[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha'a Perfect Wordsmithing

hat I learned doing this assignment is sometimes the perfect word has to be used twice or more and that's okay but the use of various words makes the screenplay much more pleasurable to read.

I caught a lot of errors which is great, but I know I didn't catch them all. Hopefully the process made them minimal enough as to not be a huge deterrent.

• This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by  Tasha Espinoza.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha's Precise Description

What I learned: I overwrite and it's surprisingly redundant. I loved this lesson because I really meditated on what the essence of a sentence is and how it can so often be conveyed in less words. That said, this lesson took me a good long while and I will be surprised (and relieved) when I can master it in 3 days or less as opposed to several months.

Also I shave off 81 pages from 211 to 130!!!

• This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by  Tasha Espinoza.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Key Scene Improvements

What I learned doing this assignment is how much thinking like this gets the wheels turning. I’ve made a lot of discoveries about what connections are working, what connections need to be brought out to the forefront more and what could probably go. It is interesting how things start to change when you work with purpose and delivery of that purpose within a scene. This exercise has definitely made my scenes stronger.

The most valuable improvements:

-I realized my opening scene could be way more less cliched.
-I was able to strengthen how my midpoint and climax delivered their purpose and clarify plot points.
-I was able to set up reveals in a more effective way by taking care to first create demand for it and then deliver it in a dramatic way.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Character Intros/Exits

What I learned doing this assignment is that it's very important to be able to come up with new scenarios for your characters especially regarding their intros and exits. A producer and/or actor is going to ask for changes and if you want to get a writing credit, you need to show them you can give then the changes they require, so you can stay on the job.

Beats of Bethany’s intro

Beginning: Bethany is doused with holy water and Demon 23 emerges from her chest hanging halfway out of her.

Middle: Demon 23 makes Bethany drop her boyfriend from a second story window and crush Deacon Anders’s shoulder.

End: Bethany uses her own spiritual instincts and ultimately exorcises herself with a late assist from Father Ptolemy.

Bethany’s New Intro:

Character’s Philosophy – Bethany treats people with kindness….unless she's not herself.

Beginning: In the high school cafeteria, Bethany happily gives Queen Bee, Andy, the new-age pin she found at Bargain Bazar because Andy admires the pin's upbeat New Age message. Despite Bethany's excitement for Andy's birthday party, Andy tells her she's been waitlisted because of the perfect ratio of boys to girls that have already rsvped, including Bethany's boyfriend Joseph.

Middle: As Bethany walks away saddened by the news, Andy's says something that triggers a horrific change in Bethany. Suddenly Bethany is on Andy, screaming profane accusations, her eyes unnatural and wild. She is pulled off Andy by some football players, but in a display of extreme strength, she shrugs off the football players restraining her, weirdly contorts her body and drags a screaming Andy under a cafeteria table.

End: When Andy's screams go silent, a burly football player bravely looks under the table and Andy suddenly emerges. The football player grabs her. With great effort, he and a few fellow teammates pull her out from under the table. Bethany is hooked to Andy's waist, smiling gleefully, her eyes an unnatural yellow. The football players pull Bethany off of Andy. Bethany slides back under the table, but she catches the side of the table before she goes completely under it. She appeals to a football player to help her. Her eyes are normal. Her demeanor is sweet and scared. The football player dives over to the table and grabs her hand. She smiles, her eyes turn sinister and she pulls him under the table with with unnatural strength and speed.

Beats of Bethany’s exit

Beginning: Bethany joins Robby at a restaurant

Middle: Robby has a demonic attachment that Bethany exorcises.

End: Bethany finds Koju in the restaurant for their date and they kiss.

Bethany's New Exit

Beginning: She goes on an actual date with Brad, but realizes she doesn’t want to date him. She finds Koju and tells him she’s not ready to be in a long term relationship. She needs to find herself. She tells the kids she has to go and do some soul searching but gives them her number and tells them she will always come running if they need her.

Middle: Months later, she has established herself in a new town and in a new job.

End: One night, she gets a call. It’s Chantal. She’s out of the youth home and on her own. She says her new roommate scares her and asks Bethany if she can come help. Bethany grabs Deacon Anders’s bible, which has been de-corrupted, and tells Chantal she can be there in a few hours if she drives straight through.

Beats of Deacon Anders’s intro

Beginning: Paralyzed with fear as he participates in his first exorcism.

Middle: After getting his shoulder crushed, he tries to kill Bethany to stop the evil. Father Ptolemy wrestles him to the ground.

End: Deacon Anders tells Father Ptolemy he will never fail him again and is made to escort Bethany out of her childhood home after she is rejected by her family. He swears to Bethany’s father that he will watch her.

Deacon Anders’s New Intro
The Reveal Opening

Beginning: Deacon Anders mentors a sick child in a dark room. He is forceful and confident as he ministers to the sick child.

Middle: The child starts to act out like it’s possessed and takes over. Deacon Anders calls cut and asks for house lights and as the house lights go back on, we see that he’s been directing a play for the church. He chides the group and reemphasizes that the play is about acts of services performed by the church, not the Exorcist.

End: Father Ptolemy’s go-to Deacon for exorcism support is no longer at the rectory. The only person available is Deacon Anders, so he is assigned to go. Deacon Anders is delighted because he’s told they will be administering to a sick girl named Bethany. He grabs his camcorder and tells his production staff he will record his work with Father Ptolemy to show the actors and hopefully inspire better performances.

Beats of Deacon Anders’s exit

Beginning: Deacon Anders, now an inmate, is escorted to a visitor’s booth.

Middle: His visitor, Elena Watkins, introduces herself and Deacon Anders thinks it’s a joke the warden is playing on him.

End: Elena Watkins offers to show Deacon Anders true power and reveals that she’s Simon Dobre and that she has the Codex.

Deacon Anders's New Exit

Beginning: Deacon Anders is in his prison cell and he’s visited by Demon 23.

Middle: Demon 23 says he’s going to teach Deacon Anders the error of his ways.

End: Demon 23 explains that if he fails, he will take the Dark Deacon to Hell.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Unique Character Dialogue

What I learned doing this assignment is that just thinking taking a stab at rewriting dialogue from the profile always makes the line better. It’s so easy.

I think Bethany’s dialogue improved quite a bit and different facets of her character profile are more present. Deacon Anders’s dialogue is pretty consistent to his profile, but there are things in his profile that I made more evident through his dialogue because it helped with motivation and actually further set-up/paid off plot points.

Bethany’s Improved Dialogue

EXAMPLE 1:
BEFORE:

AMY
So, it’s love or the convent?

BETHANY
Yep.

AFTER:

AMY
So, it’s love or the convent?

BETHANY
I guess I could look for love among the nuns, but I’d have to cross a few lines.

EXAMPLE 2:

BEFORE:

LIAM
(Slurring)
Hi Brenda.

He slobbers a kiss “Hello” all over her.

BETHANY
Bethany.

AFTER:

LIAM
(Slurring)
Hi Brenda.

He slobbers a kiss “Hello” all over her.

BETHANY
You’re saying Brenda, but luckily I’m hearing Bethany.

EXAMPLE 3:

BEFORE:

DEACON ANDERS
Only what I have been put on this Earth to do. My path is clear now. I know why I was made to carry the cross that is Bethany Sawyer.

BETHANY
You think of me as a burden?

AFTER:

DEACON ANDERS
Only what I have been put on this Earth to do. My path is clear now. I know why I was made to carry the cross that is Bethany Sawyer.

BETHANY
You think I’m—You can play the martyr, but I am no cross to bear.

Deacon Anders’s Improved Dialogue

EXAMPLE: 1
BEFORE:

FATHER PTOLEMY
You brought a knife to an exorcism.

DEACON ANDERS
It was necessary.

AFTER:

FATHER PTOLEMY
You brought a knife to an exorcism.

DEACON ANDERS
Like a good Boy Scout, I always come prepared!

EXAMPLE 2:
BEFORE:

DEACON ANDERS
On second thought, I recommend that you don’t contact him. But don’t worry, I’ll still pray for you.

AFTER:

DEACON ANDERS
On second thought, maybe we should see all this…the laptop, Ben not working out, no one working out for that matter, as a warning, for you to stay away from Brad. Believe me, Bethany, it’s for your own good. I’ll still pray for you.

EXAMPLE 3:

BEFORE:

BISHOP PTOLEMY
It looks like we’ve underestimated you. I’ve underestimated you, but I won’t make that mistake again.

DEACON ANDERS
Thank you, that means a lot.

AFTER:

BISHOP PTOLEMY
It looks like we’ve underestimated you. I’ve underestimated you, but I won’t make that mistake again.

DEACON ANDERS
Thank you, Bishop Ptolemy, for finally realizing I’m worthy of your trust.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Meaningful Action

What I learned is that this step really is incredibly easy. I really am impressed with how the technique can transform mundane action into something that reinforces and elevates the meaning of the scene.

Scene 18: Meaning: Brad wants to catch-up with Bethany. Action: He shows up at her work so she has to talk to him in person.

Scene 19: Meaning: Bethany tries to warn Brad about dating her. Action: She locks him out of the cafe.

Scene 23: Meaning: Demon 23 doesn’t want to kill Bethany. Action: So he gives her a prayer that will stop his attack.

Scene 48: Meaning: Demon 23 has a breakthrough. Action: Koju brings a pastrami sandwich to Demon 23.

Scene 54: Meaning: Bethany has unfinished love business. Action: Bethany doesn’t throw away Koju’s flier.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Elevated Scene Structures

What I learned from doing this assignment is that it really helps to try all 11 when you’re starting to see how each structure can change a single scene. It will help give you a feel for how each one could work.

-Components of the scene:
Scene 41 – Linda teaches Bethany to center herself.

-What I’m trying to Accomplish:
In this scene I’m trying to set-up Bethany’s enlightenment training to pay-off the power she exhibits and uses in the climax to defeat Deacon Anders. This scene shows Bethany struggling to master her inner emotional state because there needs to be an arc to learning her skills.

-The structures I liked:
IRONY
-Beginning: Bethany chats with Amy on the phone saying that she’s looking forward to today’s lesson with Linda because Yoga is chill, but when she enters the bounce zone building, it’s a scene of noise and chaos as children bounce off trampolines covering the floors and walls.
-Middle: Linda makes Bethany practice tree pose in the middle of the bouncing facility and Bethany freaks out as she continues to lose her footing and fall.
-Ending: Bethany realizes she won’t be able to get up if she doesn’t calm herself. She tries the breathing techniques Linda shows her and she is able to stand up and attempt Tree Pose over and over again.
SUSPENSE
-Beginning: Linda serenely and expertly demonstrates tree pose while standing on top of a fence with two angry dogs on either side waiting for her to fall.
-Middle: Bethany wobbles terribly as Linda helps her onto the fence.
-Ending: After Linda encourages Bethany to breath and find her center, she lets go of Bethany. Bethany holds the pose…for a second before toppling over into the yard of one of the ferocious dogs.
CRUCIBLE
-Beginning: Deacon Anders shows up at Bethany and Linda’s yoga lesson and commands D23 to harm Bethany.The characters are placed in the crucible.
-Middle: Bethany is so scared, she can’t center herself but Linda tries in vain to get her to center herself.
-Ending: D23 lifts the two of them up, but only a few feet because Bethany is able to center herself and project an effective wall of protection that makes them safe from D23’s attack. Bethany learns that centering herself is the key to using her other skills.
TWIST
-Beginning: Bethany tries to maintain Tree Pose in a chaotic mall. She keeps falling over and she gets frustrated.
-Middle: Linda tries to communicate something to Bethany but she’s so flustered she can’t understand, so Soleil steps in and tells Bethany that she needs to center herself or she will never be able to tap into the energy necessary to command any of the skills they are teaching her.
-Ending: Discouraged, Bethany declares she’s giving up, but when Soleil implores her to stay and gently touches one of her hands, Bethany is launched into a white void. When she returns to reality, she is on the floor and a concerned Soleil and Linda tell her she needs to take a break. She tells them where she went and Soleil tells her she accessed her inner God realm.

-Scene Structure I chose:
Twist

-New Scene:

INT. BUSY MALL – DAY

Bethany tries to maintain Tree Pose among the chaos of the Food Court near a very loud indoor water feature.
Linda and Soleil watch her from a table, sipping on a fountain sodas and sharing an oversized pretzel.

Surprise, surprise, Bethany keeps getting agitated and falling over.

BETHANY
There is no way I’m going to be able to hold this pose, let alone find inner calm in this place. Can we please go?

Linda gets up and walks over to Bethany. She makes a bunch a hand gestures but Bethany is too frustrated to follow.

BETHANY
What? Linda? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Could you just…

Linda nods and beckons for Soleil, who looks like an angel floating to them as her fabric billows behind her.

SOLEIL
Bethany, you have to ignore all this…
(gesturing to the entire mall)
…when centering yourself or you will never be able to tabl into the energy you need to command any of the skills we teach you.

BETHANY
Sure. Super easy, why wasn’t I trying that before.

SOLEIL
I know it’s hard–

BETHANY
(interrupting)
It’s impossible!

SOLEIL
But you’ll get there.

BETHANY
Not today I won’t. I’m sorry, I have to go.

Soleil hurries after her.

SOLEIL
No! Bethany! Don’t go! You are in perfect state of mind!

Bethany stops and turns to her.

BETHANY
For what–

Bethany’s sentence is interrupted when she collides with Soleil and…

INT. UNKNOWN SPACE

…is immediately launched into a white void.

At first she is shocked and freaked out, but as she gently tumbles through the void, she finds it pleasant and relaxing. She stretches out and puts her hands behind her head.

BETHANY
(looking around)
Need I say it? Where am I–

INT. BUSY MALL – DAY

Bethany snaps back to her reality. Soleil and Linda hover over her with concern.

They help her to a sitting place.

Bethany is surprised to see that no one but Linda and Soleil are concerned by her laying on the floor. Mall patrons carry on with the business of shopping and eating.

SOLEIL
We think you’re right, we should call it a day. We’re sorry we pushed you.

BETHANY
Don’t be, I was, I went to..someplace great. It was like all glowy and stuff. Did I die?

Linda and Soleil look at each.

SOLEIL
We’re pretty sure you just passed out.

Linda thinks of something and becomes very animated, pointing upward a lot.

BETHANY
What?

Soleil looks pointedly at Linda.

SOLEIL
Or you reached a form of enlightenment called the inner God realm.

BETHANY
The what now?

SOLEIL
We’ll recommend a few books. But pretty sure it wasn’t that. Shall we.

Linda and Soleil gather up their stuff and head out of the Food Court. Bethany follows them very confused.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by  Tasha Espinoza.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha's Scene Ratings
What I learned doing this assignment is it's hard to be objective, but reading the screenplay in reverse really helps to isolate the scenes from the story to better judge how entertaining each scene is as a standalone.
ACT 1
Scene 1 – Opening – Bethany's Exorcism – E9
Scene 2 – 5 years later – Deacon Anders performs mass – E7
Scene 3 – Bethany's dilemma set-up – Love or the convent? – E6
Scene 4 – Set up of Deacon Anders dilemma – he fears Bethany will have a demonic relapse – E4
Scene 5 – II – Bethany rejects the convent and Deacon Anders hears confession – E6
Scene 6 – Date with Mac – E7
Scene 7 – Date with Ted – E7
Scene 8 – Professor teaches how to make a corrupt bible – E5
Scene 9 – Montage of DA making corrupt bible – E6
Scene 10 – Bethany hustles with the kids at Happy Flowers – E6
Scene 11 – DA tells BPtolemy about the new method for protecting Bethany's dates- E3
Scene 12 – Bethany meets up with Ben – E6
Scene 13 -TP#1 – DA attaches D23 to Bethany – E7
Scene 14 – D23 lands in the parking lot – E6
Scene 15 – D23 throws Ben out of the restaurant – E7
Scene 16 – PA and Brad Finely – E6
Scene 17 – Pina Colada face – E7/E8
Scene 18 – Brad meets Bethany outside cafe mojo – E7
Scene 19 – Bethany accepts a date with brad – E8
Scene 20 – Deacon Anders gets passed over – E6
Scene 21 – DA tries to warn Brad and discovers D23 – E8
Scene 22 – Deacon Anders shows up to dinner instead of Brad – E7
ACT 2
Scene 23 – Bethany is attacked by D23 in her apt – E6/E7
Scene 24 – Amy gives Bethany Koju's flier – e6
Scene 25 – Bethany is no longer welcome at Happy Flowers – e7
Scene 26 – Bethany saves Ted from getting hit by a car – e7
Scene 27 – Bethany discovers the Survivors or Bethany – e6
Scene 28 – Bethany and Amy try. to confront DA – e7
Scene 29 – Bethany and Amy find the corrupt bible – e7
Scene 30 – Bethany is forced to enter the spiritual center – e6
Scene 31- Midpoint – Soleil weakens the tether between Bethany and D23 – e8
Scene 32 – Koju helps Bethany with her nose bleed – e7
Scene 33 – Bob gets Koju to help with Bethany's protective wall – e7
Scene 34 – Koju denies watching Bethany float to the ground – e7
Scene 35 – DA use Bethany's blood on the bible -E6/E7
Scene 36 – Bethany's face and hair mask – e5
Scene 37 – Koju apologizes – e6
Scene 38 – Jean answers the door – e5
Scene 39 – Amy show the Professor the pic of the Corrupt Bible – e6
Scene 40 – Amy learns about Simon Dobre and the Codex – e6
Scene 41 – Yoga breathing – e4
Scene 42 – DA's first miracle – e6
Scene 43 – Betthany masters yoga and protective walls – e5
Scene 44 – Bethany master Mind Telepathy – e6
ACT 3
Scene 45 – Bethany exorcises Toilet Brush – e6
Scene 46 – TP# 2 – Bethany meet D23 and he takes the Corrupt Bible – e7
Scene 47 – Crisis – Koju is possessed by D23 – e7
Scene 48 – Unknown space – Bethany sees Koju talking to D23 – e5/e6
Scene 49 – Climax – Bethany is possessed by D23 – e7/e8
Scene 50 – Bethany finds out DA's plan from D23 – e5
Scene 51 – Bethany saves the Church – e9
Scene 52 – Resolution – Bethany exercises Leo at foster home – e4
Scene 53 – Bethany is back at Happy Flowers -e6
Scene 54 – Brad shows up at the cafe again – e7
Scene 55 – Bethany says good-bye to D23 – e6/e7
Scene 57 – Bethany exorcises a guy before his date – e6
Scene 58 – Koju and Bethany kiss – e5
Scene 59 – DA is humiliated by Warden Brown – e6
Scene 60 – DA meets Simon Dobre – e7

Interpretation of Data
I'm worried that I'm still too subjective. I think I needed to be a little more realistic as I rated the entertainment value of my scenes and think of it from the reader’s perspective. I am very curious how someone else would rate these scenes. But at the very least, I did contemplate the entertainment value of the scenes.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha'a Outline to Script

What I learned from doing this assignment is that even though I intentionally flowed with every scene, it still took me a very long time to write it. Maybe I'm missing something here. But I went for it, I aimed to write absolute garbage just to get the changes down. The script ballooned from 130 to 190, but I'm confident I'll learn how to get that to a more reasonable page count in the following lessons. I'll have a think about why it took me so long. But at least I got it all out. Got that outline to match the script. Also, it was fun.

I changed 30 scenes and wrote 17 new scenes.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha's Outline Exchange 2
Please let me know if you would like to exchange feedback.
My outline is 14 pages and some change.
Title: DATING WITH DEMONS
Genre: Horror Comedy
Concept: What if Linda Blair from The Exorcist wanted to date?

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha's Outline Exchange 1
Hi Jessica. I'm ready to exchange.
My outline is also 13 pages.
Also, it deals with the Catholic religion (as in the bad guy is a priest), so if you find that offensive and would prefer not to review my outline for feedback, I totally understand. Hal said to be upfront about potentially sensitive material and I wanted to make sure I let you know. If you're okay with it, then let's exchange outlines for feedback😉
DATING WITH DEMONS
Genre: Horror Comedy
Concept: What if Linda Blair from The Exorcist wanted to date?

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha Fascinating Scene Outlines!

What I learned from doing this assignment is how important it is to rethink your approach to a scene via an Interest Technique. Even if you don’t end up using an IT in a scene, it is important in the rewrite process to free yourself from the confines of what already exists to entertain the possibilities of what could exist because that is when stronger writing happens.

