dreams and her patient’s dreams are connected.
Twist: New options emerge when Carla meets with her dream group. They take an interest in her nightmares and are supportive when they work to help her interpret them.
Reveal: The group interprets new dreams that serve as a warning for Carla and her patient.
Mystery 17: Will the members of the dream group help Carla to successfully solve these crimes and dangers?
Life Threatening 12: Will Carla continue to be safe in this dream group.
Life Threatening 13: Could there be a villain’s co-conspirator connected to the group in some way that would endanger Carla?
8. Fun and Games (30-55):
a. The remote viewing process in practice.
b. Tracking the dead body.
c. Finding clues and evidence through dream interpretation and remote viewing.
d. The dream group interpreting the clues to find the body.
e. The kid and Carla become a risk because Carla is starting to access information on the killing.
f. The kid knows something that the Villains are aware she knows and they want to silence her.
g. The kid and Carla are in danger.
h. They’re on the run.
Distrust: Simon tells her she’s got a lot of problems, and she needs therapy and to go get help.
Distrust: Simon’s petty and takes some of her stuff out of their house.
Reveal: The cops find the dazed hiker’s friend’s body through the group’s remote viewing.
Reveal: The remote viewers find the child’s mother’s jacket.
Reveal: The child saw the man under the Sasquatch costume when he thought no one was around. He spotted the child who ran away and he couldn’t catch her.
Reveal: The dream group realizes that the kid can recognize the killer and he knows what she looks like too.
Reveal: The hiker’s memories and identity are revealed through Carla’s hypnotherapy treatment of the hiker.
Reveal: The child refuses to go with her daddy when she reveals that he used to beat mommy. The authorities agree to let her stay with Carla.
Mystery 18: Will Carla find out who the Villains are before they can hurt her and the girl?
Life Threatening 14: How can Carla and the girl stay safe?
Life Threatening 15: Will Carla and the dream group identify the Villain or villains before anybody else gets killed?
Villains’ Plan 4: What will the bad guys do to get to Carla and the girl?
Life Threatening 16: Who can Carla trust to protect her and the girl?
Twist: New options emerge when a clue is unearthed through the dream group.
Twist: A secret location is uncovered through the efforts of the remote viewing group.
Twist: A secret identity is revealed when the hiker’s identify is discovered through hypnotherapy with him.
9. Midpoint (55):
Carla starts conducting hypnotherapy on the little girl to help her recall memories of the trauma in the woods.
Twist: A trust is violated when the missing woman’s husband demands that Carla be taken off their daughter’s case. He feels that Carla is unstable, unreliable and ineffective and is dangerous as a consequence. He threatens a lawsuit if Carla isn’t removed from this case.
Twist: The child refuses to go with Daddy because she said he beats Mommy. He backs off pushing Carla to get off the case.
Mystery 19: Who’s going to solve this case if Carla is removed from working with the hiker and girl?
Life Threatening 17: What’s going to happen to Carla if she’s removed from the case?
10. Bad Guys Close In (55-75):
Reveal: The killer’s family has sent over two thugs posing as FBI agents to find out what Carla knows and to have her report any new findings to them.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when other bodies are discovered or other people disappear and Carla finds herself in more danger.
Life Threatening 18: Who can Carla trust anymore?
Villains’ Plan 5: Why is the Villain trying to get Carla kicked off this case?
11. All is Lost (75):
Twist: It just got more dangerous when Carla’s house is ransacked.
Twist: New information comes to light when Carla learns that the child didn’t run away. Instead, she was kidnapped. Now they really need remote viewing to solve this crisis.
Mystery 20: How is Carla going to use the remote viewing group to find not only the hiker, but also the child?
Villain’s Plan 5: To kidnap the child to get info from her.
Life Threatening 18: How is Carla going to rescue the child?
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85):
Reveal: Carla’s brother-in-law was the one who ransacked her house looking for the Glock that the boy hid in her purse.
Reveal: Richard calls Carla and warns her that her patient has escaped the hospital and he’s disappeared. The police are looking for him. Be on the lookout.
Twist: Carla has lost her resources when she gets fired from her hypnotherapy job.
Because of the drama and threats to the town’s clinic, she’s fired and walked to the door with her shoebox.
Distrust: Richard fires Carla. She sees him as her adversary over this.
Trust: Richard is actually trying to protect her because he believes her patient is dangerous to her.
Carla, really discouraged, meets with the dream group to get help. They encourage her to pay close attention to her dreams.
Twist: Someone changes sides when the father finally realizes that he needs to ally himself with Carla to find his daughter.
Twist: We see an unexpected side of someone when Carla and the father team up to push forward.
Mystery 21: How are Carla and the father going to be able to solve this mystery together?
Life Threatening 19: How can Carla and the father stay safe long enough to see the Villain or villains behind bars?
Villain’s Plan 6: To isolate Carla, get her to a remote location and kill her.
13. Break into Three (85):
The world of synthesis is at hand.
Mystery 22: Will the technique work?
Life Threatening 20: Will Carla and the little girl’s father find the little girl safe?
Trust: Simon calls her and says he’s worried about her and thinks she should get off the case she’s working on because he knows she’s in danger.
Reveal: Carla remembers a detail from one of her dreams that may be a clue to where the girl is. The girl’s father shares a dream he had and they analyze the two dreams and figure out where the girl is. This gives them a clue to where to search for the girl.
14. Finale (85-110):
It’s the battle.
Distrust: Dr. Schneider promises her that she’ll be safe, but in the end, he sets a trap for Carla which results in her having to fight for her life against the Sasquatch killer.
Carla, with the girl’s father, find the location of the girl. They rescue her.
Trust: Simon ends up helping to save Carla during the finale.
Twist: Carla gets a call from Dr. Schneider who tells her he’s got a tip on the location of the camper’s body and suggests she meet him there.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when Carla and Simon arrive at a remote location where they find the remains of the camper’s body and Dr. Schneider.
Reveal: Dr. Schneider has revealed himself to be a villain.
Reveal: Carla’s husband has actually loved her all along and they reconcile.
Twist: New options emerge when they also find the child’s mother who is being imprisoned in a makeshift cage.
Twist: It just got even more dangerous when they face the Sasquatch killer directly.
Twist: Secret identify uncovered when a battle ensues. Carla pulls out the Glock that she found in her purse and kills a man dressed as a Sasquatch.
Mystery 23: How is Carla going to out-battle the Villain or villains and survive?
Mystery 24 If so, how?
Mystery 25: Who else will step forward and team up with Carla to defeat the Villain or villains?
Mystery 26: Why did the killer dress up as a Sasquatch and kill people who were in the wilderness?
Mystery 27: Did the killer’s family know all along that this was happening?
Mystery 28: If so, why didn’t they intervene and stop the kid from killing?
Reveal: The cops arrive and arrest Carla’s sister’s boyfriend on charges of breaking and entering and possession of a stolen gun. He also has outstanding warrants for assault.
Reveal: Carla and Simon decide to distance themselves from her family and relocate to another city where Simon has been offered a new job.
15. Final Image (110):
Carla and Simon have reunited. They turn on a scifi horror movie that’s about a Sasquatch terrorizing a community. They laugh at the coincidence and immediately change the station because enough is enough.
-
Sue Swenson’s Trust Relationships
What I learned doing this assignment is how to think about relationships in a way that fleshes out the story and provides me with plot options. These questions lead me to answers that can be used to build out my thriller story. This is a great way to grow and deepen and specify the story by requiring me to think through the details.
Create trust / distrust relationships between your characters and add them to your Thriller Map.
1. Make a list of the main characters.
Hero: Carla
Villain: Johnny, the sick kid disguised as a
Sasquatch.
Red
Herring Character: Carla’s husband,
Simon, he’s separated from Carla.
Trusted,
but shouldn’t be: The head of the
whole psychiatric department, Dr. Russell Schneider.
Isn’t
trusted, but should be: Her immediate supervisor, Richard and Simon, her
husband.2. With each character, ask these questions:
A. What is their basic state – trustable or not trustable?
Hero: Carla is trustable.
Villain: Johnny is not trustworthy.
Red Herring Character: Carla’s husband, Simon, is initially not trustable, but turns out at the end to be trustable.
Carla’s immediate supervisor, Richard: Trustable in the end, but looks untrustable when he fires her.
Dr. Russell Schneider, appears trustable initially, but turns out to be untrustable in the end.
B. How might they really be trustable, but appear not trustable OR be not trustable, but appear trustable?
Hero: Carla is trustable, but seems flaky, unstable and unreliable.
Villain: Johnny and his family are unknown to us for a long time. But the other villain, Dr. Russell Schneider, is the more dangerous villain to Carla and her patient. Dr. Russell Schneider, the head honcho of the whole department, acts all solicitous and supportive of Carla, by inviting her back to the department after her leave of absence. He presses her to take on the sick patient who has the nightmares, flattering Carla and telling her he believes in her. Behind the scenes, he’s the one orchestrating Carla’s work with the patient to find out what the patient knows.
Red Herring Character, Carla’s husband, Simon: He appears not trustable because he’s so angry with her. He is spiteful and mean, so we assume he’s evil.
Carla’s immediate supervisor, Richard. He fires her, which she takes as confirmation that he is not trustable. He judges her and is hard on her.
C. What circumstances might cause them to switch from one to the other?
Hero: Carla goes from flaky and unreliable to strong, focused and dependable. This happens after she starts having nightmares that are identical to those that her crazy patient is having. She realizes that things are more complicated and dangerous than she realized and she better get serious.
Villain: Dr. Russell Schneider, he initially likes Carla and is her mentor. At some point in the story, somebody buys him off.
Red Herring Character: Simon, Carla’s husband: When Simon realizes that Carla has foolishly gone off and put herself in danger, he puts aside his personal resentments and goes after her to protect her.
Trusted but shouldn’t be: Dr. Russell Schneider is initially trusted but shouldn’t be when he is approached behind the scenes with a bribe to help silence Carla and her sick patient.
Isn’t trusted, but should be (Richard, her supervisor): Carla’s immediate supervisor, Richard, comes across as a mean, unpleasant man who isn’t supportive and is always finding fault with her. But underneath, he’s a decent man who is ethical.