General Changes I made:

I ended up starting a lot of scenes with intrigue and leaving scenes on cliffhangers. I also tried to weave in more surprises and twists.

This process went a long way towards helping me elevate scenes that were purely functional. They became way more engaging.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Elevates Lead Characters!

What I learned from doing this assignment is that it's really helpful to think about making your character resonate with the audience by giving them some relatable issues. A fun and easy way to elevate the character.

List of changes
A. Need Stronger Lead Characters
Need to give Bethany some qualities/actions that make her more complex. Do not worry about making her likable.
10 ways to make her more complex:
-Abandonment issues
-Neurotic about people leaving her
-Using humor as a defense mechanism
-A little bit selfish – she has been told about her exorcism and how she hurt people, but she doesn’t remember it so she’s still willing to put people at risk.
-Socially awkward – she’s been mostly around nuns and priests, not really her peers
-Has a temper
-Can be mean
-Can be Unforgiving or slow to forgive esp when her trust has been violated
-Lack of a backbone (at first)
-Unfair about something like to Amy or Koju
Make her relatable, let the audience see themselves in her.

B. Need Stronger Character Intros
There needs to be a real threat that Bethany is going to lose her soul. Demon 23 should almost succeed. The audience should worry for her.
There also has to be something interesting about the way Bethany is first introduced like her head spins around or she has superhuman strength or something else unique but makes sense for a possession scene. Need that spotlight effect.

C. Playing it Too Safe
Bethany doesn’t play it safe, but she’s too relaxed about her decisions in the second half of the 2nd Act. She needs to be more unsure, more worried about the stakes involved in taking Deacon Anders and Demon 23 on. She’s choosing a path away from her faith and it confirms the existence of the supernatural. She needs to have a more extreme reaction to all of this so that the audience knows that Bethany knows she’s taking some big risks.

D. Lead Characters Not Present
There is one scene Bethany or Deacon Anders are not present in. It’s Amy’s scene. I can add Bethany to it and this is where Amy hands over a very important item to Bethany.

• This reply was modified 11 months, 3 weeks ago by  Tasha Espinoza.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha Solves Major Problems!
What I learned from doing this assignment is how these 4 simple areas really allow you to walk around easily in the story and explore ways to make greater changes at the outline level.
List of the changes:
A. Need Stronger Transformational Journey
-Need to make her more uncertain of herself in the beginning, but still keep her need to pursue the change she wants to see in her life.
-Establish in the beginning of her arc that Deacon Anders has guided her spiritually and she has never had the chance to develop the innate spiritual power she demonstrates during her exorcism.
-Deacon Anders' turn and betrayal affect her deeply and should be established as the impetus for really pushing herself out of her comfort zone and to seek a solution to her situation that is initially very foreign to her.
B. Need Stronger Conflict
-Give Deacon Anders a personal reason to fear her like a permanent injury he sustained during Bethany’s exorcism.
-Increase Deacon Anders desire to hold on to the control he has over he life.
-Make the conflict evolve from just threatening to Bethany to something that threatens the world. The conflict is fairly simple but as Bethany endeavors to solve it, it evolves into something that goes way beyond trying to figure out why she’s being ghosted. It evolves to the point where Bethany’s soul hangs in the balance.
C. Need Stronger Opening
-Needs to be scarier.
-Bethany needs to be introduced in an ordinary that turns into the unordinary as you realize she battles a demon for her soul.
-Increase the danger a possessed Bethany presents.
D. Need Stronger Ending
-Really need to drive home her pulling away from the father figure and embracing belief in herself and her newfound abilities.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Outline Improvements
What I learned doing this assignment is that I need to figure out how to streamline this process. My outline is a bit of a mess, but maybe that’s exactly what it needs to be at this stage. Looking forward to the next lesson.
1. Pull out your outline from the start of the program.
2. Compare the outline to each completed assignment and make any improvements to the outline to honor your new vision.
A. Deliver on the pitch.
Add more Horror Conventions and Comedy Conventions
Show Bethany on more dates that become disastrous or ultimately don’t work out (even if they were initially good).
Depict Deacon Anders’s overprotective nature, how he tries to control Bethany’s life, how he starts to use the dark arts to prepare for Bethany’s inevitable demonic relapse.
Depict Demon 23’s jilted ex behavior during her dates and indicate when his epiphany kicks in.
B. Match your 4-Act structure.
Raise stakes of opening
Make Bethany’s desire to date a first for her (and Deacon Anders)
Incorporate more of Deacon Anders arc into the script
Change TP1 to Bethany attacked in her apt by Demon 23 (she thinks it was a dream)
Plan – Find out why Bethany is being ghosted and stay away from Deacon Anders for the time being
The Midpoint should change to Bethany going to confront Deacon Anders about the discovery of his betrayal and she finds the corrupted Bible (or spell book)
New strategy – Go to Koju spiritual center, discover the attachment and train to become spiritually powerful (concurrent with Deacon Anders practicing his conjuring – maybe possessing the Bishop who sets up the Vatican livestream, etc). Also maybe Amy gives her the dark spell book and at first Bethany rejects it, but after she tries it out, not in the park but in Cafe Mo Jo.
TP2 – Demon 23 steals the spell book for Deacon Anders
Crisis, Climax, Resolution (stay the same)
C. Strong on Genre Conventions.
Horror: Make the exorcism more terrifying with higher stakes. Someone gets hurt.
Use comedy convention to make the first three dates funny
Use horror conventions to make the dates where Demon 23 intervenes scarier
Use isolation and hysteria to make the attack in Bethany’s apartment scary (she thinks it’s a dream)
Use horror conventions to make Deacon Anders creation of the corrupted bible more scary
Use horror conventions to make Deacon Anders ascent into madness more menacing and scary – maybe he starts to look drawn or his eyes become darker and he moves like a phantom, slow moving but can catch up to you somehow
Use horror conventions to make the corrupted bible seemingly act on its own but it’s being controlled by Deacon Anders or Demon 23.
D. The Characters Take Action from their Profiles.
Need to build in Bethany’s need for approval and how trying for a job and more importantly, a love, is really hard on her and how every decision that strains her relationship with Deacon Anders creates a self doubt that almost derails her – That way her arc has a great beginning
E. Build in each Character’s Story Line.
Add in Demon 23’s confusion about loving her and how that changes the nature of his attachment to her from abusive and violent to helpful.
Show Deacon Anders ambition and how he’s been made to feel small by the church when the Bishop asks him to help candidates for a position that should clearly go to him.
4. Tell us the improvements this made to your outline, but don’t include the outline, yet.
Improvements:
(Horror Element/ Structure Change) Bethany’s harms her boyfriend and permanently injures Deacon Anders during exorcism.
Add Deacon Anders grooming Bethany to be a nun during the 10 years since her exorcism.
Add Bethany declaring she doesn’t want to become a nun, but instead wants a new job and wants to date.
Add Deacon Anders showing up at Bethany’s new job and on her dates.
Add Bethany going on dates. Even good ones. She needs to be ghosted no matter what and that’s ultimately why her dating life sucks.
Add Deacon Anders sharing his concerns about Bethany and his tactics for sabotaging her dates (the video) during his own confession with the Bishop and realizing he has to do more to prepare for what he feels will be Bethany’s inevitable demonic relapse.
Add Deacon Anders attending a demonology class.
Add Deacon Anders altering the Bible.
Add Deacon Anders accidentally attaching Demon 23 during a DIY protection spell.
Add a date where questionable (supernatural) activity occurs to indicate that Demon 23 is interfering in a jilted ex sort of way (physical aggression, blowing up her phone with text that makes her date think she’s cheating on someone, vandalism/graffiti to dates cars, showing up uninvited and leave gifts for Bethany but in the style of a cat, so like dead birds dropping on her lap, etc).
Change Brad and Bethany’s meet-cute to include dialogue where Bethany tries to warn Brad about Demon 23 but he thinks she’s talking about an actual human ex
Change Bethany’s date with Brad to Brad standing Bethany up and Deacon Anders showing up instead.
Add a few scenes to depict Deacon Anders’s descent into madness as he tries to master controlling Demon 23.
Add Deacon Anders coming up with his grander scheme to use Bethany’s exorcism and death to control the Vatican by wielding demonic possession as a power.
Add Demon 23 attacking Bethany in her apartment instead of the restaurant. He’s commanded by Deacon Anders, so it’s against Demon 23’s will. Later, Demon 23 will explain it to Bethany as a miscommunication.
Depict Demon 23 trying to be helpful to Bethany when he can.
Add Deacon Anders shutting Bethany out from volunteering with the foster kids. But Bethany was going to take a break – she didn’t want anyone to get hurt.
Add Bethany being more afraid of things, unsure about venturing out into the world of dating, terrified of all the weird things that are happening around her dating life that have her running for safety and questioning her sanity
Add Bethany’s self doubt – is trying to find love the right thing or is she unlovable – she goes back and forth between not wanting to defy Deacon Anders but knowing that nothing demonic has happened for 10 years – her self-doubt almost derails her
Add Bethany’s loss of memory around her exorcism – maybe she could ask what happened after she is ushered from her parents farm house – she doesn’t understand why her parents are sending her away
Need to add a element/scene that parallels the scene in prison where the Deacon thinks he’s being invited into a noble role/position, but he isn’t (it gets offered to someone else or something and we should see his hope and understand how much he really wants something like this before we see his dejection

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Character Story Lines

What I learned doing this assignment is how contemplating a character's story will show you beats that exist outside the depiction of the screenplay and motivation, experiences, reactions present themselves and can better inform you about how the character functions inside the screenplay.

Story Lines for each main character:

Protagonist: Bethany
Beginning: Bethany undergoes an exorcism at age 16.
Inciting Incident: Brad asks her on a date.
Turning Point: she discovers a spell book in Deacon Anders chambers.
Midpoint: Discovers Deacon Anders has betrayed her and starts training at Koju’s spiritual center.
Turning Point 2: Deacon Anders captures her and Koju.
Dilemma: Trust Demon 23 and join forces with him or die.
Major Conflict: While Bethany shields the congregation from the demons that Deacon Anders conjured, Demon 23 stops Deacon Anders from sending Bethany to Hell.
Ending: Bethany makes peace with Demon 23 and expels him for good. She finds love with Koju.

Antagonist #1: Deacon Anders
Beginning: Deacon Anders tries to kill Bethany during her exorcism.
Inciting Incident: Bethany dates Brad.
Turning Point: The tape doesn’t scare Brad so he activates plan 2, which is to reattach Demon 23 to Bethany.
Midpoint: Comes up with plan to kill Bethany and further his church career.
Turning Point 2: He commands Demon 23 to repossess Bethany as the first step of his plan.
Dilemma: Fulfill his mission or spare Bethany.
Major Conflict: He tries to kill Bethany and possess his congregation with Demons.
Ending: He goes to prison for 6 years.

Antagonist #2: Demon 23
Beginning: Demon 23 tries to take Bethany’s soul when she 16 and is exorcised from her.
Inciting Incident: Deacon Anders uses dark magic to conjure him and reattach him to Bethany
Turning Point: He realizes he loves her.
Midpoint: He tries to help prep Bethany for a fight against Deacon Anders with supernatural cues/helpfulness
Turning Point 2: He possesses Bethany
Dilemma: Join forces with Bethany or be controlled by Deacon Anders who will use him to hurt Bethany
Major Conflict: He helps Bethany protect the congregation from Deacon Anders plan and saves her from being killed and cursed to Hell by Deacon Anders
Ending: He gives Bethany the spell to expel him for ever and returns to his point of origin.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Character Profiles
What I learned doing this assignment is it’s fun to contemplate my characters. Also punching up the character profiles is a great way to make sure the characters deliver on the pitch at the quick and easy, light and breezy outline level.
Character 1
A. Name: Bethany Sawyer
B. Role in the Story: Bethany is the once possessed protagonist, who wants to get to the bottom of why her dating life is a disaster.
C. Core Traits: Kind, Charming, Funny, A push-over
D. Motivation: Want/Need: Bethany wants a boyfriend because she’s lonely and she wants to prove to Deacon Anders that she’s worthy of love, she needs to believe in herself, seek her own approval and solve her own problems
E. Flaw/Wound: Flaw is her lack of curiosity/ Her wound is that her family abandoned her after she was exorcized
F. Secret/Hidden Agenda: Secret is that she thinks Deacon Anders might be right and she’s not loveable/Hidden Agenda is to find a way to get out from under Deacon Anders control
G. Internal Dilemma: She wants to be free to love and prove that she’s not evil but she doesn’t want to defy Deacon Anders to the point where she can’t turn to him for help if he’s right
H. What makes this character perfect for their role in this story? She’s perfect because she was susceptible to demonic control before the story, so who’s to say she couldn’t have a relapse. The potential for that makes her a danger to the other characters of the story.
A: Are there any parts of the profile that you could improve?
I want to add to her character traits that when she’s pushed too far she can be temperamental and make rash decisions, but it takes a lot to get her there.
Maybe make her want more straightforward, she wants Deacon Anders approval but she needs her own approval
Change the flaw – lack of curiosity is weak. Maybe her flaw is that she doesn’t really believe in herself and her abilities.
B: Can this character fulfill their role in the story more effectively? I think overcoming a lack of belief in herself and a lack of curiosity about her situation better sets her up to start down the new path of self-advocacy.
Character 2
A. Name: Priest Deacon Anders
B. Role in the Story: He monitors/controls Bethany and practices the dark arts in preparation for her demonic relapse.
C. Core Traits: Righteous, Crafty, Fearful, Ideologically Hypocritical in the name of God, Caring
D. Motivation: Want/Need: Deacon Anders wants to end the torment and fear Bethany causes him/ Needs recognition
E. Flaw/Wound: He is willing to use dark magic to guide and protect his flock/ His wound is that he lost Father Ptolemy’s respect and trust after his fear kept him from helping Father Ptolemy exorcize Bethany
F. Secret/Hidden Agenda: Secret is that he thinks it’s his God given mission to stop Bethany by any means necessary/Hidden Agenda is he sabotages Bethany’s potential love matches by sending the video of her exorcism to her suitors to scare them away. When that stops working, he conjures Demon 23 and reattaches him to Bethany to do more serious damage and ultimately kill her.
G. Internal Dilemma: He’s a man of God who needs to contain the evil that Bethany is a portal for but he helped raise her and he’s not entirely certain of the threat she poses if she stays contained, hence why he tries to control her exposure to people, through dating, etc.
H. What makes this character perfect for their role in this story? He’s willing to stop Bethany if necessary and he’s willing to engage with the source of the demonic threat in order to do that.
A: Are there any parts of the profile that you could improve?
Maybe change caring to something strong like he has strong empathy for his parishioners and for Bethany too early in the story (when she’s a young adult but before saying yes to Brad’s date)
Punch up his wound to not only losing Father Ptolemy’s respect after he fails to help him to losing the respect of the church and his good standing in the church Maybe he was a promising young clergyman and he harbors a dream of getting back in the good graces of the church but because he’s unraveling that dream become nefarious and more about wanting to control the Vatican by wielding demonic possession as a power.
B: Can this character fulfill their role in the story more effectively? I think I need to depict him actually preparing for Bethany’s relapse by practicing the black arts. Maybe Bethany catches him in a wiccan book store.
Character 3
A. Name: Demon 23
B. Role in the Story: He is the demon that possesses Bethany when she’s a teen and who gets reattached to her when she’s 26
C. Core Traits: Evil, Innocent (in the sense that he knows no other way than evil), possessive, capable of personal growth
D. Motivation: Want/Need: His want is to stop Deacon Anders from controlling his through black magic/ His need is to protect Bethany
E. Flaw/Wound: His flaw is his myopic view of existence/ His wound – he has none
F. Secret/Hidden Agenda: His Secret is that he realizes he would rather love Bethany than possess her/His hidden Agenda is to help Bethany along her journey to spiritual power and enlightenment whenever Deacon Anders’s control over him grows lacks
G. Internal Dilemma: He’s a demon in love. He’s meant to possess souls, not to save them.
H. What makes this character perfect for their role in this story? His supernatural power and love for Bethany helps him to sabotage Deacon Anders plans and point Bethany in the right direction for learning to protect herself.
2. Answer the questions to improve the Character Profiles.
A: Are there any parts of the profile that you could improve? Is his wound that he loves Bethany? When does he discover this?
B: Can this character fulfill their role in the story more effectively? Everything he does has to be interpreted until Bethany learns the summoning spell, so he can cause a lot of the scary/creepy moments through miscommunication. Also, maybe his initial confusing over how he feels for Bethany could make him violent at first. Also would need to establish how Bethany’s light during her exorcism is what first exposes him to weird feelings of love. Her power is like none he’s ever felt and he is attracted to it in a way that is different than he’s used to. So she stays on his mind and when he’s reattached, he finds that he no longer wants to take her soul.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Genre Conventions
What I learned doing this assignment is that I'm a little all over the place incorporating the conventions into my screenplay , but since it's okay to be messy at this stage, I'm embracing it.
1. Tell us the following:
Title: Dating with Demons
Concept: What if Linda Blair from the Exorcist wanted to start dating.
Genre: Horror Comedy
2. Make a list of the conventions for your chosen genre. 3. Brainstorm ways to deliver the conventions more effectively and build those parts into your 4-Act Structure.
Horror Genre Conventions List and Brainstorm
PURPOSE: Taking characters to the point of hysteria
I'm working to make Bethany more fearful of her resurfacing demonic attachment and of Deacon Anders.
ISOLATION: Characters are alone and powerless against the monster
Bethany has a run in with Demon 23 in the bathroom of a restaurant and in her apartment. Deacon Anders becomes more menacing as Bethany realizes he might be partaking in nefarious and sinister actions.
DEATH: Create the fear of violent torturous deaths or insanity
Bethany learns that Deacon Anders plans to use a death curse to bind her to Demon 23 and banish them to Hell forever.
MONSTER/VILLAIN: The person or thing that inflicts the endless terror/violence
Deacon Anders becomes terrifying as his command of the Dark Arts grows stronger and he sets his sights on gaining power over the Vatican.
HIGH TENSION: Situations that are out of the character’s control that get even worse or more dire
Bethany fights to get rid of her demonic attachment but Deacon Anders is successful in using Demon 23 to repossess her.
DEPARTURE FROM REALITY: Locations/situations outside of daily life
Koju's metaphysical school teaches Bethany powerful skills. Deacon Anders turns his whole congregation into a demonstration of his exorcism powers.
MORAL STATEMENT: What happens when you ignore the acceptable values and cross the line
Haven't really thought about it but a temporary one could be something like Fear can make a monster out of you.

Comedy Genre Conventions List and Brainstorm
PURPOSE: Pack the story with moments that make the audience laugh
Bethany's dating life is funny and disastrous, her friends at the coffee shop she works at approach her situation with a lightheartedness that is humorous while protecting them from all the demonic stuff that happens. Also the people at the spiritual center are quirky and their take on everything brings levity.
INCONGRUENCE: Putting elements together that don’t match to illicit humor
The support group for survivors of Bethany, her practice with spell casting is humorous, how she exorcises a boy on a date from a demonic attachment conjured by his mother is a funny way for her to flex her newfound calling at the end of the story
MECHANICS OF COMEDY: The devices that cause laughter: Set-up/Punchline, Toppers, running gags, sight and prop humor, comedic situations (Fish Out of Water, incongruent pairings, Hilarious Purpose, Absurd situation, Misinterpretation, etc)
Bethany's dating style and choices in dates, the way she tracks down her exes is almost reminiscent of a murderous stalker in a slasher, her absurd behavior around Koju because she can't hide her attraction, Demon 23 possession one of her exes to try and start dating her
COMEDIC PROTAGONIST(S): Creates laughs through incongruent perspectives, choices, reactions. Could be the straight man.
Bethany is goofy when she isn't terrified.
STRONG STORY: Comedy must be attached to an engaging story.
No one ever thinks about life after exorcism.
4. List your structure from Lesson 2 along with the improvements that came from the Genre Conventions, like I did above.
Act 1:
Opening: Bethany’s exorcism.
Horror Change: Demon 23, using Bethany as a vessel, breaks through her restraints and targets her little brother in the hallway.
Horror Change: Demon 23 threatens to harm her brother if Bethany doesn’t give in, but she is strong enough to expel Demon 23 with a late assist from Father Ptolemy.
Next Beat: Change: Bethany works at Mojo Cafe with Amy. They are friends. Amy knows about her exorcism.
Comedic Change: Amy plays at being possessed by the coffee machine and the audience thinks this is modern day Bethany before Bethany tells her to stop because they are losing customers.
Comedic Change: Amy and Bethany discuss Bethany's past dates to establish her bad luck and that she never hears from the dates anymore
Beat Change: She receives a message from Brad on Bethany's Dating App. (Maybe it could called something like DMdeMan or something)
Next Beat: During confession, the audience learns that Bethany has grown up under the watchful eye of Deacon Anders who monitors her dates through confessions and chaperone’s other parts of her life, especially her volunteer work at the foster home (he sends a nun with her who can’t always make it). She tells Deacon Anders of three dates, one okay, one bad. She tells him even the bad date ghosted her. He assigns her penance.
Inciting Incident: Deacon Anders sees her at the cafe where he witnesses her interaction with Brad, which shows a lot of potential for a love match. Deacon makes her promise not to date.
Next Beat: Bethany tries to cancel her date with Brad and encounters what could be scary paranormal activity in her apartment.
Next Beat: Deacon Anders and Bethany argue about her decision to accept Brad's date.
Next Beat: Horror Change (Isolation and budding hysteria): Brad stands her up and she is attacked by Demon 23 in the bathroom and passes out after saying a metaphysical prayer. She comes two after a few female staff said they heard a loud bang and found her lying on the floor. They chalk the loud bang up to her passing out and “crashing” to the floor.
Turning Point: Horror Change: Bethany tries to seek help from Deacon Anders but discovers a spell book that has spells for demonic possession. Also, there’s a dark force in the Rectory that makes Bethany take the book and flee.
Act 2:
New plan: Bethany turns to Amy with the book and they begin to weave a theory about Deacon Anders. Could he actually have tried to conjure something to destroy her love life? Why? Amy tells her that one way they can prove their theory is to find out why every guy she dates ends up ghosting her.
Horror Change: Deacon Anders shows up. He’s looking for his book and his demeanor is off and menacing. Bethany runs back into the cafe to hide the book. Or Bethany has left the book with Amy, who tries to hide it from some scary nuns that the Deacon has brought with him to the cafe.
Plan in action: She stops working at the Foster home. She tracks down old boyfriends and finds out that each one tells her they received a video of her exorcism and it scared them off. Meanwhile, Amy studies Deacon Anders spell book.
Comedic Change/Supernatural change: The Survivors of Bethany dating support group. Demon 23 shows up and helps her get information from the group (Demon 23 would be acting on his own outside of Deacon Anders’s orders because he is starting to care for Bethany).
Midpoint Turning Point: She returns to the family that abandoned her to ask them if they are the one sending the video of her possession to her potential suitors and finds out that the video belongs to her priest and mentor, Deacon Anders. And that got the spell book from Bethany’s mother.
Horror Change: The house is decrepit and evil. Sees her mother, shriveled and stoic, watching her from the widow. She lets her in. Tells her that Deacon Anders feared the video would fail him one day, so he came for the book. The book she used to summon the demon to help her son. But it wanted Bethany as payment, so she agreed. Now she has lured Bethany inside where her father, Frank, tries to kill.
Act 3:
Rethink everything: Bethany can’t seek help from Deacon Anders and she’s too impotent to command the spell book (though she shows potential).
New plan: Amy takes her to a spiritual center run by Koju. After an energy balancing session confirms that she has a demonic attachment, Koju’s team teaches Bethany to master metaphysical tools that will help her.
New beat: Amy tells her to try the spell book again. Bethany initially refuses but then the book opens up to the Death Curse on its own implying that she’s in danger.
Turning Point: Huge failure / Major shift: After conjuring Demon 23, he warns Bethany about Deacon Anders before taking the spell book and disappearing. Bethany and Koju go to confront Deacon Anders and he temporarily paralyzes her using magic.
Horror Change: Deacon Anders uses Demon 23 to possess Koju and terrorize Bethany a bit (he could beat her, scar her, choke her). Deacon Anders could tell her she’s lucky that he has bigger plans for her otherwise he would have Koju kill her right then and there.
Act 4:
Climax/Ultimate expression of the conflict: Deacon Anders repossesses Bethany with Demon 23 in an attempt to secretly kill her while possessing the whole congregation in an attempt to impress the Vatican with a mass exorcism, but Demon 23 and Bethany unite to defeat Deacon Anders.
Horror Change: The congregation is terrorized until Bethany shields them. Maybe some people die and their corpses are reanimated by demons.
Resolution: Deacon Anders goes to prison, Bethany expels Demon 23 once and for all and Bethany starts to date Koju who wants to stick around.
Comedic Moment – Before Bethany banishes him, Demon 23 possesses Brad and tries to get Bethany to date him because he realizes he rather love her than possess her.
Comedic Moment – Faux date. Bethany exorcises a person with a demonic attachment conjured by his mother before his blind date arrives. Bethany explains his mother is worried he'll leave her if he falls in love.
Possible Horror Change: Deacon Anders is approached by the Church of Satan in prison asking if he’s interested in revenge.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s 4 Act Structure
What I learned doing this assignment is that the antagonist’s journey needs to be just as strong as the protagonist’s journey. It can be a source of many plot holes.
List the beats of your 4 Act Transformational Structure.
1. Give us the following:
Title: Dating with Demons
Genre: Horror Comedy
Concept: What if Linda Blair from The Exorcist wanted to start dating.
Main Conflict: Formerly possessed, Bethany, really wants to find love, but her unrelenting priest and her lingering demon won't let her have a decent date..
2. Fill in each of these with the answers you have right now.

Act 1:
Opening – Father Ptolemy and Deacon Anders perform an exorcism on Bethany (16).
Is this an engaging opening scene that lures us into the story? Yes. A young girl’s soul is being threatened by a demonic presence that is possessing her, which is already attention grabbing. Unexpectedly, the clergymen end up fighting each other because one of them wants to kill Bethany and end the torment. Then Bethany, herself, has to take the initiative in her own exorcism and begins to expel the demon, something I don’t think I’ve seen depicted in a film before.
Is the lead character clearly living in a pre-transformation mode? Yes, she is at the very beginning, fighting to stop Demon 23 from taking her soul and barely surviving. However, with the role she plays in her exorcism, the audience is given the set-up for the awesome spiritual power she will express in the climax of the movie.
Also, Deacon Anders, who will become the main antagonist and he is absolutely traumatized by the event which creates a distrust of Bethany.
Inciting Incident – Brad asks her on a date full of promise.
How does this incident invite and propel us into the journey? The audience has seen Bethany’s bad dates and we see her loneliness and we see that she is good person. When Brad comes into the picture, he flirts with her and makes her feel desired. I think an audience would be invested in whether or not Bethany and Brad have a chance to pursue their attraction and possibly find love with each other. Also, the audience could be a little worried for Brad, given Deacon Anders’s efforts to deter Bethany from dating him, and we want to see what happens to him.
Deacon Anders has asserted himself as a father figure to Bethany because his philosophy is keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer. He thinks Bethany will become possessed again and he sees it as his job to try and minimize the damage until Brad comes into the picture. Brad challenges Deaon Anders authority over Bethany, so he decides to take more drastic measures to make the inevitable happen.
Turning Point – Bethany has to fight Demon 23 during her date with Brad.
How is this Turning Point a twist that locks us into the journey with “no going back?” Deacon Anders’s warning has come true. Now Bethany must deal with her demon if she wants to have a normal life, let alone achieve the goal of having a normal dating life that ultimately leads to finding love.
Demon 23 is sent by Deacon Anders because of her connection to Brad. The idea that Deacon Anders is right about Bethany needs to be more significant to Bethany. Needs a better set-up.
Act 2:
New plan – Bethany tracks down old suitors to find out why they stopped dating her.
What new plan did the protagonist create to deal with the Act 1 Turning Point? She stops going to church and decides to look up her former suitors to confirm why they stopped dating her. She wants to find out if they were exposed or attacked by something supernatural like Brad. So instead of just accepting that bad dates happen to her and the Deacon Anders is right about her being someone who shouldn’t date, her tactic is to actively seek answers in hopes of figuring out how to take control of her dating life.
Plan in action – She discovers that there’s a tape of her exorcism circulating in her dating pool. She needs to find out who’s behind it.
How does the protagonist take action on that plan? She stops interacting with Deacon Anders. She stops working with the foster kids so they won’t be in danger. Finally, she tracks down one of her suitors at work to ask him why he stopped seeing her and he shows her the tape of her exorcism, explaining it was emailed to him after their date. She then goes to the support group looking for the source of the video.
Bethany distances herself from Deacon Anders. There has to be something that makes her suspect she can’t trust him. Maybe he wants to usher her away to a convent or maybe he wants to declare her insane and commit her. But he has to cross the line in some way to drive her to find another path for herself (also the path that he has her on needs to be more defined. Basically, how has he been “treating” her “condition” thus far?
Midpoint Turning Point – Bethany pays a visit to the family that abandoned her to the church after her exorcism and learns that Deacon Anders recorded the exorcism.
How does the Midpoint change the meaning, creating a reveal that changes everything while keeping us on the same journey?
The Midpoint reveals that Deacon Anders has been sending the video of Bethany’s exorcism to potential suitors so they won’t date her anymore. Bethany must confront Deacon Anders about being the source of her bad dating. She also wonders if he has somehow caused Demon 23 to resurface.
Act 3:
Rethink everything – Bethany is worried that if Deacon Anders sent out the video of her exorcism, then he might be the reason that Demon 23 has resurfaced.
What is revealed to the protagonist from the Midpoint? How do they react or rethink things? Deacon Anders’s betrayal is revealed. Now she must assess how much of a threat he actually is and if he is somehow behind Demon 23 coming back. She also knows she can’t go to Deacon Anders to help her with the demonic stuff.
The interaction with Deacon Anders that convinces her he might be behind the demonic activity in her life has to be better established.
New plan – Bethany goes to a spiritual center and learns from a team of metaphysical practitioners.
What new plan did the protagonist create to deal with this new level of conflict? Bethany seeks help at a spiritual center where she learns metaphysical techniques to combat her demon and whoever may wish her harm.
Set-up demon 23 trying to warn Bethany about Deacon Anders. Also, Deacon Anders needs to see why Bethany is no long susceptible to the black magic he’s been using against her (in the form of reattaching Demon 23 to her).
Turning Point: Huge failure / Major shift – Bethany uses her new metaphysical talents to discovers that Deacon Anders may have conjured Demon 23 and that he’s planning to do something terrible to Bethany. When she goes to confront him, he uses the dark arts to get the upper hand.
The lowest of the low. How has this Turning Point brought the character to the lowest of lows, making it almost impossible for them to win in a normal way? This forces them to adopt the change in a much bigger way. Bethany discovers that Deacon Anders has been practicing the dark arts and he can command Demon 23. He repossesses Bethany with Demon 23 as a demonstration of his power to the Vatican. Bethany is outmatched by Deacon Anders’s dark magic prowess. He sees to it that the worst case scenario happens and Bethany has a possession relapse. However, Demon 23 tells her they can defeat Deacon 23 if she joins forces with him.
Act 4:
Climax/Ultimate expression of the conflict – On a livestream to the Vatican, Deacon Anders demonstrates the danger that Bethany and her demon causes when he attempts to posssess the entire congregation. Bethany must unite with Demon 23 to thwart Deacon Anders and protect the congregation.
How is this the ultimate expression of the conflict? How does it require a “fight to the death,” either literally or symbolically? Deacon Anders is going to use his new powers to kill Bethany and possess the entire congregation as the ultimate expression of his power. Bethany and Demon 23 join forces to heighten Bethany’s metaphysical/spiritual power to protect the congregation from the demons that Deacon Anders conquers. Demon 23 must battle Deacon Anders to stop him from killing Bethany as she fights to keep the congregation protected.
Resolution – Bethany frees herself of Demon 23, sends Deacon Anders to jail and goes on a good date.
How does this resolution represent the transformation that has taken place and bring this story to a fitting conclusion? How does the change show up in your lead character’s behavior? Demon 23 discovers that he wants to love Bethany and not possess her. Bethany forgives Demon 23 but she still expels him. As a confident exorcist, Bethany offers her services to kids with demon attachments. She also goes on a promising date with her instructor from the spiritual center.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha's Project Pitch

What I learned doing this assignment is that the pitch is a great way to focus on the hooks of your screenplay and to easily check if the screenplay is delivering on the concept.

Pitch:

A. Genre: Horror Comedy
B. Title: Dating with Demons
C. High Concept: What if Linda Blair from The Exorcist wanted to start dating.
D. Main Conflict: Once possessed as a teen, lonely heart, Bethany, really wants to find love, but her overprotective priest and ex demon won't let her have a decent date.
E. Transformational Journey: Bethany goes from a girl with a disastrous dating life and a resurfaced demonic attachment to embracing her spiritual power, exorcising herself of her demon for good and finding love.
F. Opposition: Priest, Deacon Anders, traumatized from helping with Bethany's exorcism when she was 16, actively tries to prevent Bethany from dating and practices the dark arts in preparation for her demonic relapse. Demon 23, the demon that possessed Bethany, resurfaces and starts to act like a jilted ex.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Hi Class! Hi Jessica!

My name is Tasha Espinoza.

I’ve written two okayish scripts and one with potential.

I’m looking to learn how to elevate a script through the rewrite process. I really don’t have the first clue how to approach a rewrite and I think I’ve already made it way more complicated by overthinking the process before even attempting it. So, I’m looking for guidance on how to let go and embrace a more effective approach. I’m ready to get in there and foster what’s truly working in the script while making the necessary edits and cuts.

Something unusual about me is that I’ve been grabbed by a phantom. True I had just unintentionally bleach-bombed myself in the face, but it grabbed me nonetheless.

• This reply was modified 1 year ago by  Tasha Espinoza.

[Tasha Espinoza]

GROUP RELEASE FORM

As a member of this group (the forum for Professional Rewrite 82), I, Tasha Espinoza, agree to the following:

1. That I will keep the processes, strategies, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class confidential, and that I will NOT share any of this program either privately, with a group, posting online, writing articles, through video or computer programming, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class available to anyone who is not a member of this class.

2. That each writer’s work here is copyrighted and that writer is the sole owner of that work. That includes this program which is copyrighted by Hal Croasmun. I acknowledge that submission of an idea to this group constitutes a claim of and the recognition of ownership of that idea.

I will keep the other writer’s ideas and writing confidential and will not share this information with anyone without the express written permission of the writer/owner. I will not market or even discuss this information with anyone outside this group.

3. I also understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes and from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.

4. If I have an idea that is the same as or very similar to another group member’s idea, I’ll immediately contact Hal and present proof that I had this idea prior to the beginning of the class. If Hal deems them to be the same idea or close enough to cause harm to either party, he’ll request both parties to present another concept for the class.

5. If you don’t present proof to Hal that you have the same idea as another person, you agree that all ideas presented to this group are the sole ownership of the person who presented them and you will not write or market another group member’s ideas.

6. Finally, I agree not to bring suit against anyone in this group for any reason, unless they use a substantial portion of my copyrighted work in a manner that is public and/or that prevents me from marketing my script by shopping it to production companies, agents, managers, actors, networks, studios or any other entertainment industry organizations or people.

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Character Journey Track

What I learned doing this assignment is creating a track for each character elevates the story beyond the horror.

ASSIGNMENT

1. With each of your Survivors and Victims, answer the questions for their Character Profile and Character Journey:

<b style=”background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>Kade’s Profile:

Role: The leader

Traits: Ruthless, selfish, Quick to Anger, Mean, Has a soft spot for Nikki

Fears: None

Wants/Needs: Money/Goods/to live the high life, needs control

Likability / Rooting factors: Only redeeming factor is that he cares for Nikki

How they react under stress: Denial, getting tougher/meaner

Relationship with other characters: An authority, what he says goes. Leader of his group, his “boys”. Faye’s boyfriend.

Character Journey

Character Intro: Makes the final call about not helping Sheena

Denial: Isn’t worried about Sheena’s threat to haunt them

Their reaction at first horror:

Reaction to Sheena: he’s a bit scared at first but then she calls her bluff.

Reaction to Mirror Mirror: he guards Nikki

Relation to group after first horror:

Tells the others that Sheena’s scare tactics aren’t shit and they need to ignore her

How they fight back: Ignores Sheena, Physically fights Mirror Mirror, car pursuit of Mirror Mirror and enters the house of horrors

End Point:

He may be the sole survivor

Or he is stabbed through the heart by Mirror Mirror

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

• Mirror Mirror is tougher than he is

• Mirror Mirror will make simple, off brand kills when pushed

• If he dies, then Sheena succeeds in getting her revenge

• If he doesn’t die, then he’s still unfinished business for Sheena (and maybe she can be strong enough to affect him in numbers–with added help from Nikki)

Ike’s Profile:

Role: The moral one

Traits: A bit of a follower, slight mob mentality, guilt-ridden, wants to seem tough and unaffected

Fears: Sheena’s threat

Wants/Needs: Wants to be tough/Needs Kade’s approval

Likability / Rooting factors: Starts to feel bad about what happened to Sheena even before she haunts him. Wants to keep Nikki safe.

How they react under stress: Shows fear but tries to solve it or stays to fight.

Relationship with other characters: Kade’s second in command. Respected by the group. One of Kade’s boys. Has a mother/son type relationship with Liv.

Character Journey

Character Intro: A little objection to not helping Sheena but gives in to save face in front of Kade

Denial: Believes Kade when he says Sheena is nothing to worry about as a ghost

Their reaction at first horror:

Reaction to Sheena: He’s scared and goes to Kade for help.

Reaction to Mirror Mirror: Terror but wants to help protect Nikki and Faye.

Relation to group after first horror:

Runs from Sheena like the rest but defers to Kade and starts withstanding her scares.

Is hopeful that they can stop Mirror Mirror.

How they fight back:

Researching how to banish Sheena. Follows Kade to Mirror Mirror’s shack of terrors.

End Point:

He may or may not be the one the one survives or is stabbed in the chest by Mirror Mirror. Need to figure out if it’s Kade or him. If he survives, he’s the moral one who sacrifices Nikki to save himself.

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

• Mirror Mirror is tougher than he is

• Mirror Mirror will make simple, off brand kills when pushed

• If he dies, then Sheena succeeds in getting her revenge

• If he doesn’t die, then he’s still unfinished business for Sheena (and maybe she can be strong enough to affect him in numbers–with added help from Nikki)

• Ike is a coward, not a noble hero

Jean Tyrone’s Profile

Role: The complainer/the lady’s man

Traits:

Pretty Boy, ladies man of the group, vain, selfish, materialistic, charming

Fears: nothing

Wants/Needs:

Money/Needs reassurance

Likability / Rooting factors:

Will die for his sisters and mother – Viv, Faye and Liv well.

His fight to rescue Liv and Nikki, his love for his family, and his sacrifice for his family makes you root for him.

How they react under stress:

Curiosity and wanting to solve the problem

Relationship with other characters:

Brother of Faye and Nikki, Son of Liv, One of Kade’s boys

Character Journey

Character Intro:

Taunts Sheena along with the others, doesn’t object to leaving her, thinks her curse it funny

Denial:

Agrees with Kade that there’s nothing to worry about when Sheena’s murder is reported in the news

Their reaction at first horror:

Curiosity

Relation to group after first horror:

Catalyst for Kade to declare the Sheena has failed and for Sheena to use Mirror Mirror (He’s hurt, so Kade feels protective towards him but also further angered that everyone is letting Sheena get under their skin)

How they fight back: Follows Kades advice to ignore Sheena. Probably tries to fight Mirror Mirror but is killed. Maybe we see a scene where he tries to figure out how to escape from captivity. Maybe Liv left him a clue or he finds Liv slowly dying from her body mods and he tries to get them out of there. Maybe Mirror Mirror lets them almost escape and he has a chance to leave his mom behind and save himself in a situation that will foreshadow Kade/Ike’s decision with Nikki. Staying to help Liv is tragic because Liv passes away anyway and Mirror Mirror gets Jean Tyrone.

End Point:

He’s captured by Mirror Mirror posing as Faye broken down by the side of the road. (Faye texts him, he almost blows her off, telling her to ask Kade). If there is an escape scene at the end, then Mirror Mirror could tranquilize him or just have one awful booby trap stun him/fatally wound him or just kill him.

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

That Jean Tyrone is actually a more decent guy than he’s initially portrayed. He cares deeply for his family members and would sacrifice himself for it selflessly even though he can come off as selfish.