3. With each character relationship, brainstorm how trust or distrust might show up between them.
A. Hero (Carla) and Villain (Dr. Russell Schneider):
Dr. Schneider demonstrates trust when he is kind and supportive of Carla. He says he believes in her, and he encourages her to come back to the department and resume her job as a clinical hypnotherapist after a low time in her life. He acts like her ally and protector when he confronts Richard for reprimanding her professionally in front of the whole department.
Hero (Carla) and Red Herring Character Simon): Carla and Simon have had a huge falling out. They have fought bitterly and he moves out angrily after saying some really horrible things to her. Every time he talks to her he reinforces that she’s part of a dysfunctional family and she needs therapy. He acts superior and blames everything on her. He’s petty and takes some of her stuff when he moves out.
Hero (Carla) and Trusted but shouldn’t be (Carla’s mother and sister): Her sister and mother talk behind her back. They speak poorly to her nephew about her. They get into her apartment and ransack the apartment because they think Carla took his Glock. But he lied to them about not giving Carla the gun when he actually did. Carla keeps trying to reconcile with her mother and sister. She apologizes, and they act like they’re sorry too, but they stab her in the back again.
Hero (Carla) and Isn’t trusted but should be (Richard): He reprimands Carla in front of a meeting of the whole department and she runs out of the meeting in tears. He’s hard on her and appears to never be satisfied with the quality of her work. He micromanages her and is negative with her most of the time. He demands perfection from her. He ultimately fires her. Ultimately, he comes through for Carla and almost gets killed for it.
4. Create a sequence for each trust/distrust relationship (like Hal did with Three Days of the Condor) and then add that to your map.
Carla/Dr. Russell Schneider
1. Trust: Carla is grateful to have a mentor, Dr. Schneider, who believes in her and encourages her to come back to work after her leave of absence.
2. Distrust: The Sasquatch kid’s family is a big donor to Dr. Schneider’s projects.
3. Trust: Dr. Schneider takes her part after Richard confronts her at the big staff meeting.
4. Distrust: Dr. Schneider encourages Carla to work with the sick patient even though he knows she’s fragile, and over her protests.
5. Trust: Dr. Schneider takes her out for a meal and introduces her to the dangerous Sasquatch killer’s family.
6. Distrust: But what he’s really doing is exposing her to the dangerous family of the Sasquatch killer so they can all find out what she knows and they learn that she’s getting close to finding out who the Sasquatch killer is.
7. Distrust: Dr. Schneider promises her that she’ll be safe, but in the end, he sets a trap for Carla which results in her having to fight for her life against the Sasquatch killer.
8. Trust: Dr. Schneider gives her a pay raise over the objections of her boss.
9. Distrust:
Carla/Richard, her supervisor
1. Trust: Richard welcomes her back to work. Initially he seems positive and enthusiastic to have her back and to share the workload.
2. Distrust: Richard micromanages her, finds fault with her work and is concerned about her anxiety level. He expresses doubts that maybe she came back to work too soon.
3. Trust: Dr. Schneider encourages Richard to be hard on Carla so Dr. Schneider can play good cop with Richard and have Richard play bad cop. Every time Richard is hard on her or judgmental, Dr. Schneider takes her part. But it’s really Dr. Schneider who is the devious one.
4. Trust: Richard expresses concern that Carla could be in danger. He expresses this to Dr. Schneider who adamantly disagrees with him.
5. Distrust: Richard fires Carla. She sees him as her adversary over this.
6. Trust: Richard is actually trying to protect her because he believes her patient is dangerous to her.
Carla/Simon, her husband
1. Trust: Simon expresses sincere, realistic concerns about how her family is raising her nephew and dangers that the nephew and the rest of the family are exposing themselves to with the gift of a Glock to a kid.
2. Distrust: Simon demonstrates anger and irresponsible behavior with her when he breaks a lamp when he’s mad at her.
3. Trust: Simon always takes her calls, regardless of the time of day or night.
4. Distrust: Simon moves out and declares that he can’t take it anymore regarding his toxic relationship with Carla.
5. Distrust: Simon tells her she’s got a lot of problems, and she needs therapy and to go get help.
6. Distrust: Simon’s petty and takes some of her stuff out of their house.
7. Distrust: Simon files for divorce.
8. Distrust: Carla accidentally sees Simon at a restaurant with another woman (his attorney).
9. Trust: Simon calls her and says he’s worried about her and thinks she should get off the case she’s working on because he thinks she’s in danger.
10. Trust: Simon ends up helping to save Carla during the finale.
5. Give us the new version of your Thriller Map.
1A. Opening Image (1): (A)
A Sasquatch-looking beast is viciously attacking a camper and beating him to death. Then he tears off the camper’s jacket and shirt and starts taking bites out of the body.
Mystery 1: What is this creature?
Mystery 2: Who is the camper?
Mystery 3: Are Sasquatch for real?
Mystery 4: Where is the killing of this camper taking place?
Trust: Carla is welcomed back to work after a long leave of absence. Carla is grateful to have a mentor, Dr. Schneider, who believes in her and encourages her to come back to work after her leave of absence.
Trust: Richard, her supervisor, welcomes her back to work. Initially he seems positive and enthusiastic to have her back and to share the workload.
2. Theme (5): Is blood thicker than water?
Carla attends her sister’s son’s birthday party. The sister’s husband gives the kid, 11, a Glock. He points it at Carla who freaks.
Trust: Simon, her husband, expresses sincere, realistic concerns about how her family is raising her nephew and dangers that the nephew and the rest of the family are exposing themselves to with the gift of a Glock to a kid.
Life Threatening 1: Are Carla’s mother, sister, brother in-law and nephew a physical danger to her? (The boy’s father jokes that this Glock is for Sasquatch killings.)
Life Threatening 2: Could Carla get shot by her own nephew?
Life Threatening 3: What kind of family gives an 11 year old kid a gun for his birthday, and it’s not a hunting rifle?
Mystery 5: Is Carla’s family a safe family to associate with?
Mystery 6: What’s wrong with this family?
Twist: A trust is violated when Carla’s nephew is allowed to point a Glock at her in front of his parents and grandmother, even though it’s unloaded.
3. Set-up (1-10):
Scene: Carla is chastising her sister, Jenny, about the Glock. Jenny tells her to mind her own business. Tense conversation on the phone with Carla’s separated husband who tells her this is just one more example of why he doesn’t want anything to do with her family. She hangs up on him.
Mystery 7: Why is Carla codependent with an obviously dangerous family of origin?
Mystery 8: What power does Carla’s family have over her?
Life Threatening 4: If Carla’s husband abandons her, who is she going to turn to for protection?
Carla is sleeping alone and has a violent nightmare. She wakes up terrified and calls her husband who is impatient with her.
Trust: Simon always takes her calls, regardless of the time of day or night.
Twist: A trust is violated when Carla’s husband gets impatient with her regarding her terror about her nightmare and isn’t supportive of her.
Distrust: Simon demonstrates anger and irresponsible behavior with her when he breaks a lamp when he’s mad at her
Mystery 7: What is this nightmare about?
Mystery 8: Does this nightmare harbor something that’s precognitive that could happen to Carla?
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla starts having nightmares.
Scene where Carla is providing a hypnotherapy session to a patient who’s having nightmares.
Trust: Dr. Schneider encourages Richard to be hard on Carla so Dr. Schneider can play good cop with Richard and have Richard play bad cop. Every time Richard is hard on her or judgmental, Dr. Schneider takes her part. But it’s really Dr. Schneider who is the devious one.
Mystery 9: Do the patient’s nightmares have anything to do with her nightmares?
Mystery 10: What’s going on in her life that she’s having nightmares?
Life Threatening 5: Are any of her nightmares or the patient’s nightmares a threat to Carla or her patient?
Twist: Not only is Carla having nightmares, but so is her patient.
Distrust: Richard micromanages her, finds fault with her work and is concerned about her anxiety level. He expresses doubts that maybe she came back to work too soon.
Trust: Dr. Schneider takes her part after Richard confronts her at the big staff meeting.
TV NEWS ANNOUNCEMENTS. This is the fourth killing of people in remote areas of AZ involving a Big Foot type creature.
Mystery 9: Are these creatures for real?
Life Threatening 6: Who will get killed next?
Life Threatening 7: What are the authorities doing about it?
Mystery 10: Is Carla going to get pulled into these killings?
Twist: It just got more dangerous.
4. Catalyst (12):
Carla’s supervisor in the hypnotherapy department assigns a troubled patient to her from the psych ward of the hospital because they can’t afford to keep Carla on light duty given staff shortages.
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla is assigned a troubled patient who also has nightmares. This ups the stress and danger for Carla.
Carla has returned from a leave of absence as a result of the trauma she’s been through. She unfortunately witnessed a former patient kill himself in front of her.
Twist: It turns out both Carla and the patient are having the same nightmares.
She’s opposed to working with this guy because she’s just come back from a LOA due to her own trauma regarding PTSD.
Trust: Richard expresses concern that Carla could be in danger. He expresses this to Dr. Schneider who adamantly disagrees with him.
But Dr. Schneider talks her into doing it because she’s the most skilled at hypnotherapy. This sick patient keeps complaining of these nightmares.
Distrust: Dr. Schneider encourages Carla to work with the sick patient even though he knows she’s fragile, and over her protests.
Trust: Dr. Schneider gives her a pay raise over the objections of her boss.
Mystery 11: What’s the danger to Carla from working with this sick patient?
Twist: This patient has a history of violence which makes things more dangerous for Carla.
Mystery 12: Will Carla’s own mental health be threatened by working with a sick patient who’s been traumatized?
Twist: Things get even more dangerous for Carla when the patient is released from the hospital.
Mystery 13: What will Carla learn from working with this patient?
Life Threatening 8: What kind of danger could Carla be facing from working with this new patient?
Life Threatening 9: Is Carla prepared to protect herself in the event that things go south with this patient?
5. Debate (12-25):
A hiker is found along the side of a dirt road. This is in a remote area of northern Arizona or NM. He’s delirious, probably from heat exhaustion and lack of water. He claims to have witnessed a murder but has been wandering for hours. He escapes, but he witnesses the camper getting killed.