Targ’s Profile

Role: Out of Control/ Obnoxious

Traits:

Loud mouth, clown, hot head

Fears:

J horror

Wants/Needs:

Wants attention, needs approval

Likability / Rooting factors:

His almost childlike fear of Sheena that turns into humbling desperation

How they react under stress:

He freaks out, loses rational thought, makes impulsive decisions in order to get away from the horror

He runs.

Relationship with other characters:

He’s the clown that tries to show off and make everyone laugh. Causes fights that his group has to put out. They have his back but they tolerate him. Also can cause fights within the group.

Character Journey

Character Intro:

He helps seal Sheena’s fate by aiding the group’s decision.

Denial:

He listens to Kade.

Their reaction at first horror:

Scared, runs, believes he’s in danger.

Relation to group after first horror:

Clings to them for help.

How they fight back:

Tries to escape.

End Point:

After Sheena ups the visceral scares, Targ runs into the street and is hit by a car (maybe an homage to Halloween 2 when the two cars hit that poor guy dressed like Mike Myers)

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

Maybe the meanness of Sheena and how mean her relentlessness is.

Liv’s Profile

Role: The Carrier: The one who brings the horror to the group

Traits: Warm, motherly, tough, single mom, hard worker

Fears:

Not providing for her children, fears for her children safety, worries about Jean Tyrone’s path

Wants/Needs:

She wants a thriving family/She needs a helping hand (is that how Mirror Mirror gets her? He offers her help with something?)

Likability / Rooting factors:

She’s moral. She’s kind. She’s a fighter, even when threatened with her own mortality, she worries about her kids.

How they react under stress:

She keeps calm and tries to solve the issues causing the stress.

Relationship with other characters:

Motherly matriarch. Generally respected, even by Kade.

Character Journey

Character Intro:

After Sheena’s death, when the guys agree to give Nikki a ride. She interacts with all of them, warning them to be alert because there’s a serial killer on the loose – she especially warns Nikki, her baby. She says that the guy seems to only kill women, but the guys should be just as careful because who knows. Of course Ike, the smart ass moral one, asks how she knows it’s a man and not a woman. Liv brings the horror to them by telling them about the news story around Sheena. This causes Ike’s wheels to start turning about Sheena and what they did to her.

Denial:

Maybe the thought that Mirror Mirror isn’t a threat to the group of guys?

Their reaction at first horror:

Escape. She figures out what happened to her and she tries to get out of Mirror Mirror’s house of horrors.

Relation to group after first horror:

She can only pray she can get out alive to warn everyone and help the authorities capture Mirror Mirror. (Wouldn’t it be crazy if she was allowed to call them but Mirror Mirror was about to spoof the signal to a tower in another state so the authorities can’t track it. – cell tower spoofing or IMSI catching)

How they fight back:

By being clever. She figures out how to escape her prison. She finds the cell phone. She gives as much description as she can about where she is (she doesn’t know that it’s Mirror Mirror until after the call and he takes off his mask – maybe it’s someone she works with every day at the hospital. She is a nurse or she’s a medical tech. It has to be someone unsuspecting that she’s unassumingly around. That new guy at work she didn’t even know was there until they have a meet-cute).

End Point:

She is outsmarted and overpowered because Mirror Mirror has the home team advantage. She is killed by the body modification he does.

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

That Mirror Mirror not only kills his victims, but he toys with them slowly and really tortures them. This gives the audience insight into what Sheena experienced at the hands of Mirror Mirror and why she is so vengeful.

Faye’s Profile

Role: Monster Bait

Traits: Tough, kind of like a female Kade, a bit of a dick

Fears: Nothing

Wants/Needs: Wants Kade, needs a strong partner

Likability / Rooting factors:

Not sure yet, maybe her way with Nikki or her mother

How they react under stress:

Solve it, not afraid, doesn’t run

Relationship with other characters:

Respected by the group as Kade’s girl

Character Journey

Character Intro:

She could be in the van or she could be with Kade when they pick up the group in the beginning

Denial:

Agrees with Kade and thinks it’s ridiculous because it doesn’t happen to her.

Their reaction at first horror:

She is either curious about the old lady and wants to help her or she’s mad at the old lady and tells her to get out or she’s going to kick her out. But since the Old lady is Mirror Mirror, he gets the upper hand (maybe with Sheena’s influence over Faye to not resist or be helpful suddenly).

Relation to group after first horror:

She is used as bait to get the other person Mirror Mirror is after.

How they fight back:

We don’t get to see Faye fight back or we could see her end with the lipstick.

End Point:

Mirror Mirror kills her through body modification. It could be depicted because the smothering with lipstick is interesting. Perhaps Faye has actually survived all of the horrendous torture and should have died, but because she’s a survivor, Mirror Mirror will give her one last beauty treatment, a technique he’s perfected on others – akin to tar and feathering but with the use of lipstick to smother you.

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

You realize that no one has ever gotten away from Mirror Mirror. Does that mean that Sheena was fated to be his victim? Did others get a chance to escape like a ride out of danger, just to be hunted down again. Is there a girl that survived Mirror Mirror that Ike could track down and talk to?

Nikki’s Profile

Role:

Sacrificial Lamb or Innocent (if she’s the sacrificial lamb then it’s her image that Sheena uses to lure Mirror Mirror, but she uses the whole family – Liv, Faye and Jean Tyrone – so then they would technically all be the sacrificial lamb. Either it’s just Nikki that lures him or the emphasis is placed on Nikki in Mirror Mirror’s mind. Also, Mirror Mirror should stalk her before he even goes after Liv to show that she the sacrifice that will bring him – Sheena wants the group killed, so she gives Mirror Mirror Nikki)

Traits:

Kind, good, gets along with everyone and anyone (maybe a scene where Kade gets uppity with a rival and Nikki gets him to act decently/help because she’s working with him somehow), excellent student working hard for a scholarship, works and goes to school, helps her family

Fears:

Not getting into a good college

Wants/Needs:

She wants to financially help her family/ She needs to get into a good college.

Likability / Rooting factors:

Kind, considerate, a friend to everyone, give what little pocket money she has to the homeless (Jean Tyrone: Now how is giving your money away going to help you get into college. Don’t look at me for help. You’re cute, but you’re not that cute. Jean Tyrone laughs and playfully jabs her in the ribs.)

How they react under stress:

She’s scared, she tries to run.

Relationship with other characters:

Everyone loves and protects Nikki.

Character Journey

Character Intro:

Gets a ride to a party from Kade and the boys.

Denial:

Stays optimistic that Kade could save her from Mirror Mirror. If she finds out about the Sheena theory, she could doubt that Sheena could be so vengeful.

Their reaction at first horror:

Devastation at the loss of Liv. Desperate concern for Faye and Jean Tyrone. (Does Mirror Mirror make it seem like either person has gone away?)

Relation to group after first horror:

Clings to them for help and protection.

Could possibly try to send Sheena to the light via the Ouija Board.

Relation to group after first horror:

Clings to them for help and protection.

Could possibly try to send Sheena to the light via the Ouija Board.

How they fight back:

Runs from Mirror Mirror.

End Point:

Is pulled back into the inferno of the burning shack by Mirror Mirror and roof collapses on them.

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

Ike selfishly chose not to save Nikki because he was scared it would cost him his life.

Sheena can carry out her unfinished business through Nikki.

Does the punishment fit the crime?

Should one selfish mistake cost your life?

2. Build those Character Journeys into your outline.

Completed this but too long to post in this forum.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Monster Reveal Track

What I learned doing this assignment is that getting clear on your monsters rules helps you determine how certain scenes need to play out.

1. Create each part of this model:

A. Who is your monster and what is their terror?

My monster is the recently departed Sheena and her terror is that her wrath will not cease and she knows the identity of the Mirror Mirror serial killer.

• Powers?

Sheena can:

influence thoughts and dreams

manifest gory images especially of herself

create minimal poltergeist activity

Manifest cold spots

• Limitations:

She can’t use her poltergeist activity to really cause any harm because she’s a spirit

Her power to influence isn’t very strong and can be ignored

• Weaknesses?

She’s a spirit so she can only use scares to exact her revenge

• Plan/Purpose/Appetite?

She wants to kill the members of the group that left her to die at the hands of Mirror Mirror. Once she realizes she won’t be able to scare anyone to death after she successfully offs Targ, she finds Mirror Mirror and uses her influence to get him to kill the group (and the loved ones that unfortunately become collateral damage).

B. Sequence the reveals.

She can manifest gory images especially of herself

Targ, Ike and Kade see her in various forms of dismemberment and decay or she shows up in the style of apparition Targ is most afraid of – J-horror (she could be a creepy Ring girl)

Demand to know why this is happening and what to do about it.

Establishes the terror and curiosity of how to stop the haunting.

She can create minimal poltergeist activity

She knocks things off of shelves and knocks doors open and closed at Ike and Targs homes.

Demand to know how powerful she is.

Establishes the terror the paranormal activity generates in Targ and Ike.

She can Manifest cold spots

The homes of Targ and Ike are cold.

Kade has to put on a jacket in his home.

Demand to know how powerful she is.

Establishes the terror the paranormal activity generates in Targ and Ike.

Sheena’s wrath will not cease

Out of terror from seeing the phantom of Sheena, Ike tracks down and befriends Sheena sister, Dee Dee, at a bar. Dee Dee tells that she had to stop Sheena from relentlessly going after her abusive ex boyfriend because Sheena never stops and the poor guy had enough already. Dee Dee could say if Ike did something to Sheena during her lifetime, good luck now that she’s in the after life.

Demand to know what Ike is up against.

Establishes that terror that Sheena won’t stop.

She’s a spirit so she can only use scares to exact her revenge

She appears to Targ as a terrifying dead girl and flies at his, chasing his throughout his house.

Demand to know how powerful she is.

Establishes the terror the paranormal activity generates in Targ and Ike.

She can influence thoughts and dreams.

-She lands on Targ after chasing him through the house and tells him to kill himself or to leave the house or she’ll kill him.

Demand to know why she is using her power to influence these people in this specific way.

-Establishes the terror that Targ being groomed to kill himself accidently by running into traffic.

She can’t use her poltergeist activity to really cause any harm because she’s a spirit

Kade opens his switchblade and lays in on the table. He dares her to use it on him and it just falls to the floor as if a kitten whacked it with its paw.

Demand to see through her gimmick and shut her down.

Establishes figuring out the mystery.

Her power to influence isn’t very strong and can be ignored

Kade calls her out on her lack of ability to really do anything other than make them see stuff, think stuff and see objects get knocked to the ground. He tells the group to get over it and shun the bitch.

Demand to see through her gimmick and shut her down.

Establishes figuring out the mystery.

She knows the identity of the Mirror Mirror serial killer.

Sheena realizes she’s dead and follows the guy who did it to his home. She knows who he is and where he lives.

Stan Whitman (aka the Mirror Mirror serial killer) goes throughout his day, eating his breakfast, looking at his mail, microwaving his dinner, watching tv while he eats while Sheena watches.

Demand to know why Sheena is watching a person who is not a part of the group she’s haunting.

Establishes the discovery that Sheena knows who Mirror Mirror is.

She can influence thoughts and dreams.

-Stan Whitman begins having dreams of his recent kill morphing into various people. She lands on one form, the form of a girl, that peaks his interest and shows him where he can find her in the dream.

Demand to know why she is using her power to influence these people in this specific way.

Establishes the terror that Mirror Mirror is going to go after the loved ones of the group.

She wants to kill the members of the group that left her to die at the hands of Mirror Mirror

She realizes she won’t be able to scare anyone to death after she successfully offs Targ,

She finds Mirror Mirror and uses her influence to get him to kill the group (and the loved ones that unfortunately become collateral damage).

She starts influencing him in his dreams – maybe she shows him killing Nikki in his dreams and that sells him on the idea

Demand to see just how relentless she is

Establishes her pulling the pieces together as she uses her effective problem solving skills to achieve her goal.

She can influence thoughts and dreams.

-Tells Nikki to grow her hair out

Demand to know why she is using her power to influence these people in this specific way.

Establishes the terror that Sheena is influencing Nikki to groom herself for Mirror Mirror.

C. Create Demand for each clue/reveal.

Demand in advance or it creates the demand

Each demand escalates the terror, danger or violence

Create the need to solve each demand

• Through curiosity.

• Through conflict.

• Through terror.

• Through discovery.

• Through putting together the pieces.

• Through characters trying to figure out the mystery.

2. Lay that over your current outline and fill in each clue/reveal using the tag “Monster Reveal:. Completed this, but won’t post here due to the length.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Character Death Track

What I learned doing this assignment is that it’s very helpful to see why the deaths happen in the story to motivate plot points and provide more structure.

1. Give us the order your characters die in.

With each character tell us the why and how.

• Character Death 1: Sheena

• Why: Sheena is an innocent whose death kicks off her act of vengeance and the whole movie.

• How: Killed by Mirror Mirror via body modification, torture and dismemberment.

• Character Death 2: Targ

• Why: Sheena is successful in scaring him to death.

• How: He flees his house haunted by Sheena and runs into oncoming traffic and is fatally hit by a car.

• Character Death 3: Liv

• Why: Liv is an innocent who Sheena targets to exact her revenge against the group of guys that let her die. By sending Mirror Mirror after the group she can kills off their innocent loved ones which parallels that she was an innocent and a loved one of her mother, but the guys looked at her like she was expendable. She died because she couldn’t give them what they wanted and their loved ones will die giving Mirror Mirror what he wants. As the group tries to stop Mirror Mirror, he will kill them for survival and sport. This kill will also demonstrate how deadly Mirror Mirror is.

• How: Mirror Mirror modifies Liv’s body surgically until she dies.

• Character Death 4: Faye

• Why: Faye dies to exact Sheena’s revenge, up the body count and get back at Kade especially.

• How: Kidnapped in her own car and killed by Mirror Mirror who performs body modifications that go too far as usual.

• Character Death 5: Jean Tyrone

• Why: The second of the group to die, which is Sheena’s main target. Sheena influences Mirror Mirror to believe Jean Tyrone fits his MO and therefore he kills him.

• How: Mirror Mirror kills Tyrone by a tar and feather method that uses lipstick and skin melting, to make him look more feminine.

• Character Death 6: Kade

• Why: Mirror Mirror pursues Kade through his house of horrors and kills him to survive, protect his secret surgery house and prevent Kade from preventing Mirror Mirror from performing his special surgeries on Nikki.

• How: Surprise attack and a lot of stabbing. He’s also burned him with bleach and maimed him in one eye earlier in the climax.

• Character Death 7: Mirror Mirror

• Why: Mirror Mirror dies because he’s a serial killer and must be stopped.

• How: Ike burns down Mirror Mirror’s “surgery” shack with Mirror Mirror inside.

• Character Death 8: Nikki

• Why: She dies because Mirror Mirror pulls her into the burning house and Ike chooses to save himself.

• How: Burning house collapses on her.

2. Build the answers into your outline.

ACT 1 — SET UP FOR HORROR

Atmosphere of Evil established: Sheena, a young girl traveling at night is stalked by the Mirror Mirror serial killer.

Horror Situation: Attacked and Chased – Mirror Mirror runs her off the road and chases her through the dark woods.

Reaction: Escape – She makes it to the road and flags a van down, explaining that a crazy guy ran her off the road and is following her. She needs to be taken to the nearest gas station or police station, anywhere but there.

Horror Situation: Refusing to take action – The van of thuggy dudes refuses to give her a ride because she can’t give them anything. She promises to haunt them to their graves.

Reaction: Denial – They don’t care if anything bad happens to the girl and mock her vow to haunt them. They drive away leaving her stranded.

Horror Situation: Physically Tortured – The next day she’s found mutilated (partially dismembered?) on the side of the road.

• Character Death 1: Sheena

• Why: Sheena is an innocent whose death kicks off her act of vengeance and the whole movie.

• How: Killed by Mirror Mirror via body modification, torture and dismemberment.

Connect with the characters: The lead thuggy dude, Kade picks up his boys, Targ, Jean Tyrone and Ike, one by one to go to a party. They give Jean Tyrone’s beloved little sister, Nikki, a ride to her friend’s house.

The characters are warned not to do it: Ike sees a news story about Sheena’s murder and thinks back to Sheena’s vow to haunt them to death because they didn’t help her.

Denial of Horror: Kade tells Ike he’s worried about nothing. He pins Sheena’s news picture to a dart board and Targ sends a dart into it.

Reaction: Guilt – Ike goes to Sheena’s funeral. (Note: this can be revealed later. He sees Sheena’s mother there who looks like a ghost of herself because she’s overwrought with grief).

Safety taken away: Ike sees the apparition of Sheena on his ring camera and she blows up his phone with a text saying she found him.

Horror Situation: Impending doom – Sheena knows where Ike lives.

Reaction – Denial – Ike tells Targ who blames it on the last crazy “bitch” that Ike ghosted. He tells him that he needs to learn to stop fucking girls at his place.

Horror Situation: Environment changing around you – Targ experiences cold spots and the feeling that someone is watching him. He shows up at Ike’s asking to stay the night. Targ wakes up in the middle of the night. The house is an icebox. He sees a figure in the doorway. It’s Ike. Ike asks if he can hear the woman crying in the basement.

Reaction – Escape: They go to Kade’s place. They ask Jean Tyrone if he’s experienced anything and he says no.

A character refuses to take action: Kade sends them home.

Monster: The nature of the beast: Kade’s TV shuts off and he sees Sheena’s obscured image in the barely reflective surface of his screen.

Horror Situation: She points at him and moves to him. On the surface of the reflection he sees her grab him and start whispering in his ear.

Reaction: Escape – He jumps up and tries to shrug her off. Chilled, he grabs his coat and heads out of the house.

ACT 2 — THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Isolated / Trapped / Abducted: Sheena begins her customized assaults on the group.

Horror Situation: Being lured into danger – Jean Tyrone hears “Nikki” calling him for help.

Reaction: Solve it – He frantically follows the sound to find Nikki.

Horror Situation: Tricked – He sees Nikki lying dismembered at the bottom of the stairs.

Reaction: He runs to her and she disappears.

Horror Situation: Mentally tortured – Ike is stalked by Sheena’s apparition in various stages of mutilation everywhere and it’s driving him to madness.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get to you – Targ hears footsteps running towards him but nobody’s there. Doors and cupboards fly open all around him.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – An apparition of Sheena’s dismembered body flies after him. Sheena makes him see her cut open his throat in the mirror (note: Sheena can manipulate what you see in surfaces and shadows, etc.). All the activity makes him think the monster is going to get him.

One of us is killed: Escape – Targ runs into the street and gets fatally hit by a car.

• Character Death 2: Targ

• Why: Sheena is successful in scaring him to death.

• How: He flees his house haunted by Sheena and runs into oncoming traffic and is fatally hit by a car.

Reaction: Denial – Kade berates the group for letting some bitch ghost scare them into doing “stupid shit” and points out that her scare tactics are actually harmless. All she can do is make them see things and open a few cupboards. He says put on a jacket and ignore the bitch.

MIDPOINT: The monster is worse than we thought! Full pursuit by the killer: Out of the frying pan and into the fire – Sheena influences (whispers, dreams, etc) Mirror Mirror to visit the block that Nikki walks down to get to school.

Horror Situation: The monster is coming – Mirror Mirror follows Nikki and sees Liv (her mother), Faye (her sister) and Jean Tyrone (her brother) throughout the day.

Horror Situation: Kidnapped – Liv is injected with a sedative.

Horror Situation: Trapped – Liv wakes up in a basement room.

Reaction: Escape – Liv bloodies her fingers to work the pins out of the door hinge.

Horror Situation: Fall through the floor – Liv almost gets out of the abandoned house but falls through a trap door onto a surgical table.

Reaction: Fight – Liv hurts herself falling onto the surgical table, but she tries to fight Mirror Mirror as he straps her down.

Horror Situation: Physically tortured – Liv dies from the body modification Mirror Mirror does to her.

• Character Death 3: Liv

• Why: Liv is an innocent who Sheena targets to exact her revenge against the group of guys that let her die. By sending Mirror Mirror after the group she can kills off their innocent loved ones which parallels that she was an innocent and a loved one of her mother, but the guys looked at her like she was expendable. She died because she couldn’t give them what they wanted and their loved ones will die giving Mirror Mirror what he wants. As the group tries to stop Mirror Mirror, he will kill them for survival and sport. This kill will also demonstrate how deadly Mirror Mirror is.

• How: Mirror Mirror modifies Liv’s body surgically until she dies.

Terrorized: Mirror Mirror abducts other members of the group.

Horror Situation: Menacing Stranger – Faye finds an old lady in her back seat.

Reaction: Denial – Sheena influences Faye to deny the red flags of the situation as she tries to help the lady, who ends up being Mirror Mirror in disguise. Faye is taken by Mirror Mirror.

Horror Situation: Tricked – Jean Tyrone sees Faye’s car broken down on the side of the road and Sheena influences him to think Mirror Mirror is Faye is under the hood.

Reaction: Solve it – Jean Tyrone stops by to see if he can help his sister and gets stab in the neck by a paralytic. Mirror Mirror, disguised as Faye, takes Tyrone.

Horror Situation: Impending doom – Liv’s dead body is discovered by Ike with body modification that seems familiar.

Reaction: Solve it – With Jean Tyrone nowhere to be found, Kade has a grieving Nikki stay at his place.

Horror Situation: No escape – Ike realizes that Sheena figured out how to use Mirror Mirror to exact her revenge.

Reaction: Solve it – Kade and Ike realize they have to kill Mirror Mirror and banish Sheena.

ACT 3 — FULL OUT HORROR

Fight to the death: Kade fightst to stop Mirror Mirror from taking Nikki.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – Mirror Mirror breaks into Kades home and tries to get Nikki.

Reaction: Fight – Nikki fights and almost gets away, but Mirror Mirror gets the upper hand.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – Kade comes home and tries to stop Mirror Mirror from taking Nikki, but he escapes to his car with her.

Reaction: Fight – Wounded, Kade jumps in his car and tries to follow Mirror Mirror. He calls Ike and says he’s in pursuit of Mirror Mirror because he took Nikki.

Horror Situation: Lost – Kade loses Mirror Mirror.

Reaction: Solve it – Kade drives around and finds the only abandoned structure in the area.

Horror Situation: Friends in danger – He shares his location with Ike and tells him he’s going to check out the abandoned shack.

Reaction: Solve it – Kade goes into the house.

Horror Situation: Walking into a trap – Mirror Mirror is alerted to Kade’s arrival in the house by a nest camera.

Hysteria: Kade and Ike encounter their dead friends as they get closer to Nikki and Mirror Mirror.

Horror Situation: See another dead body – Kade runs into Jean Tyrone’s hanging dead body.

• Character Death 5: Jean Tyrone

• Why: The second of the group to die, which is Sheena’s main target. Sheena influences Mirror Mirror to believe Jean Tyrone fits his MO and therefore he kills him.

• How: Mirror Mirror kills Tyrone by a tar and feather method that uses lipstick and skin melting, to make him look more feminine. (Should maybe see the beginning of this or Tyrone trapped and then “let out” only to find the room with the device that will do this to him.)

Horror Situation: Slime – Kade thinks Jean Tyrone’s blood is on him but he realizes Jean Tyrone is covered in red lipstick. Now it’s all over Kade. Jean Tyrone’s body modifications freak Kade out.

Reaction: Escape – Kade runs further into the house.

Horror Situation: Lured into the Horror – Ike finds Kade’s car and enters the shack.

Horror Situation: Seeing another dead body – Faye’s dead body falls out a hole in the ceiling and Ike becomes tangled up with her.

• Character Death 4: Faye

• Why: Faye dies to exact Sheena’s revenge, up the body count and get back at Kade especially.

• How: Kidnapped in her own car and killed by Mirror Mirror who performs body modifications that go too far as usual.

Reaction: Escape – He struggles to free himself from the tangle of Faye’s body pulling him to the ground. He aggressively steps back.

Horror Situation: Trap door in the floor – Ike steps onto the trap and he falls through the floor with Faye on him.

Horror Situation: Injured – Ike falls onto the surgical table with Faye on top of him and breaks his leg.

Reaction: Escape – Ike tries to get out from under Faye

Reaction: Hide – Ike gets dragged into the other room by Kade. Kade is badly burned with bleach and blind in one eye.

Horror Situation: Face to Face with the monster – Mirror Mirror enters the room.

Horror Situation: Seeing other dead body – Mirror Mirror shove’s Faye’s into the other room with Kade and Ike. Kade reacts violently to seeing the dead body of his girlfriend but tries to keep quiet.

Horror Situation: Friends in Danger – Mirror Mirror roles Nikki into his “surgical room”.

Horror Situation: Cannot see – Kade and Ike strain to see through the hole in the wall if Nikki is still alive. It looks like Mirror Mirror has already begun making modifications to her.

Horror Situation: Face to face with the monster – Distracted, Kade and Ike don’t see that Mirror Mirror has entered their room. Mirror strikes down Kade with several fatal knife stabs (or something else that fits his MO – maybe Mirror Mirror injects him with the sedative, drags him into the “surgery” room and starts taking vital things off of him to put on Nikki – maybe if he catches Ike).

• Character Death 6: Kade

• Why: Mirror Mirror pursues Kade through his house of horrors and kills him to survive, protect his secret surgery house and prevent Kade from preventing Mirror Mirror from performing his special surgeries on Nikki.

• How: Surprise attack and a lot of stabbing. He’s also burned him with bleach and maimed him in one eye earlier in the climax. (Still unsure if Ike should die and Kade should live?)

Reaction: Escape – Ike runs into the surgery room to find Nikki still alive. He frees her from the surgical table/gurney on wheels and they run back through the house of horrors and make it outside.

The thrilling escape from death: Ike douses the shack in gasoline from his car and lights it on fire. The shack is dry and made of flammable materials and it quickly turns into an inferno. Ike calls the cops. He didn’t call them earlier because he was going to commit arson??

• Character Death 7: Mirror Mirror

• Why: Mirror Mirror dies because he’s a serial killer and must be stopped.

• How: Ike burns down Mirror Mirror’s “surgery” shack with Mirror Mirror inside.

Death returns to take one or more: – Ike sees Sheena in the flames. Distracted, he doesn’t see Mirror Mirror emerge to grab Nikki and pull her back into the inferno of the house.

Reaction: Fight – Ike heads into the burning building to get Nikki but Mirror Mirror had dragged her deep into the flames.

Horror Situation: Dilemma – Nikki screams in pain and horror. Ike tries to go in further, but Sheena crashes into the burning structures of the house so they start to fall around him. Nikki can still be saved, but when Ike sees Sheena at the doorway, he knows he has only one chance to jump through it before she rams it and the whole place collapses on him. He saves himself.

• Character Death 8: Nikki

• Why: She dies because Mirror Mirror pulls her into the burning house and Ike chooses to save himself.

• How: Burning house collapses on her.

Resolution: Ike lives. He gives his statement to the local police exposing Mirror Mirror. He’s a local hero. But at night when he sleeps, he dreams of killing himself over the guilt of leaving Nikki behind. When he’s able to calm himself and return to sleep, Nikki whispers into his ear and Sheena joins her to increase Nikki’s power of influence.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Horror Situation Track

What I learned doing this assignment is that mapping out the horror situations is a great and easy step for weaving the horror into a horror screenplay?

ACT 1 — SET UP FOR HORROR

Atmosphere of Evil established: Sheena, a young girl traveling at night is stalked by the Mirror Mirror serial killer.

Horror Situation: Attacked and Chased – Mirror Mirror runs her off the road and chases her through the dark woods.

Reaction: Escape – She makes it to the road and flags a van down, explaining that a crazy guy ran her off the road and is following her. She needs to be taken to the nearest gas station or police station, anywhere but there.

Horror Situation: Refusing to take action – The van of thuggy dudes refuses to give her a ride because she can’t give them anything. She promises to haunt them to their graves.

Reaction: Denial – They don’t care if anything bad happens to the girl and mock her vow to haunt them. They drive away leaving her stranded.

Horror Situation: Physically Tortured – The next day she’s found mutilated (partially dismembered?) on the side of the road.

Connect with the characters: The lead thuggy dude, Kade picks up his boys, Targ, Jean Tyrone and Ike, one by one to go to a party. They give Jean Tyrone’s beloved little sister, Nikki, a ride to her friend’s house.

The characters are warned not to do it: Ike sees a news story about Sheena’s murder and thinks back to Sheena’s vow to haunt them to death because they didn’t help her.

Denial of Horror: Kade tells Ike he’s worried about nothing. He pins Sheena’s news picture to a dart board and Targ sends a dart into it.

Reaction: Guilt – Ike goes to Sheena’s funeral. (Note: this can be revealed later. He sees Sheena’s mother there who looks like a ghost of herself because she’s overwrought with grief).

Safety taken away: Ike sees the apparition of Sheena on his ring camera and she blows up his phone with a text saying she found him.

Horror Situation: Impending doom – Sheena knows where Ike lives.

Reaction – Denial – Ike tells Targ who blames it on the last crazy “bitch” that Ike ghosted. He tells him that he needs to learn to stop fucking girls at his place.

Horror Situation: Environment changing around you – Targ experiences cold spots and the feeling that someone is watching him. He shows up at Ike’s asking to stay the night. Targ wakes up in the middle of the night. The house is an icebox. He sees a figure in the doorway. It’s Ike. Ike asks if he can hear the woman crying in the basement.

Reaction – Escape: They go to Kade’s place. They ask Jean Tyrone if he’s experienced anything and he says no.

A character refuses to take action: Kade sends them home.

Monster: The nature of the beast: Kade’s TV shuts off and he sees Sheena’s obscured image in the barely reflective surface of his screen.

Horror Situation: She points at him and moves to him. On the surface of the reflection he sees her grab him and start whispering in his ear.

Reaction: Escape – He jumps up and tries to shrug her off. Chilled, he grabs his coat and heads out of the house.

ACT 2 — THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Isolated / Trapped / Abducted: Sheena begins her customized assaults on the group.

Horror Situation: Being lured into danger – Jean Tyrone hears “Nikki” calling him for help.

Reaction: Solve it – He frantically follows the sound to find Nikki.

Horror Situation: Tricked – He sees Nikki lying dismembered at the bottom of the stairs.

Reaction: He runs to her and she disappears.

Horror Situation: Mentally tortured – Ike is stalked by Sheena’s apparition in various stages of mutilation everywhere and it’s driving him to madness.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get to you – Targ hears footsteps running towards him but nobody’s there. Doors and cupboards fly open all around him.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – An apparition of Sheena’s dismembered body flies after him. Sheena makes him see her cut open his throat in the mirror (note: Sheena can manipulate what you see in surfaces and shadows, etc.). All the activity makes him think the monster is going to get him.

One of us is killed: Escape – Targ runs into the street and gets fatally hit by a car.

Reaction: Denial – Kade berates the group for letting some bitch ghost scare them into doing “stupid shit” and points out that her scare tactics are actually harmless. All she can do is make them see things and open a few cupboards. He says put on a jacket and ignore the bitch.

MIDPOINT: The monster is worse than we thought! Full pursuit by the killer: Out of the frying pan and into the fire – Sheena influences (whispers, dreams, etc) Mirror Mirror to visit the block that Nikki walks down to get to school.

Horror Situation: The monster is coming – Mirror Mirror follows Nikki and sees Liv (her mother), Faye (her sister) and Jean Tyrone (her brother) throughout the day.

Horror Situation: Kidnapped – Liv is injected with a sedative.

Horror Situation: Trapped – Liv wakes up in a basement room.

Reaction: Escape – Liv bloodies her fingers to work the pins out of the door hinge.

Horror Situation: Fall through the floor – Liv almost gets out of the abandoned house but falls through a trap door onto a surgical table.

Reaction: Fight – Liv hurts herself falling onto the surgical table, but she tries to fight Mirror Mirror as he straps her down.

Horror Situation: Physically tortured – Liv dies from the body modification Mirror Mirror does to her.

Terrorized: Mirror Mirror abducts other members of the group.

Horror Situation: Menacing Stranger – Faye finds an old lady in her back seat.

Reaction: Denial – Sheena influences Faye to deny the red flags of the situation as she tries to help the lady, who ends up being Mirror Mirror in disguise. Faye is taken by Mirror Mirror.

Horror Situation: Tricked – Jean Tyrone sees Faye’s car broken down on the side of the road and Sheena influences him to think Mirror Mirror is Faye is under the hood.

Reaction: Solve it – Jean Tyrone stops by to see if he can help his sister and gets stab in the neck by a paralytic. Mirror Mirror, disguised as Faye, takes Tyrone.

Horror Situation: Impending doom – Liv’s dead body is discovered by Ike with body modification that seems familiar.

Reaction: Solve it – With Jean Tyrone nowhere to be found, Kade has a grieving Nikki stay at his place.

Horror Situation: No escape – Ike realizes that Sheena figured out how to use Mirror Mirror to exact her revenge.

Reaction: Solve it – Kade and Ike realize they have to kill Mirror Mirror and banish Sheena.

ACT 3 — FULL OUT HORROR

Fight to the death: Kade fights to stop Mirror Mirror from taking Nikki.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – Mirror Mirror breaks into Kades home and tries to get Nikki.

Reaction: Fight – Nikki fights and almost gets away, but Mirror Mirror gets the upper hand.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – Kade comes home and tries to stop Mirror Mirror from taking Nikki, but he escapes to his car with her.

Reaction: Fight – Wounded, Kade jumps in his car and tries to follow Mirror Mirror. He calls Ike and says he’s in pursuit of Mirror Mirror because he took Nikki.

Horror Situation: Lost – Kade loses Mirror Mirror.

Reaction: Solve it – Kade drives around and finds the only abandoned structure in the area.

Horror Situation: Friends in danger – He shares his location with Ike and tells him he’s going to check out the abandoned shack.

Reaction: Solve it – Kade goes into the house.

Horror Situation: Walking into a trap – Mirror Mirror is alerted to Kade’s arrival in the house by a nest camera.

Hysteria: Kade and Ike encounter their dead friends as they get closer to Nikki and Mirror Mirror.

Horror Situation: See another dead body – Kade runs into Jean Tyrone’s hanging dead body.

Horror Situation: Slime – Kade thinks Jean Tyrone’s blood is on him but he realizes Jean Tyrone is covered in red lipstick. Now it’s all over Kade. Jean Tyrone’s body modifications freak Kade out.

Reaction: Escape – Kade runs further into the house.

Horror Situation: Lured into the Horror – Ike finds Kade’s car and enters the shack.

Horror Situation: Seeing another dead body – Faye’s dead body falls out a hole in the ceiling and Ike becomes tangled up with her.

Reaction: Escape – He struggles to free himself from the tangle of Faye’s body pulling him to the ground. He aggressively steps back.

Horror Situation: Trap door in the floor – Ike steps onto the trap and he falls through the floor with Faye on him.

Horror Situation: Injured – Ike falls onto the surgical table with Faye on top of him and breaks his leg.

Reaction: Escape – Ike tries to get out from under Faye

Reaction: Hide – Ike gets dragged into the other room by Kade. Kade is badly burned with bleach and blind in one eye.

Horror Situation: Face to Face with the monster – Mirror Mirror enters the room.

Horror Situation: Seeing other dead body – Mirror Mirror shove’s Faye’s into the other room with Kade and Ike. Kade reacts violently to seeing the dead body of his girlfriend but tries to keep quiet.

Horror Situation: Friends in Danger – Mirror Mirror roles Nikki into his “surgical room”.

Horror Situation: Cannot see – Kade and Ike strain to see through the hole in the wall if Nikki is still alive. It looks like Mirror Mirror has already begun making modifications to her.

Horror Situation: Face to face with the monster – Distracted, Kade and Ike don’t see that Mirror Mirror has entered their room. Mirror strikes down Kade with several fatal knife stabs (or something else that fits his MO – maybe Mirror Mirror injects him with the sedative, drags him into the “surgery” room and starts taking vital things off of him to put on Nikki – maybe if he catches Ike).

Reaction: Escape – Ike runs into the surgery room to find Nikki still alive. He frees her from the surgical table/gurney on wheels and they run back through the house of horrors and make it outside.

The thrilling escape from death: Ike douses the shack in gasoline from his car and lights it on fire. The shack is dry and made of flammable materials and it quickly turns into an inferno. Ike calls the cops. He didn’t call them earlier because he was going to commit arson??

Death returns to take one or more: – Ike sees Sheena in the flames. Distracted, he doesn’t see Mirror Mirror emerge to grab Nikki and pull her back into the inferno of the house.

Reaction: Fight – Ike heads into the burning building to get Nikki but Mirror Mirror had dragged her deep into the flames.

Horror Situation: Dilemma – Nikki screams in pain and horror. Ike tries to go in further, but Sheena crashes into the burning structures of the house so they start to fall around him. Nikki can still be saved, but when Ike sees Sheena at the doorway, he knows he has only one chance to jump through it before she rams it and the whole place collapses on him. He saves himself.

Resolution: Ike lives. He gives his statement to the local police exposing Mirror Mirror. He’s a local hero. But at night when he sleeps, he dreams of killing himself over the guilt of leaving Nikki behind. When he’s able to calm himself and return to sleep, Nikki whispers into his ear and Sheena joins her to increase Nikki’s power of influence.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Characters for Horror

What I learned doing this assignment is that just naming the people in the group helps to shape the story.

1. Tell us your Concept and the Group you have chosen.

Concept: What if a spirit had to use a serial killer to carry out her vengeance against the group of people responsible for her murder.

Group: Sinners/Social Group

2. Tell us the Dying Pattern of this movie.

Pattern A – Put 6 to 8 characters together and kill them off one by one.

3. Give us an Identity and a sentence for each character that makes up your group.

1. Leader: Kade – wannabe thug, sets the tone for his group of boys, too “hard” for his own good. He’s either the last one to die or he has the biggest arc and redeems himself enough to make it to the sequel, although what state he’ll be in is the question.

2. Complainer: Sunny – the star child of his family, smart, egotistical, unhealthy attitude towards women. Definitely second to last to go.

3. Obnoxious: Jean Tyrone – ladies man, at least he thinks so, handsome but offers not much else. Second of the guys to go. Almost gets taken out by the spirit before Qade chides him for letting the spirit’s “parlor” tricks get to him.

4. Rescuer: Ike – could be a nice guy if he wasn’t a mindless follower. If Qade doesn’t have a redeeming arc and survives, then Ike will be a survivor, if not soul survivor. But he becomes nice enough to matter to the audience, so the stakes are higher around his death.

5. Obnoxious: Targ – another follower, disaffected, makes fun of “try-hards”, ironically is the most superstitious. First of the guys to go. He’s a real jerk, so audiences might not be rooting for his survival. He might actually be killed by the spirit because he lets his fear get the better of him and he runs out in traffic.

6. The Innocent: Nikki – Jean Tyrone’s sweet little sister, the one woman Qade and his boys actually likes and protects. Her death is devastating, unless Qade has that redeeming arc and saves her.

7. Love Interest: Faye – Kade’s mean girl queen bee. Fayes is the second lady to be killed.

1. Moral One: Liv – Faye, Nikki and Jean Tyrone’s young, single mother. Liv is the first to be killed by the serial killer because she fits his M.O.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Terrifying Monster

What I learned doing this assignment is that mystery and mythology are not the same thing.

1. Tell us what or who your monster is.

My monster is a vengeful spirit.

2. Give us a few sentences for each of the following for your monster:

• Their Terror: It stalks its prey, moves objects, makes spots cold, shows up in mirrors, photos, hallways, eventually it manipulates a serial killer to carry out the terror and murder of its prey

• Their Mystery: Eventually, the vengeful spirit uses a serial killer to carry out their vengeance, so the group has to find and stop the serial killer

• Their Fear Provoking Appearance: Dead girl phantom – the state the serial killer left her in

• Their Rules: no real supernatural powers other than appearance, some object movement, cold spots, typical ghost stuff but she knows the identity of a serial killer and can logically think – also can’t/ isn’t allowed to cross over until she avenges herself

• Their Mythology: The vengeful spirit was a girl that the group had a chance to rescue from certain death at the hands of a serial killer but chose not to because she could give them anything they wanted

[Tasha Espinoza]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Tasha and I’m super late to join this class, but here goes.

I’ve written 3 feature length scripts so far. I hope to gain a mastery of writing scripts in my favorite genre.

I use a lot of older slang in my personal/everyday way of speaking. Some examples are: Man Alive!, the salad days, and old hat at. I never thought that way of speaking was old-fashioned, but my friends and family have since corrected me.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Horror Conventions

What I learned doing this assignment is that the conventions of horror can really start to shape your story even at just the concept phase.

ASSIGNMENT

Analyze a HORROR movie to discover how the conventions were expressed.