Twist: A new problem occurs when a hiker is found along the side of a dirt road and claims that he witnessed a Sasquatch type creature murder a camper.
Carla addresses whether to take this assignment because she’s already working with one highly troubled patient and still feels vulnerable from the trauma regarding the suicide of a previous patient.
Distrust: Simon moves out and declares that he can’t take it anymore regarding his toxic relationship with Carla.
Also, she’s having marital problems and her husband has just moved out. She’s feeling vulnerable and traumatized.
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla’s husband moves out after a fight.
She then discusses whether to take on a second highly disturbed patient with her boss who tells her that they need her to step up and take this assignment because she’s the only hypnotherapist on staff at this point. She grudgingly agrees to step up to the plate.
Mystery 14: What could possibly go wrong?
Mystery 15: Who is this guy and is he trustworthy?
Villain’s Plan 1: Will the Sasquatch killer continue to kill?
Villain’s Plan 2: If so, could she be a target?
Life Threatening 10: How is Carla going to be able to cope with this life threatening situation given her emotional vulnerability?
6. Break into Two (25): Revised.
Twist: A new problem occurs when a traumatized child is found who claims her mother disappeared in a remote area of Arizona. The little girl claims to have heard her mother scream, then the little girl ran away.
Carla is called into her boss’s office and informed about the missing mother and traumatized child. He gives her an ultimatum, either take these assignments or he’s going to replace her. She agrees to take yet another assignment.
Trust: To assuage her protests, Dr. Schneider takes her out for a meal and introduces her to the dangerous Sasquatch killer’s family.
Distrust: But what he’s really doing is exposing her to the dangerous family of the Sasquatch killer so they can all find out what she knows and they learn that she’s getting close to finding out who the Sasquatch killer is.
Mystery 15: Are these patients’ situations connected? If so, how?
Life Threatening 11: Will working on all of these assignments increase Carla’s danger?
Villain’s Plan 3: Was the mother murdered, and if so, was it by the same killer?
Mystery 16: Will Carla get to the bottom of these mysteries before somebody else gets killed?
Life Threatening 11: Will anybody else be killed?
7. B Story (30):
Dream Group attendance – the dream group is Carla’s B story. She’s known these people for years. They are her real family. She goes to them for love, support, acceptance, belonging and peace.
Twist: New options emerge when Carla meets with her dream group. They take an interest in her nightmares and are supportive when they work to help her interpret them.
Mystery 17: Will the members of the dream group help Carla to successfully solve these crimes and dangers?
Life Threatening 12: Will Carla continue to be safe in this dream group.
Life Threatening 13: Could there be a villain’s co-conspirator connected to the group in some way that would endanger Carla?
8. Fun and Games (30-55):
The remote viewing process in practice.
Tracking the dead body.
Finding clues and evidence through dream interpretation and remote viewing.
The dream group interpreting the clues to find the body.
The kid and Carla become a risk because Carla is starting to access information on the killing.
The kid witnessed the killing.
The kid knows something that the Villains are aware she knows and they want to silence her.
The kid and Carla are in danger.
They’re on the run.
Distrust: Simon tells her she’s got a lot of problems, and she needs therapy and to go get help.
Distrust: Simon’s petty and takes some of her stuff out of their house.
Mystery 18: Will Carla find out who the Villains are before they can hurt her and the girl?
Life Threatening 14: How can Carla and the girl stay safe?
Life Threatening 15: Will Carla and the dream group identify the Villain or villains before anybody else gets killed?
Villains’ Plan 4: What will the bad guys do to get to Carla and the girl?
Life Threatening 16: Who can Carla trust to protect her and the girl?
Twist: New options emerge when a clue is unearthed through the dream group.
Twist: A secret location is uncovered through the efforts of the remote viewing group.
Twist: A secret identity is revealed when the hiker’s identify is discovered through hypnotherapy with him.
9. Midpoint (55):
Carla starts conducting hypnotherapy on the little girl to help her recall memories of the trauma in the woods.
Twist: A trust is violated when the missing woman’s husband demands that Carla be taken off their daughter’s case. He feels that Carla is unstable, unreliable and ineffective and is dangerous as a consequence. He threatens a lawsuit if Carla isn’t removed from this case.
Twist: The child refuses to go with Daddy because she said he beats Mommy. He backs off pushing Carla to get off the case.
Mystery 19: Who’s going to solve this case if Carla is removed from working with the hiker and girl?
Life Threatening 17: What’s going to happen to Carla if she’s removed from the case?
10. Bad Guys Close In (55-75):
Twist: A lie is uncovered when Carla discovers that fake FBI agents acquired information from her that they use against her.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when other bodies are discovered or other people disappear and Carla finds herself in more danger.
Twist: A trust is violated when an acquaintance of Carla’s is hired by the Villain to befriend Carla to stay informed of her progress.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when someone infiltrates the remote viewing group to create chaos, divide the members and find out what they’ve learned.
The plant infiltrates the group and quietly sabotages the team. The plant encourages fear and distrust in the remote viewing group and they temporarily lose their solidarity and unity and become ineffective. Maybe they have a fight. The group’s cohesiveness is attacked.
Mystery 20: Who’s behind the divisiveness of the remote viewing group?
Mystery 21: Why did the group scapegoat Carla?
Life Threatening 18: Who can Carla trust anymore?
Villains’ Plan 5: Why is the Villain trying to get Carla kicked off this case?
Villains’ Plan 6: How did the Villain or villains find out about the remote viewing group?
11. All is Lost (75):
Twist: A new problem occurs when the little girl runs away and Carla gets blamed for it.
Carla feels personally responsible for finding the little girl and keeping her safe.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when Carla’s house is ransacked.
Distrust: Simon files for divorce.
Twist: New information comes to light when Carla learns that the child didn’t run away. Instead, she was kidnapped. Now they really need remote viewing to solve this crisis.
Twist: We see an unexpected side of someone when Carla learns that the girl’s father actually kidnapped the child.
Mystery 20: How is Carla going to use the remote viewing group to find not only the hiker, but also the child?
Villain’s Plan 5: To kidnap the child from her father.
Life Threatening 18: How is Carla going to save the child from being kidnapped from her father?
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85):
Twist: Carla has lost her resources when she gets fired from her hypnotherapy job.
Because of the drama and threats to the town’s clinic, she’s fired and walked to the door with her shoebox.
Distrust: Richard fires Carla. She sees him as her adversary over this.
Trust: Richard is actually trying to protect her because he believes her patient is dangerous to her.
Distrust: Carla accidentally sees Simon at a restaurant with another woman (his attorney).
Carla, really discouraged, meets with the dream group to get help. They encourage her to try something else.
Carla convinces the father of the little girl that she has his best interests and that of his family at heart and persuades him to let her work one more time with the girl privately.
Twist: Someone changes sides when the father finally realizes that he needs to ally himself with Carla to protect his daughter.
Twist: We see an unexpected side of someone when Carla and the father team up to push forward.
Mystery 21: How are Carla and the father going to be able to solve this mystery together?
Life Threatening 19: How can Carla and the father stay safe long enough to see the Villain or villains behind bars?
Villain’s Plan 6: To isolate Carla, get her to a remote location and kill her.
13. Break into Three (85):
Twist: New options emerge when Carla uses a technique on the little girl that results in an idea to solve the mystery. The world of synthesis is at hand.
Mystery 22: Will the technique work?
Life Threatening 20: How can Carla, the little girl and her father stay safe?
Trust: Simon calls her and says he’s worried about her and thinks she should get off the case she’s working on because he thinks she’s in danger.
14. Finale (85-110):
It’s the battle.
Twist: New options emerge when Carla is finally able to piece together some clues that give her enough information to know how to trap this kid.
Distrust: Dr. Schneider promises her that she’ll be safe, but in the end, he sets a trap for Carla which results in her having to fight for her life against the Sasquatch killer.
Carla teams up with the girl’s father find the location identified by the remote viewing group.
Trust: Simon ends up helping to save Carla during the finale.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when Carla and the girl’s father arrive at a remote location where they find the remains of the camper’s body.
Twist: New options emerge when they also find the child’s mother who is being imprisoned in a makeshift cage.
Twist: It just got even more dangerous when they face the Sasquatch killer directly.
Twist: Secret identify uncovered when a battle ensues. Carla pulls out the Glock that she borrowed from her nephew, and kills a man dressed as a Sasquatch.
Mystery 23: How is Carla going to out-battle the Villain or villains and survive?
Mystery 24: Will the father be willing and able to help Carla?
Mystery 25: If so, how?
Mystery 26: Who else will step forward and team up with Carla to defeat the Villain or villains?
Mystery 27: Why did the killer dress up as a Sasquatch and kill people who were in the wilderness?
Mystery 28: Did the killer’s family know all along that this was happening?
Mystery 29: If so, why didn’t they intervene and stop the kid from killing?
Mystery 30: Do they find the missing mother?
15. Final Image (110):
Carla and Simon have reunited. They turn on a scifi horror movie that’s about a Sasquatch terrorizing a community. They laugh at the coincidence and immediately change the station because enough is enough.
-
Sue Swenson’s Twists and Turns
What I learned is that the plot twists and turns really help to raise the mystery, intrigue and suspense by interrupting the audience’s expectations and keeping their interest. They are kept questioning and guessing which keeps them on the edge as they watch the story unfold.
1A. Opening Image (1): (A)
A Sasquatch-looking beast is viciously attacking a camper and beating him to death. Then he tears off the camper’s jacket and shirt and starts taking bites out of the body.
Mystery 1: What is this creature?
Mystery 2: Who is the camper?
Mystery 3: Are Sasquatch for real?
Mystery 4: Where is the killing of this camper taking place?
2. Theme (5): Is blood thicker than water?
Carla attends her sister’s son’s birthday party. The sister’s husband gives the kid, 11, a Glock. He points it at Carla who freaks.
Life Threatening 1: Are Carla’s mother, sister, brother in-law and nephew a physical danger to her? (The boy’s father jokes that this Glock is for Sasquatch killings.)