• Title: The Hitcher (1986)

• Concept: While transporting a car from Chicago to San Diego, Jim Halsey picks up a hitchhiker named John Ryder, who claims to be a serial killer.

• Terrorize The Characters: Jim Halsey is doggedly pursued by a disappointed serial killer who will continue to kill the people that come into contact with Jim until Jim figures out how to stop him.

• Isolation: A long stretch of lonely, desert road in 80s Texas with only a handful of gas stations and diners along the way, half of which are not operational.

• Death: Dismemberment, Beheading, Explosions, Shootings, Vehicular Manslaughter, Child Murder

• Monster/Villain: John Ryder, The Hitcher, a phantom-like serial killer who relentlessly torments Halsey into the final act of stopping Ryder.

• High Tension: Every place of sanctuary Halsey seeks is visited by Ryder where he racks up a high body count. Halsey’s not even safe at a police station surrounded by cops.

• Departure from Reality: Ryder corners Halsey at every turn and Halsey is forced to break the law i.n order to seek help.

• Moral Statement: Stranger Danger! Never pick up a Hitchhiker! Also, driving solo across the country isn’t just dangerous for the driver.

3. Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great horror film?

This movie is an excellent horror film. Not only is it very effective in delivering the horror by isolating characters, creating the fear of the unknown with the enigmatic Hitcher that is a lethal, phantom-like serial killer and driving characters to the point of hysteria and fear for their lives as the body count mounts and the kills become more gruesome, but it was written with budget decision in mind as it kept characters and locations to a minimum and had a trim running time. It is super effective on all fronts.

4. With your concept, fill in each of these Conventions for your story.

• Concept: A vengeful spirit kills off the group of guys that refused to rescue her from the serial killer that tortured her to death.

• Terrorize The Characters: The vengeful spirit guides the serial killer to hunt down and pick off her prey.

• Isolation: Most of the deaths occur in the abandoned rural shack where the serial killer operates.

• Death: Supernatural torture and the serial killer’s MO of performing weird body modification “art” that leads to fatality.

• Monster/Villain: Vengeful Spirit and the Serial Killer

• High Tension: The group is being pursued by a serial killer they can’t fight against and a supernatural force they can’t appeal to.

• Departure from Reality: Serial Killers are in normal life, but a serial killer guided/manipulated by a spirit is a departure from reality.

• Moral Statement: Empathy in crucial to maintaining humanity and protecting against the dangers of becoming too desensitized to the suffering of others.

[Tasha Espinoza]

GROUP RELEASE FORM

As a member of this group (Horror 29), I, Tasha Espinoza, agree to the terms of the following release form:

1. That I will keep the processes, strategies, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class confidential, and that I will NOT share any of this program either privately, with another group, posting online, writing articles, through video or computer programming, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class available to anyone who is not a member of this class.

2. That each writer’s work here is copyrighted and that writer is the sole owner of that work. That includes this program which is copyrighted by Hal Croasmun. I acknowledge that submissions of an ideas to this group constitutes a claim of and the recognition of ownership of that idea.

I will keep the other writer’s ideas and writing confidential and will not share this information with anyone without the express written permission of the writer/owner. I will not market or even discuss this information with anyone outside this group.

3. I also understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes and from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.

4. If I have an idea that is the same as or very similar to another group member’s idea, I’ll immediately contact Hal and present proof that I had this idea prior to the beginning of the class. If Hal deems them to be the same idea or close enough to cause harm to either party, he’ll request both parties to present another concept for the class.

5. If you don’t present proof to Hal that you have the same idea as another person, you agree that all ideas presented to this group are the sole ownership of the person who presented them and you will not write or market another group member’s ideas.

6. Finally, I agree not to bring suit against anyone in this group for any reason, unless they use a substantial portion of my copyrighted work in a manner that is public and/or that prevents me from marketing my script by shopping it to production companies, agents, managers, actors, networks, studios or any other entertainment industry organizations or people.

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Scary-As-Hell Scene

What I learned doing this assignment is don’t try for perfection at this level. Just write the damn thing.

Create a Horror Map for your scene and then write the scene.

1. Use the Scary-As-Hell scene process to create the Horror Map.

• A. Start with a Horror Situation.

• Isolated/Paranoid/Pursued: Sheena drives down a lonely woodland road when she crosses paths with a serial killer.

• B. Sequence the emotions, starting with the beginning and ending emotion.

Beginning: Apprehension

Ending: Panic

In between Emotions: Anxiety, Suspense, Shock, Fear

Emotional Sequence is

Apprehension, Anxiety, Suspense, Shock, Fear

• C. Give a physical action that could cause each emotion.

• completed
• D. Add in Scares and Releases.
• completed

2. Once you have the Horror Map, write the scene.

completed

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Scares, Releases, and Creepy moments!

What I learned doing this assignment is that you can brainstorm from the list of each emotion to round out your scene and pack it full of all the fun horror stuff.

Write a scene that uses scares, releases, and creepy moments.

1. Pick a scene from anyplace in your script that could use these three horror moments.

INT. TARG’S HOUSE – DAY

Targ is confronted with Sheena’s ghost and runs out of his house.

2. Create an OUTLINE of that scene and build in a scare, release, and a creepy moment.

Completed

3. Write the scene.

Completed.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Level 3 Horror Emotion Scene

What I learned doing this assignment is that outlines are integral to brainstorming ideas for how to add horror emotions to a scene.

1. Look through your Act 3 scenes and pick one that you would like to write through all four emotions. The most likely candidates will be your climax scenes where the most horror happens.

INT. MIRROR MIRROR’S KILL SHACK – NIGHT

Ike heads into the burning building after Jade and Mirror Mirror.

2. Brainstorm the scene to emphasize the Level 3 emotions and write it.

Complete

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Level 2 Horror Emotion Scene

What I learned doing this assignment is the level 2 emotions really ramp up the terror of a scene.

Write a scene that uses all three of these horror emotions: Fear, Suspense, Dread.

1. Look through your Act 2 scenes and pick one that you would like to write through all three emotions. It very likely will be a scene where some kind of horror action begins.

INT. LIV’S APARTMENT – DAY

Jean Tyrone hears Jade calling for help.

2. Brainstorm the scene to emphasize the Level 2 emotions and write it.

Complete

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Level 1 Horror Emotion Scene

What I learned doing this assignment is how easy it was to elevate the horror in my scene by just weaving the three emotions.

Write a scene that uses all three of these horror emotions.

1. Pick a scene that you could write from the first Act of your story.

The scene where Qade and Faye pick up the group, including Jade.

2. Create an outline of the scene that includes each of these emotions — apprehension/anxiety, surprise, and shock.

Complete

3. Write the scene as a first draft.

Complete

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Horror Outline Version 1

What I learned is I still need to improve my turnaround time for assignments. The allotted time was 48 hrs and I took 3 months.

My Horror Outline Version 1 is finally complete.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Character Journey Track

What I learned doing this assignment is that I need to get better at not letting my decision drag. It took way to long to complete this one.

ASSIGNMENT

1. With each of your Survivors and Victims, answer the following questions:

A. What is their Character Profile?

B. What is their Character Journey for this story?

<b style=”background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>Qade’s Profile:

Role: The leader

Traits: Ruthless, selfish, Quick to Anger, Mean, Has a soft spot for Vivi

Fears: None

Wants/Needs: Money/Goods/to live the high life, needs control

Likability / Rooting factors: Only redeeming factor is that he cares for Vivi

How they react under stress: Denial, getting tougher/meaner

Relationship with other characters: An authority, what he says goes. Leader of his group, his “boys”. Faye’s boyfriend.

Character Journey

Character Intro: Makes the final call about not helping Sheena

Denial: Isn’t worried about Sheena’s threat to haunt them

Their reaction at first horror:

Reaction to Sheena: he’s a bit scared at first but then she calls her bluff.

Reaction to Mirror Mirror: he guards Vivi

Relation to group after first horror:

Tells the others that Sheena’s scare tactics aren’t shit and they need to ignore her

How they fight back: Ignores Sheena, Physically fights Mirror Mirror, car pursuit of Mirror Mirror and enters the house of horrors

End Point:

He may be the sole survivor

Or he is stabbed through the heart by Mirror Mirror

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

• Mirror Mirror is tougher than he is

• Mirror Mirror will make simple, off brand kills when pushed

• If he dies, then Sheena succeeds in getting her revenge

• If he doesn’t die, then he’s still unfinished business for Sheena (and maybe she can be strong enough to affect him in numbers–with added help from Vivi)

Ike’s Profile:

Role:

The moral one

Traits:

A bit of a follower, slight mob mentality, guilt-ridden, wants to seem tough and unaffected

Fears:

Sheena’s threat

Wants/Needs:

Wants to be tough/Needs Qade’s approval

Likability / Rooting factors:

Starts to feel bad about what happened to Sheena even before she haunts him. Wants to keep Vivi safe.

How they react under stress:

Shows fear but tries to solve it or stays to fight.

Relationship with other characters:

Qade’s second in command. Respected by the group. One of Qade’s boys.

Character Journey

Character Intro:

A little objection to not helping Sheena but gives in to save face in front of Qade

Denial:

Believes Qade when he says Sheena is nothing to worry about as a ghost

Their reaction at first horror:

Reaction to Sheena: He’s scared and goes to Qade for help.

Reaction to Mirror Mirror: Terror but wants to help protect Vivi and Faye.

Relation to group after first horror:

Runs from Sheena like the rest but defers to Qade and starts withstanding her scares.

Is hopeful that they can stop Mirror Mirror

How they fight back:

Researching how to banish Sheena. Follows Qade to Mirror Mirror’s shack of terrors.

End Point:

He may or may not be the one the one survives or is stabbed in the chest by Mirror Mirror. Need to figure out if it’s Qade or him. If he survives, he’s the moral one who sacrifices Vivi to save himself.

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

• Mirror Mirror is tougher than he is

• Mirror Mirror will make simple, off brand kills when pushed

• If he dies, then Sheena succeeds in getting her revenge

• If he doesn’t die, then he’s still unfinished business for Sheena (and maybe she can be strong enough to affect him in numbers–with added help from Vivi)

• Ike is a coward, not a noble hero

Jean Tyrone’s Profile

Role:

The complainer

Traits:

Pretty Boy, ladies man of the group, vain, selfish, materialistic, charming

Fears: nothing

Wants/Needs:

Money/Needs reassurance

Likability / Rooting factors:

Treats Viv, Faye and Liv well.

If he fights to rescue Liv as well as himself, then his love for his family and his sacrifice for his family makes you root for him.

How they react under stress:

Curiosity and wanting to solve the problem

Relationship with other characters:

Brother of Faye and Vivi, Son of Liv, One of Qade’s boys

Character Journey

Character Intro:

Taunts Sheena along with the others, doesn’t object to leaving her, thinks her curse it funny

Denial:

Agrees with Qade that there’s nothing to worry about when Sheena’s murder is reported in the news

Their reaction at first horror:

Curiosity

Relation to group after first horror:

Catalyst for Qade to declare the Sheena has failed and for Sheena to use Mirror Mirror (He’s hurt, so Qade feels protective towards him but also further angered that everyone is letting Sheena get under their skin)

How they fight back: Follows Qades advice to ignore Sheena. Probably tries to fight Mirror Mirror but is killed. Maybe we see a scene where he tries to figure out how to escape from captivity. Maybe Liv left him a clue or he finds Liv slowly dying from her body mods and he tries to get them out of there. Maybe Mirror Mirror lets them almost escape and he has a chance to leave his mom behind and save himself in a situation that will foreshadow Qade/Ike’s decision with Vivi. Staying to help Liv is tragic because Liv passes away anyway and Mirror Mirror gets Jean Tyrone.

End Point:

He’s captured by Mirror Mirror posing as Faye broken down by the side of the road. (Faye texts him, he almost blows her off, telling her to ask Qade). If there is an escape scene at the end, then Mirror Mirror could tranquilize him or just have one awful booby trap stun him/fatally wound him or just kill him.

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

That Jean Tyrone is actually a more decent guy than he’s initially portrayed. He cares deeply for his family members and would sacrifice himself for it selflessly even though he can come off as selfish.

Targ’s Profile

Role:

Out of Control/ Obnoxious

Traits:

Loud mouth, clown, hot head

Fears:

J horror

Wants/Needs:

Wants attention, needs approval

Likability / Rooting factors:

His almost childlike fear of Sheena that turns into humbling desperation

How they react under stress:

He freaks out, loses rational thought, makes impulsive decisions in order to get away from the horror

He runs.

Relationship with other characters:

He’s the clown that tries to show off and make everyone laugh. Causes fights that his group has to put out. They have his back but they tolerate him. Also can cause fights within the group.

Character Journey

Character Intro:

He helps seal Sheena’s fate by aiding the group’s decision.

Denial:

He listens to Qade.

Their reaction at first horror:

Scared, runs, believes he’s in danger.

Relation to group after first horror:

Clings to them for help.

How they fight back:

Tries to escape.

End Point:

After Sheena ups the visceral scares, Targ runs into the street and is hit by a car (maybe an homage to Halloween 2 when the two cars hit that poor guy dressed like Mike Myers)

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

Maybe the meanness of Sheena and how mean her relentlessness is.

Liv’s Profile

Role:

The Carrier: The one who brings the horror to the group

Traits:

Warm, motherly, tough, single mom, hard worker

Fears:

Not providing for her children, fears for her children safety, worries about Jean Tyrone’s path

Wants/Needs:

She wants a thriving family/She needs a helping hand (is that how Mirror Mirror gets her? He offers her help with something?)

Likability / Rooting factors:

She’s moral. She’s kind. She’s a fighter, even when threatened with her own mortality, she worries about her kids.

How they react under stress:

She keeps calm and tries to solve the issues causing the stress.

Relationship with other characters:

Motherly matriarch. Generally respected, even by Qade.

Character Journey

Character Intro:

After the death, when the guys agree to give Vivi a ride. She interacts with all of them, warning them to be alert because there’s a serial killer on the loose – she especially warns Vivi, her baby. She says that the guy seems to only kill women, but the guys should be just as careful because who knows. Of course Ike, the smart ass moral one, asks how she knows it’s a man and not a woman. Liv brings the horror to them by telling them about the news story around Sheena. This causes Ike’s wheels to start turning about Sheena and what they did to her.

Denial:

Maybe the thought that Mirror Mirror isn’t a threat to the group of guys?

Their reaction at first horror:

Escape. She figures out what happened to her and she tries to get out of Mirror Mirror’s house of horrors.

Relation to group after first horror:

She can only pray she can get out alive to warn everyone and help the authorities capture Mirror Mirror. (Wouldn’t it be crazy if she was allowed to call them but Mirror Mirror was about to spoof the signal to a tower in another state so the authorities can’t track it. – cell tower spoofing or IMSI catching)

How they fight back:

By being clever. She figures out how to escape her prison. She finds the cell phone. She gives as much description as she can about where she is (she doesn’t know that it’s Mirror Mirror until after the call and he takes off his mask – maybe it’s someone she works with every day at the hospital. She is a nurse or she’s a medical tech. It has to be someone unsuspecting that she’s unassumingly around. That new guy at work she didn’t even know was there until they have a meet-cute).

End Point:

She is outsmarted and overpowered because Mirror Mirror has the home team advantage. She is killed by the body modification he does.

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

That Mirror Mirror not only kills his victims, but he toys with them slowly and really tortures them. This gives the audience insight into what Sheena experienced at the hands of Mirror Mirror and why she is so vengeful.

Faye’s Profile

Role:

Monster Bait

Traits:

Tough, kind of like a female Qade, a bit of a dick

Fears:

Nothing

Wants/Needs:

Wants Qade, needs a strong partner

Likability / Rooting factors:

Not sure yet, maybe her way with Vivi or her mother

How they react under stress:

Solve it, not afraid, doesn’t run

Relationship with other characters:

Respected by the group as Qade’s girl

Character Journey

Character Intro:

She could be in the van or she could be with Qade when they pick up the group in the beginning

Denial:

Agrees with Qade and thinks it’s ridiculous because it doesn’t happen to her.

Their reaction at first horror:

She is either curious about the old lady and wants to help her or she’s mad at the old lady and tells her to get out or she’s going to kick her out. But since the Old lady is Mirror Mirror, he gets the upper hand (maybe with Sheena’s influence over Faye to not resist or be helpful suddenly).

Relation to group after first horror:

She is used as bait to get the other person Mirror Mirror is after.

How they fight back:

We don’t get to see Faye fight back or we could see her end with the lipstick.

End Point:

Mirror Mirror kills her through body modification. It could be depicted because the smothering with lipstick is interesting. Perhaps Faye has actually survived all of the horrendous torture and should have died, but because she’s a survivor, Mirror Mirror will give her one last beauty treatment, a technique he’s perfected on others – akin to tar and feathering but with the use of lipstick to smother you.

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

You realize that no one has ever gotten away from Mirror Mirror. Does that mean that Sheena was fated to be his victim? Did others get a chance to escape like a ride out of danger, just to be hunted down again. Is there a girl that survived Mirror Mirror that Ike could track down and talk to?

Vivi’s Profile

Role:

Sacrificial Lamb or Innocent (if she’s the sacrificial lamb then it’s her image that Sheena uses to lure Mirror Mirror, but she uses the whole family – Liv, Faye and Jean Tyrone – so then they would technically all be the sacrificial lamb. Either it’s just Vivi that lures him or the emphasis is placed on Vivi in Mirror Mirror’s mind. Also, Mirror Mirror should stalk her before he even goes after Liv to show that she the sacrifice that will bring him – Sheena wants the group killed, so she gives Mirror Mirror Vivi)

Traits:

Kind, good, gets along with everyone and anyone (maybe a scene where Qade gets uppity with a rival and Vivi gets him to act decently/help because she’s working with him somehow), excellent student working hard for a scholarship, works and goes to school, helps her family

Fears:

Not getting into a good college

Wants/Needs:

She wants to financially help her family/ She needs to get into a good college.

Likability / Rooting factors:

Kind, considerate, a friend to everyone, give what little pocket money she has to the homeless (Jean Tyrone: Now how is giving your money away going to help you get into college. Don’t look at me for help. You’re cute, but you’re not that cute. Jean Tyrone laughs and playfully jabs her in the ribs.)

How they react under stress:

She’s scared, she tries to run.

Relationship with other characters:

Everyone loves and protects Vivi.

Character Journey

Character Intro:

Gets a ride to a party from Qade and the boys.

Denial:

Stays optimistic that Qade could save her from Mirror Mirror. If she finds out about the Sheena theory, she could doubt that Sheena could be so vengeful.

Their reaction at first horror:

Devastation at the loss of Liv. Desperate concern for Faye and Jean Tyrone. (Does Mirror Mirror make it seem like either person has gone away?)

Relation to group after first horror:

Clings to them for help and protection.

Could possibly try to send Sheena to the light via the Ouija Board.

Relation to group after first horror:

Clings to them for help and protection.

Could possibly try to send Sheena to the light via the Ouija Board.

How they fight back:

Runs from Mirror Mirror.

End Point:

Is pulled back into the inferno of the burning shack by Mirror Mirror and roof collapses on them.

What insight do their deaths or survival bring to the others/audience?

Ike selfishly chose not to save Vivi because he was scared it would cost him his life.

Sheena can carry out her unfinished business through Vivi.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Monster Reveal Track

What I learned doing this assignment is it’s crucial to understand how your monster operates in order to put together the story logic and the main horror element of the story.

1. Create each part of this model:

A. Who is your monster and what is their terror?

My monster is the recently departed Sheena and her terror is that her wrath will not cease and she knows the identity of the Mirror Mirror serial killer.

• Powers?

She can:

influence thoughts and dreams

manifest gory images especially of herself

create minimal poltergeist activity

Manifest cold spots

• Limitations:

She can’t use her poltergeist activity to really cause any harm because she’s a spirit

Her power to influence isn’t very strong and can be ignored

• Weaknesses?

She’s a spirit so she can only use scares to exact her revenge

• Plan/Purpose/Appetite?

She wants to kill the members of the group that left her to die at the hands of Mirror Mirror. Once she realizes she won’t be able to scare anyone to death after she successfully offs Targ, she finds Mirror Mirror and uses her influence to get him to kill the group (and the loved ones that unfortunately become collateral damage).

B. Sequence the reveals.

She can manifest cold spots

The homes of Targ and Ike are cold.

Qade has to put on a jacket in his home.

She can create minimal poltergeist activity

She knocks things off of shelves and knocks doors open and closed at Ike and Targs homes.

She can manifest gory images especially of herself

Targ, Ike and Qade see her in various forms of dismemberment and decay or she shows up in the style of apparition Targ is most afraid of – J-horror (she could be a creepy Ring girl)

Sheena’s wrath will not cease

Ike learns that Sheena was relentless in her life.

<b style=”background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>She’s a spirit so she can only use scares to exact her revenge

She appears to Targ as a terrifying dead girl and flies at his, chasing his throughout his house.

She can influence thoughts and dreams.

-She lands on Targ after chasing him through the house and tells him to kill himself or to leave the house or she’ll kill him.

She can’t use her poltergeist activity to really cause any harm because she’s a spirit

Qade opens his switchblade and lays in on the table. He dares her to use it on him and it just falls to the floor as if a kitten whacked it with its paw.

Her power to influence isn’t very strong and can be ignored

Qade calls her out on her lack of ability to really do anything other than make them see stuff, think stuff and see objects get knocked to the ground. He tells the group to get over it and ignore her.

She knows the identity of the Mirror Mirror serial killer.

Stan Whitman (aka the Mirror Mirror serial killer) goes throughout his day, eating his breakfast, looking at his mail, microwaving his dinner, watching tv while he eats while Sheena watches.

<b style=”background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>She can influence thoughts and dreams and she <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”> wants Mirror Mirror to kill the members of the group that left her to die.

-Stan Whitman begins having dreams of his recent kill morphing into various people. She morphs into Vivi and shows him killing Vivi. He’s sold on the idea and shows him where he can find her in the dream.

<b style=”background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>She can influence thoughts and dreams.

-Sheena gets Vivi to grow her hair out and groom herself for Mirror Mirror.

Mirror Mirror is a sadistic and effective serial killer.

How he toys with and kills Liv.

Mirror Mirror uses female disguises to disarm his victims.

Gets Faye by dressing up as little old lady.

Gets Jean Tyrone by dressing up as his sister, Faye.

Monster Reveal: One monster is using another monster to kill off the group.

Ike and Qade realize they not only have to kill Mirror Mirror, but they have to banish Sheena.

Monster Reveal: Mirror Mirror is strong enough to take Vivi from Qade.

Mirror Mirror fights Qade and kidnaps Vivi.

Monster Reveal: They discover Mirror Mirror’s lair.

They can burn it down after they rescue Vivi, killing Mirror Mirror.

Monster Reveal: Mirror Mirror will sacrifice himself if it means he can complete a kill.

Mirror Mirror captures Vivi and drags her into the burning building.

Monster Reveal: Sheena is so determined to kill the last remaining member of the group that banishment doesn’t work on her.

She teams up with Vivi’s dead spirit to drive Ike to his death.

2. Lay that over your current outline and fill in each clue/reveal using the tag “Monster Reveal:.

ACT 1 — SET UP FOR HORROR

Atmosphere of Evil established: Sheena, a young girl traveling at night is stalked by the Mirror Mirror serial killer.

Horror Situation: Attacked and Chased – Mirror Mirror runs her off the road and chases her through the dark woods.

Reaction: Escape – She makes it to the road and flags a van down, explaining that a crazy guy ran her off the road and is following her. She needs to be taken to the nearest gas station or police station, anywhere but there.

Horror Situation: Refusing to take action – The van of thuggy dudes refuses to give her a ride because she can’t give them anything. She promises to haunt them to their graves.

Reaction: Denial – They don’t care if anything bad happens to the girl and mock her vow to haunt them. They drive away leaving her stranded.

Horror Situation: Physically Tortured – The next day she’s found mutilated (partially dismembered?) on the side of the road.

• Character Death 1: Sheena

• Why: Sheena is an innocent whose death kicks off her act of vengeance and the whole movie.

• How: Killed by Mirror Mirror via body modification, torture and dismemberment.

Connect with the characters: The lead thuggy dude, Qade picks up his boys, Targ, Jean Tyrone and Ike, one by one to go to a party. They give Jean Tyrone’s beloved little sister, Vivi, a ride to her friend’s house.

The characters are warned not to do it: Ike sees a news story about Sheena’s murder and thinks back to Sheena’s vow to haunt them to death because they didn’t help her.

Denial of Horror: Qade tells Ike he’s worried about nothing. He pins Sheena’s news picture to a dart board and Targ sends a dart into it.

Reaction: Guilt – Ike goes to Sheena’s funeral. (Note: this can be revealed later. He sees Sheena’s mother there who looks like a ghost of herself because she’s overwrought with grief).

Safety taken away: Ike sees the apparition of Sheena on his ring camera and she blows up his phone with a text saying she found him.

Horror Situation: Impending doom – Sheena knows where Ike lives.

Reaction – Denial – Ike tells Targ who blames it on the last crazy “bitch” that Ike ghosted. He tells him that he needs to learn to stop fucking girls at his place.

Monster Reveal: She can Manifest cold spots.

Horror Situation: Environment changing around you – Targ experiences cold spots and the feeling that someone is watching him. He shows up at Ike’s asking to stay the night. Targ wakes up in the middle of the night. The house is an icebox. He sees a figure in the doorway. It’s Ike. Ike asks if he can hear the woman crying in the basement.

Reaction – Escape: They go to Qade’s place. They ask Jean Tyrone if he’s experienced anything and he says no.

A character refuses to take action: Qade sends them home.

Monster: The nature of the beast: Qade’s TV shuts off and he sees Sheena’s obscured image in the barely reflective surface of his screen.

Monster Reveal: She can manifest gory images of herself and others and she can influence thoughts

Horror Situation: She points at him and moves to him. On the surface of the reflection he sees her grab him and start whispering in his ear.

Reaction: Escape – He jumps up and tries to shrug her off. Chilled, he grabs his coat and heads out of the house.

ACT 2 — THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Isolated / Trapped / Abducted: Sheena begins her customized assaults on the group.

Monster Reveal: She can mimic voices and manifest gory images of herself and others

Horror Situation: Being lured into danger – Jean Tyrone hears “Vivi” calling him for help.

Reaction: Solve it – He frantically follows the sound to find Vivi.

Monster Reveal: She can manifest gory images of herself and others

Horror Situation: Tricked – He sees Vivi lying dismembered at the bottom of the stairs.

Reaction: He runs to her and she disappears.

Horror Situation: Mentally tortured – Ike is stalked by Sheena’s apparition in various stages of mutilation everywhere and it’s driving him to madness.

Reaction: Solve it – Ike tracks down Sheena’s sister, Dee Dee, to see if she will give him any clues on how to stop Sheena.

Monster Reveal: Sheena’s wrath will not cease.

Horror Situation: The monster is coming for you – Dee Dee explains that once her sister has a goal, she’s relentless in the pursuit of it and will never stop. Tells him a few stories illustrating this including one where Dee Dee had to intervene on her own stalker’s behalf because Sheena wouldn’t stop terrorizing the poor guy. (depict it of course)

Monster Reveal: She can create minimal poltergeist activity.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get to you – Targ hears footsteps running towards him but nobody’s there. Doors and cupboards fly open all around him.

Monster Reveal: She can manifest gory images especially of herself. She’s a spirit so she can only use scares to exact her revenge.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – An apparition of Sheena’s dismembered body flies after Targ. She is styled as a J-horror phantom (Targ’s favorite and most feared type of horror), making him see her cut open his throat in the mirror (note: Sheena can manipulate what you see in surfaces and shadows, etc.). All the activity makes him think the monster is going to get him.

One of us is killed: Escape – Targ runs into the street and gets fatally hit by a car.

• Character Death 2: Targ

• Why: Sheena is successful in scaring him to death.

• How: He flees his house haunted by Sheena and runs into oncoming traffic and is fatally hit by a car.

Monster Reveal: She can’t use her poltergeist activity to really cause any harm because she’s a spirit. Her power to influence isn’t very strong and can be ignored.

Qade opens his switchblade and lays in on the table. He dares her to use it on him and it just falls to the floor as if a kitten whacked it with its paw.

Reaction: Denial – Qade berates the group for letting some bitch ghost scare them into doing “stupid shit” and points out that her scare tactics are actually harmless. All she can do is make them see things and open a few cupboards. He says put on a jacket and ignore the bitch.

Monster Reveal: She knows the identity of the Mirror Mirror serial killer.

Sheena realizes she’s dead and follows the guy who did it to his home. She knows who he is and where he lives.

Stan Whitman (aka the Mirror Mirror serial killer) goes throughout his day, eating his breakfast, looking at his mail, microwaving his dinner, watching tv while he eats while Sheena watches.

MIDPOINT: The monster is worse than we thought! Full pursuit by the killer: Out of the frying pan and into the fire – Sheena influences (whispers, dreams, etc) Mirror Mirror to visit the block that Vivi walks down to get to school.

Monster Reveal: She can influence thoughts and dreams and she wants Mirror Mirror to kill the members of the group that left her to die.

-Stan Whitman begins having dreams of his recent kill morphing into various people. She morphs into Vivi and shows him killing Vivi. He’s sold on the idea and shows him where he can find her in the dream.

Horror Situation: The monster is coming – Mirror Mirror follows Vivi and sees Liv (her mother), Faye (her sister) and Jean Tyrone (her brother) throughout the day.

Horror Situation: Kidnapped – Liv is injected with a sedative.

Horror Situation: Trapped – Liv wakes up in a basement room.

Reaction: Escape – Liv bloodies her fingers to work the pins out of the door hinge.

Horror Situation: Fall through the floor – Liv almost gets out of the abandoned house but falls through a trap door onto a surgical table.

Monster Reveal: Mirror Mirror is a sadistic and effective serial killer.

Reaction: Fight – Liv hurts herself falling onto the surgical table, but she tries to fight Mirror Mirror as he straps her down.

Horror Situation: Physically tortured – Liv dies from the body modification Mirror Mirror does to her.

• Character Death 3: Liv

• Why: Liv is an innocent who Sheena targets to exact her revenge against the group of guys that let her die. By sending Mirror Mirror after the group she can kills off their innocent loved ones which parallels that she was an innocent and a loved one of her mother, but the guys looked at her like she was expendable. She died because she couldn’t give them what they wanted and their loved ones will die giving Mirror Mirror what he wants. As the group tries to stop Mirror Mirror, he will kill them for survival and sport. This kill will also demonstrate how deadly Mirror Mirror is.

• How: Mirror Mirror modifies Liv’s body surgically until she dies.

Terrorized: Mirror Mirror abducts other members of the group.

Monster Reveal: Mirror Mirror uses female disguises to disarm his victims.

Monster Reveal: Sheena uses her influence to lower Faye’s defenses and common sense.

Horror Situation: Menacing Stranger – Faye finds an old lady in her back seat.

Reaction: Denial – Sheena influences Faye to deny the red flags of the situation as she tries to help the lady, who ends up being Mirror Mirror in disguise. Faye is taken by Mirror Mirror.

Monster Reveal: Mirror Mirror will disguise himself as a victims loved one to disarm them.

Horror Situation: Tricked – Jean Tyrone sees Faye’s car broken down on the side of the road and Sheena influences him to think Mirror Mirror is Faye is under the hood.

Reaction: Solve it – Jean Tyrone stops by to see if he can help his sister and gets stab in the neck by a paralytic. Mirror Mirror, disguised as Faye, takes Tyrone.

Horror Situation: Impending doom – Liv’s dead body is discovered by Ike with body modification that seems familiar.

Monster Reveal: One monster is using another monster to kill off their group.

Reaction: Solve it – With Jean Tyrone nowhere to be found, Qade has a grieving Vivi stay at his place.

Horror Situation: No escape – Ike realizes that Sheena figured out how to use Mirror Mirror to exact her revenge.

Reaction: Solve it – Qade and Ike realize they have to kill Mirror Mirror and banish Sheena.

ACT 3 — FULL OUT HORROR

Fight to the death: Qade fights to stop Mirror Mirror from taking Vivi.

Monster Reveal: Mirror Mirror is strong enough to take Vivi from Qade.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – Mirror Mirror breaks into Qades home and tries to get Vivi.

Reaction: Fight – Vivi fights and almost gets away, but Mirror Mirror gets the upper hand.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – Qade comes home and tries to stop Mirror Mirror from taking Vivi, but he escapes to his car with her.

Reaction: Fight – Wounded, Qade jumps in his car and tries to follow Mirror Mirror. He calls Ike and says he’s in pursuit of Mirror Mirror because he took Vivi.

Horror Situation: Lost – Qade loses Mirror Mirror.

Reaction: Solve it – Qade drives around and finds the only abandoned structure in the area.

Horror Situation: Friends in danger – He shares his location with Ike and tells him he’s going to check out the abandoned shack.

Monster Reveal: They discover Mirror Mirror’s lair and can burn it down after they rescue Vivi, killing Mirror Mirror.

Reaction: Solve it – Qade goes into the house.

Horror Situation: Walking into a trap – Mirror Mirror is alerted to Qade’s arrival in the house by a nest camera.

Hysteria: Qade and Ike encounter their dead friends as they get closer to Vivi and Mirror Mirror.

Horror Situation: See another dead body – Qade runs into Jean Tyrone’s hanging dead body.

• Character Death 5: Jean Tyrone

• Why: The second of the group to die, which is Sheena’s main target. Sheena influences Mirror Mirror to believe Jean Tyrone fits his MO and therefore he kills him.

• How: Mirror Mirror kills Tyrone by a tar and feather method that uses lipstick and skin melting, to make him look more feminine. (Should maybe see the beginning of this or Tyrone trapped and then “let out” only to find the room with the device that will do this to him.)

Horror Situation: Slime – Qade thinks Jean Tyrone’s blood is on him but he realizes Jean Tyrone is covered in red lipstick. Now it’s all over Qade. Jean Tyrone’s body modifications freak Qade out.

Reaction: Escape – Qade runs further into the house.

Horror Situation: Lured into the Horror – Ike finds Qade’s car and enters the shack.

Horror Situation: Seeing another dead body – Faye’s dead body falls out a hole in the ceiling and Ike becomes tangled up with her.

• Character Death 4: Faye

• Why: Faye dies to exact Sheena’s revenge, up the body count and get back at Qade especially.

• How: Kidnapped in her own car and killed by Mirror Mirror who performs body modifications that go too far as usual.

Reaction: Escape – He struggles to free himself from the tangle of Faye’s body pulling him to the ground. He aggressively steps back.

Horror Situation: Trap door in the floor – Ike steps onto the trap and he falls through the floor with Faye on him.

Horror Situation: Injured – Ike falls onto the surgical table with Faye on top of him and breaks his leg.

Reaction: Escape – Ike tries to get out from under Faye

Reaction: Hide – Ike gets dragged into the other room by Qade. Qade is badly burned with bleach and blind in one eye.

Horror Situation: Face to Face with the monster – Mirror Mirror enters the room.

Horror Situation: Seeing other dead body – Mirror Mirror shove’s Faye’s into the other room with Qade and Ike. Qade reacts violently to seeing the dead body of his girlfriend but tries to keep quiet.

Horror Situation: Friends in Danger – Mirror Mirror roles Vivi into his “surgical room”.

Horror Situation: Cannot see – Qade and Ike strain to see through the hole in the wall if Vivi is still alive. It looks like Mirror Mirror has already begun making modifications to her.

Horror Situation: Face to face with the monster – Distracted, Qade and Ike don’t see that Mirror Mirror has entered their room. Mirror strikes down Qade with several fatal knife stabs (or something else that fits his MO – maybe Mirror Mirror injects him with the sedative, drags him into the “surgery” room and starts taking vital things off of him to put on Vivi – maybe if he catches Ike).

• Character Death 6: Qade

• Why: Mirror Mirror pursues Qade through his house of horrors and kills him to survive, protect his secret surgery house and prevent Qade from preventing Mirror Mirror from performing his special surgeries on Vivi.

• How: Surprise attack and a lot of stabbing. He’s also burned him with bleach and maimed him in one eye earlier in the climax. (Still unsure if Ike should die and Qade should live?)

Reaction: Escape – Ike runs into the surgery room to find Vivi still alive. He frees her from the surgical table/gurney on wheels and they run back through the house of horrors and make it outside.

The thrilling escape from death: Ike douses the shack in gasoline from his car and lights it on fire. The shack is dry and made of flammable materials and it quickly turns into an inferno. Ike calls the cops. He didn’t call them earlier because he was going to commit arson??

• Character Death 7: Mirror Mirror

• Why: Mirror Mirror dies because he’s a serial killer and must be stopped.

• How: Ike burns down Mirror Mirror’s “surgery” shack with Mirror Mirror inside.

Death returns to take one or more: – Ike sees Sheena in the flames. Distracted, he doesn’t see Mirror Mirror emerge to grab Vivi and pull her back into the inferno of the house.

Reaction: Fight – Ike heads into the burning building to get Vivi but Mirror Mirror had dragged her deep into the flames.

Horror Situation: Dilemma – Vivi screams in pain and horror. Ike tries to go in further, but Sheena crashes into the burning structures of the house so they start to fall around him. Vivi can still be saved, but when Ike sees Sheena at the doorway, he knows he has only one chance to jump through it before she rams it and the whole place collapses on him. He saves himself.

• Character Death 8: Vivi

• Why: She dies because Mirror Mirror pulls her into the burning house and Ike chooses to save himself.

• How: Burning house collapses on her.

Monster Reveal: Sheena is so determined to kill the last remaining member of the group that banishment doesn’t work on her.

Resolution: Ike lives. He gives his statement to the local police exposing Mirror Mirror. He’s a local hero. But at night when he sleeps, he dreams of killing himself over the guilt of leaving Vivi behind. When he’s able to calm himself and return to sleep, Vivi whispers into his ear and Sheena joins her to increase Vivi’s power of influence.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Character Death Track

What I learned doing this assignment is that it’s very helpful to see why the deaths happen in the story to motivate plot points and provide more structure.

1. Give us the order your characters die in.

With each character tell us the why and how.

• Character Death 1: Sheena

• Why: Sheena is an innocent whose death kicks off her act of vengeance and the whole movie.

• How: Killed by Mirror Mirror via body modification, torture and dismemberment.

• Character Death 2: Targ

• Why: Sheena is successful in scaring him to death.

• How: He flees his house haunted by Sheena and runs into oncoming traffic and is fatally hit by a car.

• Character Death 3: Liv

• Why: Liv is an innocent who Sheena targets to exact her revenge against the group of guys that let her die. By sending Mirror Mirror after the group she can kills off their innocent loved ones which parallels that she was an innocent and a loved one of her mother, but the guys looked at her like she was expendable. She died because she couldn’t give them what they wanted and their loved ones will die giving Mirror Mirror what he wants. As the group tries to stop Mirror Mirror, he will kill them for survival and sport. This kill will also demonstrate how deadly Mirror Mirror is.

• How: Mirror Mirror modifies Liv’s body surgically until she dies.

• Character Death 4: Faye

• Why: Faye dies to exact Sheena’s revenge, up the body count and get back at Qade especially.

• How: Kidnapped in her own car and killed by Mirror Mirror who performs body modifications that go too far as usual.

• Character Death 5: Jean Tyrone

• Why: The second of the group to die, which is Sheena’s main target. Sheena influences Mirror Mirror to believe Jean Tyrone fits his MO and therefore he kills him.

• How: Mirror Mirror kills Tyrone by a tar and feather method that uses lipstick and skin melting, to make him look more feminine.

• Character Death 6: Qade

• Why: Mirror Mirror pursues Qade through his house of horrors and kills him to survive, protect his secret surgery house and prevent Qade from preventing Mirror Mirror from performing his special surgeries on Vivi.

• How: Surprise attack and a lot of stabbing. He’s also burned him with bleach and maimed him in one eye earlier in the climax.

• Character Death 7: Mirror Mirror

• Why: Mirror Mirror dies because he’s a serial killer and must be stopped.

• How: Ike burns down Mirror Mirror’s “surgery” shack with Mirror Mirror inside.

• Character Death 8: Vivi

• Why: She dies because Mirror Mirror pulls her into the burning house and Ike chooses to save himself.

• How: Burning house collapses on her.

2. Build the answers into your outline.

ACT 1 — SET UP FOR HORROR

Atmosphere of Evil established: Sheena, a young girl traveling at night is stalked by the Mirror Mirror serial killer.

Horror Situation: Attacked and Chased – Mirror Mirror runs her off the road and chases her through the dark woods.

Reaction: Escape – She makes it to the road and flags a van down, explaining that a crazy guy ran her off the road and is following her. She needs to be taken to the nearest gas station or police station, anywhere but there.