Life Threatening 2: Could Carla get shot by her own nephew?
Life Threatening 3: What kind of family gives an 11 year old kid a gun for his birthday, and it’s not a hunting rifle?
Mystery 5: Is Carla’s family a safe family to associate with?
Mystery 6: What’s wrong with this family?
Twist: A trust is violated when Carla’s nephew is allowed to point a Glock at her in front of his parents and grandmother, even though it’s unloaded.
3. Set-up (1-10):
Scene: Carla is chastising her sister, Jenny, about the Glock. Jenny tells her to mind her own business. Tense conversation on the phone with Carla’s separated husband who tells her this is just one more example of why he doesn’t want anything to do with her family. She hangs up on him.
Mystery 7: Why is Carla codependent with an obviously dangerous family of origin?
Mystery 8: What power does Carla’s family have over her?
Life Threatening 4: If Carla’s husband abandons her, who is she going to turn to for protection?
Carla is sleeping alone and has a violent nightmare. She wakes up terrified and calls her husband who is impatient with her.
Twist: A trust is violated when Carla’s husband gets impatient with her regarding her terror about her nightmare and isn’t supportive of her.
Mystery 7: What is this nightmare about?
Mystery 8: Does this nightmare harbor something that’s precognitive that could happen to Carla?
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla starts having nightmares.
Scene where Carla is providing a hypnotherapy session to a patient who’s having nightmares.
Mystery 9: Do the patient’s nightmares have anything to do with her nightmares?
Mystery 10: What’s going on in her life that she’s having nightmares?
Life Threatening 5: Are any of her nightmares or the patient’s nightmares a threat to Carla or her patient?
Twist: Not only is Carla having nightmares, but so is her patient.
TV NEWS ANNOUNCEMENTS. This is the fourth killing of people in remote areas of AZ involving a Big Foot type creature.
Mystery 9: Are these creatures for real?
Life Threatening 6: Who will get killed next?
Life Threatening 7: What are the authorities doing about it?
Mystery 10: Is Carla going to get pulled into these killings?
Twist: It just got more dangerous.
4. Catalyst (12):
Carla’s supervisor in the hypnotherapy department assigns a troubled patient to her from the psych ward of the hospital because they can’t afford to keep Carla on light duty given staff shortages.
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla is assigned a troubled patient who also has nightmares. This ups the stress and danger for Carla.
Carla has returned from a leave of absence as a result of the trauma she’s been through. She unfortunately witnessed a former patient kill himself in front of her.
Twist: It turns out both Carla and the patient are having the same nightmares.
She’s opposed to working with this guy because she’s just come back from a LOA due to her own trauma regarding PTSD.
But she gets talked into doing it because she’s the most skilled at hypnotherapy. This sick patient keeps complaining of these nightmares.
Mystery 11: What’s the danger to Carla from working with this sick patient?
Twist: This patient has a history of violence which makes things more dangerous for Carla.
Mystery 12: Will Carla’s own mental health be threatened by working with a sick patient who’s been traumatized?
Twist: Things get even more dangerous for Carla when the patient is released from the hospital.
Mystery 13: What will Carla learn from working with this patient?
Life Threatening 8: What kind of danger could Carla be facing from working with this new patient?
Life Threatening 9: Is Carla prepared to protect herself in the event that things go south with this patient?
5. Debate (12-25):
A hiker is found along the side of a dirt road. This is in a remote area of northern Arizona or NM. He’s delirious, probably from heat exhaustion and lack of water. He claims to have witnessed a murder but has been wandering for hours. He escapes, but he witnesses the camper getting killed.
Twist: A new problem occurs when a hiker is found along the side of a dirt road and claims that he witnessed a Sasquatch type creature murder a camper.
Carla addresses whether to take this assignment because she’s already working with one highly troubled patient and still feels vulnerable from the trauma regarding the suicide of a previous patient.
Also, she’s having marital problems and her husband has just moved out. She’s feeling vulnerable and traumatized.
Twist: A new problem occurs when Carla’s husband moves out after a fight.
She then discusses whether to take on a second highly disturbed patient with her boss who tells her that they need her to step up and take this assignment because she’s the only hypnotherapist on staff at this point. She grudgingly agrees to step up to the plate.
Mystery 14: What could possibly go wrong?
Mystery 15: Who is this guy and is he trustworthy?
Villain’s Plan 1: Will the Sasquatch killer continue to kill?
Villain’s Plan 2: If so, could she be a target?
Life Threatening 10: How is Carla going to be able to cope with this life threatening situation given her emotional vulnerability?
6. Break into Two (25): Revised.
Twist: A new problem occurs when a traumatized child is found who claims her mother disappeared in a remote area of Arizona. The little girl claims to have heard her mother scream, then the little girl ran away.
Carla is called into her boss’s office and informed about the missing mother and traumatized child. He gives her an ultimatum, either take these assignments or he’s going to replace her. She agrees to take yet another assignment.
Mystery 15: Are these patients’ situations connected? If so, how?
Life Threatening 11: Will working on all of these assignments increase Carla’s danger?
Villain’s Plan 3: Was the mother murdered, and if so, was it by the same killer?
Mystery 16: Will Carla get to the bottom of these mysteries before somebody else gets killed?
Life Threatening 11: Will anybody else be killed?
7. B Story (30):
Dream Group attendance – the dream group is Carla’s B story. She’s known these people for years. They are her real family. She goes to them for love, support, acceptance, belonging and peace.
Twist: New options emerge when Carla meets with her dream group. They take an interest in her nightmares and are supportive when they work to help her interpret them.
Mystery 17: Will the members of the dream group help Carla to successfully solve these crimes and dangers?
Life Threatening 12: Will Carla continue to be safe in this dream group.
Life Threatening 13: Could there be a villain’s co-conspirator connected to the group in some way that would endanger Carla?
8. Fun and Games (30-55):
a. The remote viewing process in practice.
b. Tracking the dead body.
c. Finding clues and evidence through dream interpretation and remote viewing.
d. The dream group interpreting the clues to find the body.
e. The kid and Carla become a risk because Carla is starting to access information on the killing.
f. The kid witnessed the killing.
g. The kid knows something that the Villains are aware she knows and they want to silence her.
h. The kid and Carla are in danger.
i. They’re on the run.
Mystery 18: Will Carla find out who the Villains are before they can hurt her and the girl?
Life Threatening 14: How can Carla and the girl stay safe?
Life Threatening 15: Will Carla and the dream group identify the Villain or villains before anybody else gets killed?
Villains’ Plan 4: What will the bad guys do to get to Carla and the girl?
Life Threatening 16: Who can Carla trust to protect her and the girl?
Twist: New options emerge when a clue is unearthed through the dream group.
Twist: A secret location is uncovered through the efforts of the remote viewing group.
Twist: A secret identity is revealed when the hiker’s identify is discovered through hypnotherapy with him.
9. Midpoint (55):
Carla starts conducting hypnotherapy on the little girl to help her recall memories of the trauma in the woods.
Twist: A trust is violated when the missing woman’s husband demands that Carla be taken off their daughter’s case. He feels that Carla is unstable, unreliable and ineffective and is dangerous as a consequence. He threatens a lawsuit if Carla isn’t removed from this case.
Twist: The child refuses to go with Daddy because she said he beats Mommy. He backs off pushing Carla to get off the case.
Mystery 19: Who’s going to solve this case if Carla is removed from working with the hiker and girl?
Life Threatening 17: What’s going to happen to Carla if she’s removed from the case?
10. Bad Guys Close In (55-75):
Twist: A lie is uncovered when Carla discovers that fake FBI agents acquired information from her that they use against her.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when other bodies are discovered or other people disappear and Carla finds herself in more danger.
Twist: A trust is violated when an acquaintance of Carla’s is hired by the Villain to befriend Carla to stay informed of her progress.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when someone infiltrates the remote viewing group to create chaos, divide the members and find out what they’ve learned.
The plant infiltrates the group and quietly sabotages the team. The plant encourages fear and distrust in the remote viewing group and they temporarily lose their solidarity and unity and become ineffective. Maybe they have a fight. The group’s cohesiveness is attacked.
Mystery 20: Who’s behind the divisiveness of the remote viewing group?
Mystery 21: Why did the group scapegoat Carla?
Life Threatening 18: Who can Carla trust anymore?
Villains’ Plan 5: Why is the Villain trying to get Carla kicked off this case?
Villains’ Plan 6: How did the Villain or villains find out about the remote viewing group?
11. All is Lost (75):
Twist: A new problem occurs when the little girl runs away and Carla gets blamed for it.
Carla feels personally responsible for finding the little girl and keeping her safe.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when Carla’s house is ransacked.
Twist: New information comes to light when Carla learns that the child didn’t run away. Instead, she was kidnapped. Now they really need remote viewing to solve this crisis.
Twist: We see an unexpected side of someone when Carla learns that the girl’s father actually kidnapped the child.
Mystery 20: How is Carla going to use the remote viewing group to find not only the hiker, but also the child?
Villain’s Plan 5: To kidnap the child from her father.
Life Threatening 18: How is Carla going to save the child from being kidnapped from her father?
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85):
Twist: Carla has lost her resources when she gets fired from her hypnotherapy job.
Because of the drama and threats to the town’s clinic, she’s fired and walked to the door with her shoebox.
Carla, really discouraged, meets with the dream group to get help. They encourage her to try something else.
Carla convinces the father of the little girl that she has his best interests and that of his family at heart and persuades him to let her work one more time with the girl privately.
Twist: Someone changes sides when the father finally realizes that he needs to ally himself with Carla to protect his daughter.
Twist: We see an unexpected side of someone when Carla and the father team up to push forward.
Mystery 21: How are Carla and the father going to be able to solve this mystery together?
Life Threatening 19: How can Carla and the father stay safe long enough to see the Villain or villains behind bars?
Villain’s Plan 6: To isolate Carla, get her to a remote location and kill her.
13. Break into Three (85):
Twist: New options emerge when Carla uses a technique on the little girl that results in an idea to solve the mystery. The world of synthesis is at hand.
Mystery 22: Will the technique work?
Life Threatening 20: How can Carla, the little girl and her father stay safe?
14. Finale (85-110):
It’s the battle.
Twist: New options emerge when Carla is finally able to piece together some clues that give her enough information to know how to trap this kid.
Carla teams up with the girl’s father find the location identified by the remote viewing group.
Twist: It just got more dangerous when Carla and the girl’s father arrive at a remote location where they find the remains of the camper’s body.
Twist: New options emerge when they also find the child’s mother who is being imprisoned in a makeshift cage.
Twist: It just got even more dangerous when they face the Sasquatch killer directly.
Twist: Secret identify uncovered when a battle ensues. Carla pulls out the Glock that she borrowed from her nephew, and kills a man dressed as a Sasquatch.
Mystery 23: How is Carla going to out-battle the Villain or villains and survive?
Mystery 24: Will the father be willing and able to help Carla?
Mystery 25: If so, how?
Mystery 26: Who else will step forward and team up with Carla to defeat the Villain or villains?
Mystery 27: Why did the killer dress up as a Sasquatch and kill people who were in the wilderness?
Mystery 28: Did the killer’s family know all along that this was happening?
Mystery 29: If so, why didn’t they intervene and stop the kid from killing?
Mystery 30: Do they find the missing mother?
15. Final Image (110):
Carla and her husband turn on a scifi horror movie that’s about a Sasquatch terrorizing a community. They laugh at the coincidence and immediately change the station because enough is enough.
-
Sue Swenson’s Thriller Plot!
What I learned is that, although this assignment took me many hours to complete, it was well worth the effort. I used Blake Snyder’s 15 Beats structure, then added the Mystery, Intrigue and Suspense questions and statements.
It was a laborious job, but I was compelled to think through the whole story and add the MIS elements. I am at an advantage now because I have an outline. Granted, it’s scaffolding with a lot of placeholders, but I actually have a story now that I can see unfolding. Using a structure plus this layering of elements that are essential to a thriller, is a smart way to go. Better to do the detailed, hard work now than to put it off and have to start over later and waste a lot of time. My script will be a better product for it.
This story is about two families that are dysfunctional begging the question: Is blood thicker than water? Or, should blood be thicker than water?
Carla’s separation from her husband has been partly caused by the tension between her husband and her mother and sister.
1A. Opening Image (1): (A)
A Sasquatch-looking beast is viciously attacking a camper and beating him to death. Then he tears off the camper’s jacket and shirt and starts taking bites out of the body.
Mystery 1: What is this creature?
Mystery 2: Who is the camper?
Mystery 3: Are Sasquatch for real?
Mystery 4: Where is the killing of this camper taking place?
1B. Opening Image (1): (B)
A mother and daughter on a road trip with their dog, tie the dog to the car door with the leash, enter a restaurant/bar. Weird locals share stories of rumored Sasquatch in the area. The mother tells the daughter not to listen to these stories when the child gets scared. They suddenly hear their dog stress barking. The mother and daughter see the busted leash and no dog. The girl calls the dog by name. The dog barks, but is in the woods somewhere. The daughter takes off toward the sound of the dog. The mother yells after her to come back, grabs a flashlight and runs after the daughter. (Then we cut.)
These helicopters are occupied by law enforcement, searching for Big Foot nests.
The Sasquatch kid is poaching campers and hikers under cover of a Big Foot costume to satisfy his craving for human flesh.
But he’s also fulfilling a desire for his family to economically benefit from the tourist attention and media that draws people to this former ghost town.
This small town contains a restaurant/bar, a gas station/convenience store/gift shop and a small motel near the Mogollon Rim.
They’re turning this whiff of a town into a tourist attraction. The kid’s parents don’t want this secret revealed. They are ultimately the Villains.
We could have self-described experts and scientists interviewed for tapings and segments on news shows.
Now pictures, videos are being put on Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook.
A lot of media buzz.
2. Theme (5): Is blood thicker than water?
Carla attends her sister’s son’s birthday party. The sister’s husband gives the kid, 11, a Glock. He points it at Carla who freaks.
Life Threatening 1: Are Carla’s mother, sister, brother in-law and nephew a physical danger to her? (The boy’s father jokes that this Glock is for Sasquatch killings.
Life Threatening 2: Could Carla get shot by her own nephew?
Life Threatening 3: What kind of family gives an 11 year old kid a gun for his birthday, and it’s not a hunting rifle?
Mystery 5: Is Carla’s family a safe family to associate with?
Mystery 6: What’s wrong with this family?
3. Set-up (1-10):
Scene: Carla is chastising her sister, Jenny, about the Glock. Jenny tells her to mind her own business. Tense conversation on the phone with Carla’s separated husband who tells her this is just one more example of why he doesn’t want anything to do with her family. She hangs up on him.
Mystery 7: Why is Carla codependent with an obviously dangerous family of origin?
Mystery 8: What power does Carla’s family have over her?
Life Threatening 4: If Carla’s husband abandons her, who is she going to turn to for protection?
Carla is sleeping alone and has a violent nightmare. She wakes up terrified and calls her husband who is impatient with her.
Mystery 7: What is this nightmare about?
Mystery 8: Does this nightmare harbor something that’s precognitive that could happen to Carla?
Scene where Carla is providing a hypnotherapy session to a patient who’s having nightmares.
Mystery 9: Do the patient’s nightmares have anything to do with her nightmares?
Mystery 10: What’s going on in her life that she’s having nightmares?
Life Threatening 5: Are any of her nightmares or the patient’s nightmares a threat to Carla?
TV NEWS ANNOUNCEMENTS. This is the fourth killing of people in remote areas of AZ involving a Big Foot type creature.
Mystery 9: Are these creatures for real?
Life Threatening 6: Who will get killed next?
Life Threatening 7: What are the authorities doing about it?
Mystery 10: Is Carla going to get pulled into these killings?
4. Catalyst (12):
Carla’s supervisor in the hypnotherapy department assigns a troubled patient to her from the psych ward of the hospital because they can’t afford to keep Carla on light duty given staff shortages.
Carla has returned from a leave of absence as a result of the trauma she’s been through. She unfortunately witnessed a former patient kill himself in front of her.
She’s opposed to working with this guy because she’s just come back from a LOA due to her own trauma regarding PTSD.
But she gets talked into doing it because she’s the most skilled at hypnotherapy. This sick patient keeps complaining of these nightmares.
Mystery 11: What’s the danger to Carla from working with this sick patient?
Mystery 12: Will Carla’s own mental health be threatened by working with a sick patient who’s been traumatized?
Mystery 13: What will Carla learn from working with this patient?
Life Threatening 8: What kind of danger could Carla be facing from working with this new patient?
Life Threatening 9: Is Carla prepared to take herself in the event that things go south with this patient?
5. Debate (12-25):
A hiker is found along the side of a dirt road. This is in a remote area of northern Arizona or NM. He’s delirious, probably from heat exhaustion and lack of water. He claims to have witnessed a murder but has been wandering for hours. He escapes, but he witnesses the camper getting killed.
Carla addresses whether to take this assignment or not. She’s concerned because she’s just come back to work from a leave of absence. Also, she’s having marital problems and her husband has just moved out. She’s feeling vulnerable and traumatized already. She’s unsure about whether she’s up to the task of this challenging assignment.
She debates the pros and cons of this decision with her husband and also with her dream/therapy group who are her emotional family.
She then discusses this issue again with her boss who tells her that they need her to step up and take this assignment because she’s the only hypnotherapist on staff at this point. She grudgingly agrees to step up to the plate and to take one for the gipper.
Mystery 14: What could possibly go wrong?
Villain’s Plan 1: Will the Sasquatch killer continue to kill?
Villain’s Plan 2: If so, could she be a target?
Life Threatening 10: How is Carla going to be able to cope with this life threatening situation given her emotional vulnerability?
6B. Break into Two (25): Revised.
There may have been another murder. A traumatized child has been found who claims her mother disappeared in a remote area of Arizona. The little girl claims to have heard her mother scream, but ran away.
Carla is called into her boss’s office and informed about the missing mother and traumatized child. He gives her an ultimatum, either take the two assignments or he going to replace her. She agrees to take both assignments.
Mystery 15: How are these two patients’ situation connected?
Life Threatening 11: Will working on both of these two assignments increase Carla’s danger?
Villain’s Plan 3: Was the mother murdered, and if so, was it by the same killer?
Mystery 16: Will Carla get to the bottom of these mysteries?
Life Threatening 11: Will anybody else be killed?
7. B Story (30):
Dream Group attendance – the dream group is Carla’s B story. She’s known these people for years. They are her real family. She goes to them for love, support, acceptance, belonging and peace.
Mystery 17: Will the members of the dream group help Carla to successfully solve these crimes and dangers?
Life Threatening 12: Will Carla continue to be safe in this dream group.
Life Threatening 13: Could there be a villain’s co-conspirator connected to the group in some way that would endanger Carla?
8. Fun and Games (30-55):
a. The remote viewing process in practice.
b. Tracking the dead body.
c. Finding clues and evidence through dream interpretation and remote viewing.
d. The dream group interpreting the clues to find the body.
e. The kid and Carla become a risk because Carla is starting to access information on the killing.
f. The kid witnessed the killing.
g. The kid knows something that the Villains are aware she knows and they want to silence her.
h. The kid and Carla are in danger.
i. They’re on the run.
Mystery 18: Will Carla find out who the Villains are before they can hurt her and the girl?
Life Threatening 14: How can Carla and the girl stay safe?
Life Threatening 15: Will Carla and the dream group identify the Villain or villains before anybody else gets killed?
Villains’ Plan 4: What will the bad guys do to get to Carla and the girl?
Life Threatening 16: Who can Carla trust to protect her and the girl?
9. Midpoint (55):
The missing woman’s husband demands that Carla be taken off the case with his kid and the male patient. He feels that Carla is unstable, unreliable and ineffective for these reasons and is dangerous as a consequence. He threatens a lawsuit if Carla isn’t removed from this case.
Mystery 19: Who’s going to solve this case if Carla is removed from working with the hiker and girl?
Life Threatening 17: What’s going to happen to Carla if she’s removed from the case?
10. Bad Guys Close In (55-75):
Fake FBI agents get information from Carla that they use against her.
Other bodies are discovered or other people disappear and Carla is blamed for it.
Someone hired by the Villain befriends Carla to stay informed of her progress.
Someone infiltrates the remote viewing group to create chaos, divide the members and find out what they’ve learned.
The plant infiltrates the group and quietly sabotages the team. The plant encourages fear and distrust in the remote viewing group and they temporarily lose their solidarity and unity and become ineffective. Maybe they have a fight. The group’s cohesiveness is attacked.
Mystery 20: Who’s behind the divisiveness of the remote viewing group?
Mystery 21: Why did the group scapegoat Carla?
Life Threatening 18: Who can Carla trust anymore?
Villains’ Plan 5: Why is the Villain trying to get Carla kicked off this case?
Villains’ Plan 6: How did the Villain or villains find out about the remote viewing group?
11. All is Lost (75):
Carla gets kicked out of the remote viewing group and it feels like a death to her.
Mystery 20: How is Carla going to recover from the loss of the remote viewing group?
Villain’s Plan 5: To dismantle the remote viewing group so it isn’t a source of information for Carla any longer.
Life Threatening 18: Without the remote viewing group, how is Carla going to have an advantage over the Villains?
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85):
Carla gets fired from her hypnotherapy job when she arrives at work.
Because of the drama and threats to the town’s clinic, she’s fired and walked to the door with her shoebox. Carla meets with the dream group to mourn the lost member and talk about her problems. They encourage her to try something else.
Carla convinces the father of the little girl that she has the best interests of him and his family at heart and persuades him to let her work one more time with the girl privately.
Carla and the father team up to push forward.
Mystery 21: How are Carla and the father going to be able to solve this mystery together?
Life Threatening 19: How can Carla and the father stay safe long enough to see the Villain or villains behind bars?
Villain’s Plan 6: To isolate Carla, get her to a remote location and kill her.
13. Break into Three (85):
Carla uses a technique on the little girl that results in an idea to solve the mystery. The world of synthesis is at hand.
Mystery 22: Will the technique work?
Life Threatening 20: How can Carla, the little girl and her father stay safe?
14. Finale (85-110):
It’s the battle.
Carla gets lured to a location where she faces the Sasquatch killer directly and alone.
Carla finally is able to piece together some clues that give her enough information to know how to trap this kid. With the help of the dream group she knows how to trap the sick kid.
With the help of her husband who has agreed to work on their marriage, they are able to subdue the kid.
They get help to get him into jail with a large bail bond to keep him there.
The rest of the family is rounded up and arrested as co-conspirators.
Carla decides to move away from her family to stop the abuse and bullying she’s been the victim of her whole life. With that concession, she and her husband are able to start over as a couple.
Mystery 23: How is Carla going to out-battle the Villain or villains and survive?
Mystery 24: Will the father be willing and able to help Carla?
Mystery 25: If so, how?
Mystery 26: Who else will step forward and team up with Carla to defeat the Villain or villains?
Mystery 27: Why did the killer dress up as a Sasquatch and kill people who were in the wilderness?
Mystery 28: Did the killer’s family know all along that this was happening?
Mystery 29: If so, why didn’t they intervene and stop the kid from killing?
Mystery 30: Do they find the missing mother?
15. Final Image (110):
Carla and her husband turn on a scifi horror movie that’s about a Sasquatch terrorizing a community. They laugh at the coincidence and immediately change the station because enough is enough.
-
Sue Swenson’s Life Threatening Sequence
What I learned is that it really helps to break down the story into small steps in order to figure out the elements of the story and get them down in some kind of sequence. This detailed building of a complicated story such as a thriller requires this organized step-by-step development in order to grow the story in a way that works. It also reveals and exposes the flaws in the story early on for correction before I get too far into the process.
1. What is the Villain’s plan and how does that put the Hero in danger?
The Villain, who is the head of the Department of Psychology, has secretly acquired a contract with a stealth organization that plans to experiment on a small, remote population of people. They actually have already started their experiments.
An experiment to mass hypnotize a large number of people to control them. So they’ll be more amenable to the authoritarian billionaires taking over.
A program of mass hypnosis. They plan to spray people first to prepare them to be triggered on a mass level to act in a certain way.
It’s something that’s dangerous, dark, evil and something that this dark operation is funding through the university’s psychology department. The funders are hiding the true purpose of the project, but throwing a lot of money at the psychology department to conduct these experiments as part of the project. They’re presenting the project as a benign project.
How does the Villain’s plan put the Hero in danger?
While working as a hypnotherapist in the Villain’s psychology department, Carla inadvertently uncovers some cryptic evidence that points to a missing colleague through a session with one of her patients.
This is critical information that the Villain needs Carla so he isn’t connected to the disappearance of their colleague. He needs to find out from Carla what she knows and then silence her.
He’ll press her for information, threaten and cajole her to silence her, or kill her.
2. What other potential dangers could your Hero experience as they try to solve the mystery and confront the Villain?
The head of the paranormal psychology department appears impressed with her findings and fascinated with what she’s researching. He invites her to join his team and encourages her to report to him directly rather than her female supervisor who is furious with him, but takes it out on Carla who happily welcomes him as her new supervisor and mentor.
When she can’t figure out why she’s having these nightmares, she joins a dream group that’s being run by a colleague and friend of hers, in order to get to the bottom of the nightmare mystery.
He is the head of the paranormal psychology department that Carla works in. He discovers that Carla has acquired some information through her research on hypnotherapy regression and remote viewing.
Carla’s toxic female colleague resents not having Carla as a direct report anymore and attempts to get her fired, or at least, censored. This former supervisor is threatened by Carla and tries in all kinds of ways to undermine her. This character is a red herring who becomes an ally later on.
The Villain lures Carla’s patient to a remote location. He finds out some secret that this man has been harboring. The Villain murders him, then disposes of his body.
He creates distractions to confuse the authorities and the other members of the department when they start investigating members of the department about Carla’s patient’s death.
He sets up Carla, the heroine, as a suspect by connecting Carla to the deceased patient’s phone and computer records that the authorities have found.
The Villain monitors her more closely in order to keep apprised of her progress with this disappearance.
He spreads misinformation and shares this false information with the police and the missing patient’s wife and the other members of the department regarding what happened to the missing patient.
He scares Carla in different ways to distract and frighten her away from the search. He sends a couple of fake FBI or State Police detectives to interrogate Carla. She tells them about her dream group. The fake FBI agents tell her to only confide in them. Don’t tell anybody else.
They report this info to the Villain who stays close to Carla to keep on top of her activities and progress.
The Villain gets into Carla’s head and brings out her secret, flaw or a vulnerability that he will use against her later on.
The Villain plants a spy in the dream group. The Villain uses this spy to set someone up as a red herring.
Carla finds out more information about a location where her patient’s body may be. She shares this info with the fake FBI agents. They beat her to the location and try to kill her.
Carla escapes the fake FBI agents after she leads them to the site of the body. She is on the run. She contacts her mentor for help since she still thinks he is an ally. He tells her to lay low and he will come get her.
3. From the list of potential dangers, choose the ones that work for this story.
I am choosing the full list of potential dangers because they can all work for this
story. Please see above.
4. Sequence those dangers in order and make a list like the one I did for Basic Instinct above.
Carla has been regressing a patient through hypnotherapy. Carla starts having nightmares and can’t figure out why. Her patient is a professional remote reviewer who belongs to a group of remote viewers who are paid to find missing people and items.
Could his nightmares be related to her subsequent nightmares?
The patient gives Carla information about her missing colleague through a cryptic remote drawing that she can’t make sense of.
Carla starts researching dream groups, joins one. When she can’t figure out
why she’s having these nightmares, she joins a dream group that’s being run by
a colleague and friend of hers, in order to get to the bottom of the nightmare mystery.
The head of the paranormal psychology department appears impressed with her findings and fascinated with what she’s researching. He invites her to join his team and encourages her to report to him directly rather than her female supervisor who is furious with him, but takes it out on Carla who happily welcomes him as her new supervisor and mentor.
The Villain monitors her more closely in order to keep apprised of her progress with this disappearance.
Carla’s toxic female colleague resents not having Carla as a direct report anymore and attempts to get her fired, or at least, censored. This former supervisor is threatened by Carla and tries in all kinds of ways to undermine her. This character is a red herring who becomes an ally later on.
The Villain, the head of the paranormal psychology department that Carla works in, discovers that Carla has acquired some information through her research on hypnotherapy regression and remote viewing.
Carla’s patient suddenly goes missing.
He creates distractions to confuse the authorities and the other members of the department when they start investigating members of the department about Carla’s patient’s death.
The Villain, the head of the paranormal psychology department, spreads misinformation and shares this false information with the police and the missing patient’s wife and the other members of the department regarding what happened to the missing patient.
The Villain plants a spy in the dream group. The Villain uses this spy to set someone up as a red herring.
The Villain gets into Carla’s head and brings out her secret, flaw or a vulnerability that he will use against her later on.
The villain sets up Carla, the heroine, as a suspect by connecting Carla to the deceased patient’s phone and computer records that the authorities have found.
He scares Carla in different ways to distract and frighten her away from the search. He sends a couple of fake FBI or State Police detectives to interrogate Carla. She tells them about her dream group. The fake FBI agents tell her to only confide in them. Don’t tell anybody else. They report this info to the Villain who stays close to Carla to keep on top of her activities and progress.
Carla finds out more information about a location where her patient’s body may be. She shares this info with the fake FBI agents. They beat her to the location and try to kill her.
Carla escapes the fake FBI agents after she leads them to the site of the body. She is on the run. She contacts her mentor for help since she still thinks he is an ally. He tells her to lay low and he will come get her.
-
Sue Swenson’s Mystery Sequence
What I learned is that mystery sequencing is hard and challenging, but well worth the effort.
Create your mystery sequence. Give us the answer to these questions.
What is the big secret that the
Villain is covering up?The Villain’s secret is that he’s part of a covert operation to experiment on large numbers of people by subduing them and implanting an RFID chip in them to track them and acquire information from them without their knowledge. A colleague found out about this plan and threatened to report the Villain and expose him. They had a fight and the Villain killed the potential whistleblower.
How many ways can they cover
that secret? Those become the mysteries.Villain lures the victim, his professional colleague, to a remote location. He finds out some secret that his colleague learned. Villain murders him. He disposes of his body.
He spreads misinformation indicating that the colleague said he was taking a trip by himself to clear his head.
He creates distractions to confuse the authorities and the other members of the department.
He destroys the victim’s cell phone and takes the victim’s computer and hides it.
He sets up Carla, the heroine, as a suspect. He monitors her more closely in order to keep apprised of her progress with this disappearance.
He spreads misinformation and shares this false information with the police and the missing colleague’s wife and the other members of the department regarding where the missing colleague went.
He scares Carla in different ways to distract and frighten her away from the search. He sends a couple of fake FBI or State Police detectives to interrogate Carla. She tells them about her dream group. The fake FBI agents tell her to only confide in them. Don’t tell anybody else. She does.
They report this info to the Villain who stays close to Carla to keep on top of her activities and progress.
He promotes her into his department, gives her a new title and responsibilities.
The Villain gets into Carla’s head and brings out her secret, flaw or a vulnerability that he can use against her. He uses this information against her later on.
A hard-ass female colleague who’s not welcoming of Carla into the department. This individual is a red herring who turns out to be a quiet ally.
The Villain plants a spy in the dream group. The Villain uses this spy to set someone up as a red herring. This could be the female colleague. They could become partners in solving this mystery.
Carla finds out more information about a location. She shares this info with the fake FBI agents. They visit this location and try to kill her.
Carla escapes the fake FBI agents after she leads them to the site of the body of her dead colleague. She is on the run. She contacts the professor for help since she still thinks he is an ally. He tells her to lay low and he will come get her.
The first mystery must engage
the Hero into solving it.Carla starts having nightmares and sleep issues after her colleague disappears and doesn’t report to work.
Sequence the mysteries so that
each one leads us to the next one. Include ONE Red Herring mystery if you
can.Carla is a hypnotherapist with patients that she regresses as part of their treatment.
She starts working with a new patient who’s having nightmares.
Carla starts having nightmares that are similar to her patient’s nightmares.
Her patient is a professional remote viewer who belongs to a group of remove viewers who are paid to find missing people and items. Could his profession be related to his nightmares? If so, how?
At night she starts researching remote viewing and dream groups because of both her nightmares and her patient’s nightmares.
When she can’t figure out why she’s having these nightmares, she joins a dream group that’s being run by a colleague and friend of hers, in order to get to the bottom of the nightmare mystery.
The head of the paranormal psychology department appears impressed with her findings and fascinated with what she’s researching. He invites her to join his team and encourages her to report to him directly rather than her female supervisor who is furious with him, but takes it out on Carla who happily welcomes him as her new supervisor and mentor.
He is the head of the paranormal psychology department that Carla works in. He discovers that Carla has acquired some information through her research on hypnotherapy regression and remote viewing.
Carla’s toxic female colleague resents not having Carla as a direct report anymore and attempts to get her fired, or at least, censored. This former supervisor is threatened by Carla and tries in all kinds of ways to undermine her. This character is a red herring who becomes an ally later on.
Back story for Carla’s mentor: He acquired some information through a past secret project he did for the government. This information gave him power behind the scenes. His goal is to control this information because of its importance in several ways.
The Villain lures Carla’s patient to a remote location. He finds out some secret that this man has been harboring. The Villain murders him, then disposes of his body.
He creates distractions to confuse the authorities and the other members of the department when they start investigating members of the department about Carla’s patient’s death.
He sets up Carla, the heroine, as a suspect by connecting Carla to the deceased patient’s phone and computer records that the authorities have found.
He monitors her more closely in order to keep apprised of her progress with this disappearance.
He spreads misinformation and shares this false information with the police and the missing patient’s wife and the other members of the department regarding what happened to the missing patient.
He scares Carla in different ways to distract and frighten her away from the search. He sends a couple of fake FBI or State Police detectives to interrogate Carla. She tells them about her dream group. The fake FBI agents tell her to only confide in them. Don’t tell anybody else.
They report this info to the Villain who stays close to Carla to keep on top of her activities and progress.
The Villain gets into Carla’s head and brings out her secret, flaw or a vulnerability that he will use against her later on.
The Villain plants a spy in the dream group. The Villain uses this spy to set someone up as a red herring.
Carla finds out more information about a location where her patient’s body may be. She shares this info with the fake FBI agents. They beat her to the location and try to kill her.
Carla escapes the fake FBI agents after she leads them to the site of the body. She is on the run. She contacts her mentor for help since she still thinks he is an ally. He tells her to lay low and he will come get her.
Create a Mystery Chain for each
main mystery.A. What’s causing the nightmares in both the patient and Carla?
Patient presents with nightmares which Carla treats him for through hypnotherapy.
She starts to have similar or identical nightmares to the patient.
She joins a dream group to find out why this is happening.
B. What happened to the patient?
The patient doesn’t show up for his hypnotherapy appointment.
Carla is unable to reach him. His wife reports him to the police as missing.
Carla gets concerned when he doesn’t respond to her voice mail messages. And he doesn’t respond to his wife’s attempts to reach him.
Carla tries to figure out what the cryptic pictures that he drew about previous nightmares mean.
Carla researches remote viewing and joins a remote viewers group to get help in locating the missing patient.
C. Will using remote viewing skills help Carla find her missing patient?
Carla and the team of remote viewers she’s working with start making some progress using these psychic skills.
They gather some information which brings them closer to an answer about where the missing patient is.
They also gather some information on what he may have been up to.
D. What was the missing patient involved with that would cause him to disappear?
He discovered that there is a dark operations group that is trying to take out whole swaths of the population because of water shortages and other shortages.
-
Sue Swenson’s Villain Has a Great Plan!
What I learned is that this process really helps to approach the task of writing a compelling thriller. I found these steps really helpful to generate ideas, to think through a plot, to imagine a story and to better define both the Villain and the heroine as well as red herring and victim characters.
To create your Villain’s plan, answer these four questions:
1. What is the end goal?
The villain is hiding the murder of a colleague. The end goal is to keep that a secret. The colleague is missing.
2. How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way?
A. He spreads misinformation and shares this false information with the police and his wife, the missing colleague’s wife and the other members of the department regarding where the missing colleague went.
B. The villain deletes texts and e-mails that would link him to the dead colleague regarding what might have happened to him.
C. He hires someone and plants him in the remote viewing group.
D. He scares Carla in different ways to distract her and frighten her away from the search.
E. He gets into Carla’s head and uses the information against her.
3. How can the Villain’s plan and their actions be covered up?
A. He has an alibi for his absence from the university during the time the murdered colleague disappears.
B. The Villain stays close to Carla to keep on top of her activities and progress.
C. He sends a couple of fake FBI or State Police detectives. They interrogate Carla. She tells them about her remote viewing group. The fake FBI tells her to only confide in them. Don’t tell anybody else. She does. She finds out more information about a location. She shares this info with the fake FBI agents. They all visit this location. They try to kill her.
D. The Villain plants a spy in the remote viewing group.
E. The Villain sets someone up as a red herring.
F. Carla escapes the fake FBI agents after she leads them to the site of the body of her dead colleague. She is on the run. She contacts the professor for help since she still thinks he is the ally. He tells to lay low and he will come get her.
G. The Villain gets into Carla’s head and brings out her secret, flaw or a vulnerability that he can use against her.
Note: Have a hard bitten, hard-ass female colleague who’s not welcoming of Carla into the department. This individual is a red herring who turns out to be a quiet ally.
Sequence it to make it as
intriguing as possible.Villain lures the victim, his professional colleague, to a remote location. He finds out some secret that his colleague learned. Villain murders him. Disposes of his body.
The villain takes and destroys the victim’s phone. He deletes texts and e-mails that would link him to the dead colleague regarding what might have happened to him.
He spreads misinformation and shares this false information with the police and his wife, the missing colleague’s wife and the other members of the department regarding where the missing colleague went.
He scares Carla in different ways to distract and frighten her away from the search. He sends a couple of fake FBI or State Police detectives. They interrogate Carla. She tells them about her remote viewing group. The fake FBI tells her to only confide in them. Don’t tell anybody else. She does.
They report this info to the Villain who stays close to Carla to keep on top of her activities and progress. He promotes her into his department, gives her a new title and responsibilities.
The Villain gets into Carla’s head and brings out her secret, flaw or a vulnerability that he can use against her. He uses this information against her later on.
Have a hard bitten, hard-ass female colleague who’s not welcoming of Carla into the department. This individual is a red herring who turns out to be a quiet ally.
The Villain plants a spy in the remote viewing group.
The Villain uses this spy to set someone up as a red herring. This could be the female colleague. They could become partners in solving this mystery.
Carla finds out more information about a location. She shares this info with the fake FBI agents. They all visit this location. They try to kill her.
Carla escapes the fake FBI agents after she leads them to the site of the body of her dead colleague. She is on the run. She contacts the professor for help since she still thinks he is an ally. He tells her to lay low and he will come get her.
-
Sue Swenson’s SOTL Stacking Suspense – Part2
Give us a detailed list of the things you learned from doing this process that can help you write stronger thrillers.
Create scenes that have a lot of questions, twists, mystery, intrigue and suspense.
Build the story one layered scene after the other.
Include lots of red herrings for surprise and to throw off the audience.
Keep the audience guessing and wondering.
Put the audience on edge. Make the story scary.
Make the hero/heroine relatable and likeable and someone to root for.
Make the villain unique and formidable.
Create a fascinating world for these characters.
Don’t make anything obvious.
-
Sue Swenson’s Basic Instinct Stacking Suspense
3. Make a list of everything you learn in the process that can help you write stronger thrillers. The Stacking Suspense Chart covers most of the scenes, so you can just keep track as you watch the movie.
A. Scenes need to generate questions.
B. Some scenes need to surprise with a different
ending than expected.C. Scenes need to feed the MIS engine.
D. Scenes need to add to the Mystery, Intrigue and
Suspense. Otherwise, they’re not needed. -
Sue Swenson’s World and Characters!
What I learned doing this assignment is that this structure is helping me to imagine all kinds of story options and scenarios that I otherwise would never access.
CONCEPT and the Big M.I.S. of your story:
Big Mystery Who is after Carla and what do they want from her and why?
Big Intrigue: Carla has information she’s not aware she has. She inadvertently and unintentionally picked up on information from a hypnotherapy patient. She didn’t put this information into her clinical notes because she didn’t understand it, as it seemed to be senseless gibberish. The villains have been tracking her phone calls and they know she’s joined a dream group to deal with her nightmares. The villain or villains plant a new member into the dream group to try to access this information from Carla.
The hypnotherapy patient who passed the information onto her, died, and the villain can’t access it from the original source which is why Carla has become the target.
Big Suspense: My hero has inadvertently acquired information from a patient during a hypnotherapy session that is extremely important to some people. The patient was a remote viewer who revealed this information to her in some kind of cryptic drawings. He was later killed in a hit and run auto accident. The mysterious villains want this information and are tracking Carla down to acquire it by any means necessary.
Intriguing World: A mainstream hypnotherapist gets drawn into the underground world of psychic mediums for help to uncover the source of her ongoing, terrifying nightmares that hold messages about the source of the danger she finds herself in.
2 Characters
Role: Heroine: Carla, hypnotherapist, is having nightmares that her professional skills can’t help her solve on her own.
A. Mystery: Carla being tormented by nightmares and she needs to find out who or what is behind these disturbing dreams before they become reality and she gets killed.
B. Suspense: Carla has inadvertently acquired information from a patient during a hypnotherapy session that is extremely important to someone. The patient was a remote viewer who revealed this information to her in a set of cryptic drawings. He was later killed in a hit and run auto accident. The mysterious villains want this information and are tracking Carla down to acquire it by any means necessary.
C. Intrigue :The covert, clandestine, underhanded plot is to take down the three west coast states through a massive wildfire campaign that renders them almost unlivable and financially decimated.
Role: Villain, Erick, is the head of a clandestine cult.
Mystery: What does this clandestine cult leader have to do with Carla, and why is he a danger to her?
Suspense: Erick, the cult leader, is desperate to get the information that he hired someone to acquire, but that person became a whistleblower instead, and conveyed that information to Carla inadvertently when he received hypnotherapy from her for mental issues.
Intrigue: Erick is trying to recapture life as it was in the U.S. in the 1950s for white people. The cult members live in an isolated compound in Arizona. Erick is leading them to take down the economies of California, Oregon and Washington because he believes that the west coast states are a dangerous influence on the rest of the country.
-
Sue Swenson’s Big MIS
What I learned doing this assignment is that having the structure of this course including the questions, is hugely important to laying the groundwork for writing a thriller script. I am super grateful to be taking this course and building the foundation for my first thriller screenplay.
Logline: Fragile disbarred hypnotherapist currently working as a call center order taker, becomes the target of a group of villains who believe she has received cryptic information from a former client while he was under hypnosis. These villains will do anything to get that information from her.
Unwitting but Resourceful Hero: Carla, 37, recently divorced. Vulnerable, depressed, written off by her family for being hysterical. Has sleep issues. She’s working temporarily as a phone order taker to pay the bills. She’s subject to panic attacks. Her ex-husband is an overbearing, angry man.
She’s a hypnotherapist and a sex addict. She was fired from her job at a counseling center because she crossed professional and ethical boundaries by having a sexual relationship with a patient. She has had her professional license to practice hypnotherapy suspended.
Dangerous Villain:
It could be: Ex-husband, phone order caller who is lonely, loves hearing her voice, her ex-boss, landlord, any one in her dream group including the leader, weird neighbor in the apartment building, government people who actually show up, a former patient with exposed secrets he gave her inadvertently, or the patient she had sex with and crossed professional and ethical lines to do it.
High stakes:
Her sanity, her safety and her life are all at risk.
Life and death situations:
A call center customer keeps calling her and pushing her to get together with him. He seems to know more about her than he should. He’s not a serious threat, but his aggressiveness triggers her anxiety. She complains to her supervisor who won’t do anything because he doesn’t want to offend a big customer. The unresolved threats trigger her panic attacks and fear response.
Her former patient she had a sexual relationship with. He stalks her because he wants to resume the relationship.
A helicopter appears when she’s walking alone and hovers over her car to scare her, then flies off.
Carla’s Back story:
Carla was a hypnotherapist and was also a sex addict. She was fired from her job with a counseling practice because she crossed professional and ethical boundaries by having a sexual relationship with a patient.
Her former supervisor who was privy to her notes, was killed. She gets brought in for questioning because the authorities see it as a revenge murder for being fired. She’s cleared because she had a solid alibi.
She was put in an orphanage and then placed in a series of foster homes where she aged out at 18. She found a distant relative who stepped forward and helped her to get an education including a Masters or Ph.D. in psychology. That relative died.
NOTE: Carla has ongoing nightmares that revolve around helicopters. The nightmares seem to come in stages and become progressively worse. This motivates her to join a dream group that’s run by a professional colleague of hers.
This story is thrilling because?
We don’t know if she’s a credible character. We don’t know whether to believe or trust her.
Carla’s supervisor has been killed. It happened shortly after Carla was fired. She was called into questioning. Even though she had an alibi, it has left some doubt about her innocence.
She’s receiving death threats by phone, and we don’t know who’s doing this. She doesn’t either.
Her nightmares are terrifying and realistic. One becomes a reality when a helicopter lovers over her car.
We don’t know who the villain is and we don’t really know what’s going on or why.
We don’t know how Carla is going to be able to protect herself.
Big Mystery: What is the main mystery of your story that will keep us wondering throughout the story?
Who is after Carla and what do they want from her and why?
Big Intrigue: What is the covert, clandestine, underhanded plot that will live under the surface for most of the movie?
Carla has information she’s not aware she has. She inadvertently and unintentionally picked up on information from a hypnotherapy patient. She didn’t put this information into her clinical notes because she didn’t understand it, as it seemed to be senseless gibberish. The villains have been tracking her phone calls and they know she’s joined a dream group to deal with her nightmares. The villain or villains plant a new member into the dream group to try to access this information from Carla.
The hypnotherapy patient who passed the information onto her, died, and the villain can’t access it from the original source which is why she’s become the target.
They plant a sexual temptation into the group that Carla will be vulnerable to, given her history of sexual addiction.
Big Suspense: What is the main danger to your Hero that will continue to escalate throughout the script?
My hero has inadvertently acquired information from a patient during a hypnotherapy session that is extremely important to some people. The patient was a remote viewer who revealed this information to her in some kind of cryptic drawings. He was later killed in a hit and run auto accident. The mysterious villains want this information and are tracking Carla down to acquire it with any means necessary.
-
What I learned doing this assignment is… I learned that the stacking as much as possible the suspense, mystery, intrigue, betrayal, tension and twists really heightened the thrill of watching this movie. I want to write a thriller that achieves this level of thrills for the viewer.
2. Watch the movie and as you do, note the conventions of THIS story. I watched the thriller “The Woman in the Window”.
Unwitting
but Resourceful Hero:Anna
Fox, a psychologist, is an unwitting but resourceful hero. She’s
agoraphobic, housebound, paranoid, suspicious, afraid, anxious and nosy.
She’s taking Elavan for depression. She’s attempted suicide in the past.
Dangerous
Villain: Turns out to be the adolescent
boy across the street, Ethan Russell, 15.
High
stakes: Anna’s life, her sense of
sanity and her credibility.
Life
and death situations:
Ethan’s father, Alistair, came to Anna’s house and threatened her. Ethan’s
mother, Jane, called Anna on the phone and threatened to call the police
if she didn’t stop spying on the family.The police challenged Anna about her truthfulness.
David, Anna’s tenant downstairs, threatened Anna to keep quiet when she revealed that she knew he was on parole. He made a veiled physical threat.
Ethan, unbeknownst to Anna, had broken into her house and stayed there for a week. While there, he photographed her while she was asleep.
Ethan attacked and killed David in the house with a knife. He threatened Anna with the same death. He said he wanted to watch her die.
This
movie is thrilling because we
don’t know whether we can believe her and whether she’s a credible
character.We don’t know whether she’s safe or not. We don’t know who the villain is. It could be any one of several people.
3. What is the BIG Mystery, Intrigue, and Suspense of this story?
Big
Mystery: Is what Anna seeing real and
true or is she hallucinating? We know that she drinks wine and mixes it
with all of her anti-psychotic drugs.
Big
Intrigue: First of all, we don’t know if there is a villain. And
if there is a real villain, and she isn’t fantasizing all of this danger,
we don’t know who the villain is. By the time that Anna and the viewer
learn that Ethan is the villain, Anna is at a big disadvantage for
defending herself.We later find out that Ethan is the one who killed his father’s administrative assistant, Pam, and that his father covered it up for him. And that, if he kills Anna, Ethan will be able to get away with it in a similar fashion because his father will cover up for him again.
Big
Suspense: (The main danger the hero
experiences) Anna has made herself vulnerable to anyone who knows her
because she’s so fragile, weakened by the drugs and alcohol and severe
depression, and most people question her sanity. So she has absolutely no
credibility with anyone including her therapist. The alcohol and drugs
have weakened her ability to be alert and strong enough to fight back
against a villain.4. Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great thriller?
It kept me guessing about Anna’s credibility and her ability to take care of and defend herself. She was constantly threatening and accusing the people around her of suspicious and criminal behavior. She was making herself a target which made her even more vulnerable. All of this heightened the tension, drama and suspense as I watched this movie.
-
I’m Sue Swenson and I’ve written 2 feature film comedy scripts. I hope to learn how to build a solid thriller script given that I’ve never written this genre before but I’ve had several unique ideas for developing one during the past several years. I spent a summer picking grapes on a kibbutz in Israel. This experience inspired me to write a comedy script that takes place on an ostrich ranch.
-
Sue Swenson
I agree to the terms of this release form.