Horror Situation: Refusing to take action – The van of thuggy dudes refuses to give her a ride because she can’t give them anything. She promises to haunt them to their graves.

Reaction: Denial – They don’t care if anything bad happens to the girl and mock her vow to haunt them. They drive away leaving her stranded.

Horror Situation: Physically Tortured – The next day she’s found mutilated (partially dismembered?) on the side of the road.

• Character Death 1: Sheena

• Why: Sheena is an innocent whose death kicks off her act of vengeance and the whole movie.

• How: Killed by Mirror Mirror via body modification, torture and dismemberment.

Connect with the characters: The lead thuggy dude, Qade picks up his boys, Targ, Jean Tyrone and Ike, one by one to go to a party. They give Jean Tyrone’s beloved little sister, Vivi, a ride to her friend’s house.

The characters are warned not to do it: Ike sees a news story about Sheena’s murder and thinks back to Sheena’s vow to haunt them to death because they didn’t help her.

Denial of Horror: Qade tells Ike he’s worried about nothing. He pins Sheena’s news picture to a dart board and Targ sends a dart into it.

Reaction: Guilt – Ike goes to Sheena’s funeral. (Note: this can be revealed later. He sees Sheena’s mother there who looks like a ghost of herself because she’s overwrought with grief).

Safety taken away: Ike sees the apparition of Sheena on his ring camera and she blows up his phone with a text saying she found him.

Horror Situation: Impending doom – Sheena knows where Ike lives.

Reaction – Denial – Ike tells Targ who blames it on the last crazy “bitch” that Ike ghosted. He tells him that he needs to learn to stop fucking girls at his place.

Horror Situation: Environment changing around you – Targ experiences cold spots and the feeling that someone is watching him. He shows up at Ike’s asking to stay the night. Targ wakes up in the middle of the night. The house is an icebox. He sees a figure in the doorway. It’s Ike. Ike asks if he can hear the woman crying in the basement.

Reaction – Escape: They go to Qade’s place. They ask Jean Tyrone if he’s experienced anything and he says no.

A character refuses to take action: Qade sends them home.

Monster: The nature of the beast: Qade’s TV shuts off and he sees Sheena’s obscured image in the barely reflective surface of his screen.

Horror Situation: She points at him and moves to him. On the surface of the reflection he sees her grab him and start whispering in his ear.

Reaction: Escape – He jumps up and tries to shrug her off. Chilled, he grabs his coat and heads out of the house.

ACT 2 — THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Isolated / Trapped / Abducted: Sheena begins her customized assaults on the group.

Horror Situation: Being lured into danger – Jean Tyrone hears “Vivi” calling him for help.

Reaction: Solve it – He frantically follows the sound to find Vivi.

Horror Situation: Tricked – He sees Vivi lying dismembered at the bottom of the stairs.

Reaction: He runs to her and she disappears.

Horror Situation: Mentally tortured – Ike is stalked by Sheena’s apparition in various stages of mutilation everywhere and it’s driving him to madness.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get to you – Targ hears footsteps running towards him but nobody’s there. Doors and cupboards fly open all around him.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – An apparition of Sheena’s dismembered body flies after him. Sheena makes him see her cut open his throat in the mirror (note: Sheena can manipulate what you see in surfaces and shadows, etc.). All the activity makes him think the monster is going to get him.

One of us is killed: Escape – Targ runs into the street and gets fatally hit by a car.

• Character Death 2: Targ

• Why: Sheena is successful in scaring him to death.

• How: He flees his house haunted by Sheena and runs into oncoming traffic and is fatally hit by a car.

Reaction: Denial – Qade berates the group for letting some bitch ghost scare them into doing “stupid shit” and points out that her scare tactics are actually harmless. All she can do is make them see things and open a few cupboards. He says put on a jacket and ignore the bitch.

MIDPOINT: The monster is worse than we thought! Full pursuit by the killer: Out of the frying pan and into the fire – Sheena influences (whispers, dreams, etc) Mirror Mirror to visit the block that Vivi walks down to get to school.

Horror Situation: The monster is coming – Mirror Mirror follows Vivi and sees Liv (her mother), Faye (her sister) and Jean Tyrone (her brother) throughout the day.

Horror Situation: Kidnapped – Liv is injected with a sedative.

Horror Situation: Trapped – Liv wakes up in a basement room.

Reaction: Escape – Liv bloodies her fingers to work the pins out of the door hinge.

Horror Situation: Fall through the floor – Liv almost gets out of the abandoned house but falls through a trap door onto a surgical table.

Reaction: Fight – Liv hurts herself falling onto the surgical table, but she tries to fight Mirror Mirror as he straps her down.

Horror Situation: Physically tortured – Liv dies from the body modification Mirror Mirror does to her.

• Character Death 3: Liv

• Why: Liv is an innocent who Sheena targets to exact her revenge against the group of guys that let her die. By sending Mirror Mirror after the group she can kills off their innocent loved ones which parallels that she was an innocent and a loved one of her mother, but the guys looked at her like she was expendable. She died because she couldn’t give them what they wanted and their loved ones will die giving Mirror Mirror what he wants. As the group tries to stop Mirror Mirror, he will kill them for survival and sport. This kill will also demonstrate how deadly Mirror Mirror is.

• How: Mirror Mirror modifies Liv’s body surgically until she dies.

Terrorized: Mirror Mirror abducts other members of the group.

Horror Situation: Menacing Stranger – Faye finds an old lady in her back seat.

Reaction: Denial – Sheena influences Faye to deny the red flags of the situation as she tries to help the lady, who ends up being Mirror Mirror in disguise. Faye is taken by Mirror Mirror.

Horror Situation: Tricked – Jean Tyrone sees Faye’s car broken down on the side of the road and Sheena influences him to think Mirror Mirror is Faye is under the hood.

Reaction: Solve it – Jean Tyrone stops by to see if he can help his sister and gets stab in the neck by a paralytic. Mirror Mirror, disguised as Faye, takes Tyrone.

Horror Situation: Impending doom – Liv’s dead body is discovered by Ike with body modification that seems familiar.

Reaction: Solve it – With Jean Tyrone nowhere to be found, Qade has a grieving Vivi stay at his place.

Horror Situation: No escape – Ike realizes that Sheena figured out how to use Mirror Mirror to exact her revenge.

Reaction: Solve it – Qade and Ike realize they have to kill Mirror Mirror and banish Sheena.

ACT 3 — FULL OUT HORROR

Fight to the death: Qade fightst to stop Mirror Mirror from taking Vivi.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – Mirror Mirror breaks into Qades home and tries to get Vivi.

Reaction: Fight – Vivi fights and almost gets away, but Mirror Mirror gets the upper hand.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – Qade comes home and tries to stop Mirror Mirror from taking Vivi, but he escapes to his car with her.

Reaction: Fight – Wounded, Qade jumps in his car and tries to follow Mirror Mirror. He calls Ike and says he’s in pursuit of Mirror Mirror because he took Vivi.

Horror Situation: Lost – Qade loses Mirror Mirror.

Reaction: Solve it – Qade drives around and finds the only abandoned structure in the area.

Horror Situation: Friends in danger – He shares his location with Ike and tells him he’s going to check out the abandoned shack.

Reaction: Solve it – Qade goes into the house.

Horror Situation: Walking into a trap – Mirror Mirror is alerted to Qade’s arrival in the house by a nest camera.

Hysteria: Qade and Ike encounter their dead friends as they get closer to Vivi and Mirror Mirror.

Horror Situation: See another dead body – Qade runs into Jean Tyrone’s hanging dead body.

• Character Death 5: Jean Tyrone

• Why: The second of the group to die, which is Sheena’s main target. Sheena influences Mirror Mirror to believe Jean Tyrone fits his MO and therefore he kills him.

• How: Mirror Mirror kills Tyrone by a tar and feather method that uses lipstick and skin melting, to make him look more feminine. (Should maybe see the beginning of this or Tyrone trapped and then “let out” only to find the room with the device that will do this to him.)

Horror Situation: Slime – Qade thinks Jean Tyrone’s blood is on him but he realizes Jean Tyrone is covered in red lipstick. Now it’s all over Qade. Jean Tyrone’s body modifications freak Qade out.

Reaction: Escape – Qade runs further into the house.

Horror Situation: Lured into the Horror – Ike finds Qade’s car and enters the shack.

Horror Situation: Seeing another dead body – Faye’s dead body falls out a hole in the ceiling and Ike becomes tangled up with her.

• Character Death 4: Faye

• Why: Faye dies to exact Sheena’s revenge, up the body count and get back at Qade especially.

• How: Kidnapped in her own car and killed by Mirror Mirror who performs body modifications that go too far as usual.

Reaction: Escape – He struggles to free himself from the tangle of Faye’s body pulling him to the ground. He aggressively steps back.

Horror Situation: Trap door in the floor – Ike steps onto the trap and he falls through the floor with Faye on him.

Horror Situation: Injured – Ike falls onto the surgical table with Faye on top of him and breaks his leg.

Reaction: Escape – Ike tries to get out from under Faye

Reaction: Hide – Ike gets dragged into the other room by Qade. Qade is badly burned with bleach and blind in one eye.

Horror Situation: Face to Face with the monster – Mirror Mirror enters the room.

Horror Situation: Seeing other dead body – Mirror Mirror shove’s Faye’s into the other room with Qade and Ike. Qade reacts violently to seeing the dead body of his girlfriend but tries to keep quiet.

Horror Situation: Friends in Danger – Mirror Mirror roles Vivi into his “surgical room”.

Horror Situation: Cannot see – Qade and Ike strain to see through the hole in the wall if Vivi is still alive. It looks like Mirror Mirror has already begun making modifications to her.

Horror Situation: Face to face with the monster – Distracted, Qade and Ike don’t see that Mirror Mirror has entered their room. Mirror strikes down Qade with several fatal knife stabs (or something else that fits his MO – maybe Mirror Mirror injects him with the sedative, drags him into the “surgery” room and starts taking vital things off of him to put on Vivi – maybe if he catches Ike).

• Character Death 6: Qade

• Why: Mirror Mirror pursues Qade through his house of horrors and kills him to survive, protect his secret surgery house and prevent Qade from preventing Mirror Mirror from performing his special surgeries on Vivi.

• How: Surprise attack and a lot of stabbing. He’s also burned him with bleach and maimed him in one eye earlier in the climax. (Still unsure if Ike should die and Qade should live?)

Reaction: Escape – Ike runs into the surgery room to find Vivi still alive. He frees her from the surgical table/gurney on wheels and they run back through the house of horrors and make it outside.

The thrilling escape from death: Ike douses the shack in gasoline from his car and lights it on fire. The shack is dry and made of flammable materials and it quickly turns into an inferno. Ike calls the cops. He didn’t call them earlier because he was going to commit arson??

• Character Death 7: Mirror Mirror

• Why: Mirror Mirror dies because he’s a serial killer and must be stopped.

• How: Ike burns down Mirror Mirror’s “surgery” shack with Mirror Mirror inside.

Death returns to take one or more: – Ike sees Sheena in the flames. Distracted, he doesn’t see Mirror Mirror emerge to grab Vivi and pull her back into the inferno of the house.

Reaction: Fight – Ike heads into the burning building to get Vivi but Mirror Mirror had dragged her deep into the flames.

Horror Situation: Dilemma – Vivi screams in pain and horror. Ike tries to go in further, but Sheena crashes into the burning structures of the house so they start to fall around him. Vivi can still be saved, but when Ike sees Sheena at the doorway, he knows he has only one chance to jump through it before she rams it and the whole place collapses on him. He saves himself.

• Character Death 8: Vivi

• Why: She dies because Mirror Mirror pulls her into the burning house and Ike chooses to save himself.

• How: Burning house collapses on her.

Resolution: Ike lives. He gives his statement to the local police exposing Mirror Mirror. He’s a local hero. But at night when he sleeps, he dreams of killing himself over the guilt of leaving Vivi behind. When he’s able to calm himself and return to sleep, Vivi whispers into his ear and Sheena joins her to increase Vivi’s power of influence.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Horror Situation Track

What I learned doing this assignment is working out some of the logic issues at this stage will set you up for success as you work through the other tracks.

ACT 1 — SET UP FOR HORROR

Atmosphere of Evil established: Sheena, a young girl traveling at night is stalked by the Mirror Mirror serial killer.

Horror Situation: Attacked and Chased – Mirror Mirror runs her off the road and chases her through the dark woods.

Reaction: Escape – She makes it to the road and flags a van down, explaining that a crazy guy ran her off the road and is following her. She needs to be taken to the nearest gas station or police station, anywhere but there.

Horror Situation: Refusing to take action – The van of thuggy dudes refuses to give her a ride because she can’t give them anything. She promises to haunt them to their graves.

Reaction: Denial – They don’t care if anything bad happens to the girl and mock her vow to haunt them. They drive away leaving her stranded.

Horror Situation: Physically Tortured – The next day she’s found mutilated (partially dismembered?) on the side of the road.

Connect with the characters: The lead thuggy dude, Qade picks up his boys, Targ, Jean Tyrone and Ike, one by one to go to a party. They give Jean Tyrone’s beloved little sister, Vivi, a ride to her friend’s house.

The characters are warned not to do it: Ike sees a news story about Sheena’s murder and thinks back to Sheena’s vow to haunt them to death because they didn’t help her.

Denial of Horror: Qade tells Ike he’s worried about nothing. He pins Sheena’s news picture to a dart board and Targ sends a dart into it.

Reaction: Guilt – Ike goes to Sheena’s funeral. (Note: this can be revealed later. He sees Sheena’s mother there who looks like a ghost of herself because she’s overwrought with grief).

Safety taken away: Ike sees the apparition of Sheena on his ring camera and she blows up his phone with a text saying she found him.

Horror Situation: Impending doom – Sheena knows where Ike lives.

Reaction – Denial – Ike tells Targ who blames it on the last crazy “bitch” that Ike ghosted. He tells him that he needs to learn to stop fucking girls at his place.

Horror Situation: Environment changing around you – Targ experiences cold spots and the feeling that someone is watching him. He shows up at Ike’s asking to stay the night. Targ wakes up in the middle of the night. The house is an icebox. He sees a figure in the doorway. It’s Ike. Ike asks if he can hear the woman crying in the basement.

Reaction – Escape: They go to Qade’s place. They ask Jean Tyrone if he’s experienced anything and he says no.

A character refuses to take action: Qade sends them home.

Monster: The nature of the beast: Qade’s TV shuts off and he sees Sheena’s obscured image in the barely reflective surface of his screen.

Horror Situation: She points at him and moves to him. On the surface of the reflection he sees her grab him and start whispering in his ear.

Reaction: Escape – He jumps up and tries to shrug her off. Chilled, he grabs his coat and heads out of the house.

ACT 2 — THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Isolated / Trapped / Abducted: Sheena begins her customized assaults on the group.

Horror Situation: Being lured into danger – Jean Tyrone hears “Vivi” calling him for help.

Reaction: Solve it – He frantically follows the sound to find Vivi.

Horror Situation: Tricked – He sees Vivi lying dismembered at the bottom of the stairs.

Reaction: He runs to her and she disappears.

Horror Situation: Mentally tortured – Ike is stalked by Sheena’s apparition in various stages of mutilation everywhere and it’s driving him to madness.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get to you – Targ hears footsteps running towards him but nobody’s there. Doors and cupboards fly open all around him.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – An apparition of Sheena’s dismembered body flies after him. Sheena makes him see her cut open his throat in the mirror (note: Sheena can manipulate what you see in surfaces and shadows, etc.). All the activity makes him think the monster is going to get him.

One of us is killed: Escape – Targ runs into the street and gets fatally hit by a car.

Reaction: Denial – Qade berates the group for letting some bitch ghost scare them into doing “stupid shit” and points out that her scare tactics are actually harmless. All she can do is make them see things and open a few cupboards. He says put on a jacket and ignore the bitch.

MIDPOINT: The monster is worse than we thought!Full pursuit by the killer: Out of the frying pan and into the fire – Sheena influences (whispers, dreams, etc) Mirror Mirror to visit the block that Vivi walks down to get to school.

Horror Situation: The monster is coming – Mirror Mirror follows Vivi and sees Liv (her mother), Faye (her sister) and Jean Tyrone (her brother) throughout the day.

Horror Situation: Kidnapped – Liv is injected with a sedative.

Horror Situation: Trapped – Liv wakes up in a basement room.

Reaction: Escape – Liv bloodies her fingers to work the pins out of the door hinge.

Horror Situation: Fall through the floor – Liv almost gets out of the abandoned house but falls through a trap door onto a surgical table.

Reaction: Fight – Liv hurts herself falling onto the surgical table, but she tries to fight Mirror Mirror as he straps her down.

Horror Situation: Physically tortured – Liv dies from the body modification Mirror Mirror does to her.

Terrorized: Mirror Mirror abducts other members of the group.

Horror Situation: Menacing Stranger – Faye finds an old lady in her back seat.

Reaction: Denial – Sheena influences Faye to deny the red flags of the situation as she tries to help the lady, who ends up being Mirror Mirror in disguise. Faye is taken by Mirror Mirror.

Horror Situation: Tricked – Jean Tyrone sees Faye’s car broken down on the side of the road and Sheena influences him to think Mirror Mirror is Faye is under the hood.

Reaction: Solve it – Jean Tyrone stops by to see if he can help his sister and gets stab in the neck by a paralytic. Mirror Mirror, disguised as Faye, takes Tyrone.

Horror Situation: Impending doom – Liv’s dead body is discovered by Ike with body modification that seems familiar.

Reaction: Solve it – With Jean Tyrone nowhere to be found, Qade has a grieving Vivi stay at his place.

Horror Situation: No escape – Ike realizes that Sheena figured out how to use Mirror Mirror to exact her revenge.

Reaction: Solve it – Qade and Ike realize they have to kill Mirror Mirror and banish Sheena.

ACT 3 — FULL OUT HORROR

Fight to the death: Qade fightst to stop Mirror Mirror from taking Vivi.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – Mirror Mirror breaks into Qades home and tries to get Vivi.

Reaction: Fight – Vivi fights and almost gets away, but Mirror Mirror gets the upper hand.

Horror Situation: Monster trying to get you – Qade comes home and tries to stop Mirror Mirror from taking Vivi, but he escapes to his car with her.

Reaction: Fight – Wounded, Qade jumps in his car and tries to follow Mirror Mirror. He calls Ike and says he’s in pursuit of Mirror Mirror because he took Vivi.

Horror Situation: Lost – Qade loses Mirror Mirror.

Reaction: Solve it – Qade drives around and finds the only abandoned structure in the area.

Horror Situation: Friends in danger – He shares his location with Ike and tells him he’s going to check out the abandoned shack.

Reaction: Solve it – Qade goes into the house.

Horror Situation: Walking into a trap – Mirror Mirror is alerted to Qade’s arrival in the house by a nest camera.

Hysteria: Qade and Ike encounter their dead friends as they get closer to Vivi and Mirror Mirror.

Horror Situation: See another dead body – Qade runs into Jean Tyrone’s hanging dead body.

Horror Situation: Slime – Qade thinks Jean Tyrone’s blood is on him but he realizes Jean Tyrone is covered in red lipstick. Now it’s all over Qade. Jean Tyrone’s body modifications freak Qade out.

Reaction: Escape – Qade runs further into the house.

Horror Situation: Lured into the Horror – Ike finds Qade’s car and enters the shack.

Horror Situation: Seeing another dead body – Faye’s dead body falls out a hole in the ceiling and Ike becomes tangled up with her.

Reaction: Escape – He struggles to free himself from the tangle of Faye’s body pulling him to the ground. He aggressively steps back.

Horror Situation: Trap door in the floor – Ike steps onto the trap and he falls through the floor with Faye on him.

Horror Situation: Injured – Ike falls onto the surgical table with Faye on top of him and breaks his leg.

Reaction: Escape – Ike tries to get out from under Faye

Reaction: Hide – Ike gets dragged into the other room by Qade. Qade is badly burned with bleach and blind in one eye.

Horror Situation: Face to Face with the monster – Mirror Mirror enters the room.

Horror Situation: Seeing other dead body – Mirror Mirror shove’s Faye’s into the other room with Qade and Ike. Qade reacts violently to seeing the dead body of his girlfriend but tries to keep quiet.

Horror Situation: Friends in Danger – Mirror Mirror roles Vivi into his “surgical room”.

Horror Situation: Cannot see – Qade and Ike strain to see through the hole in the wall if Vivi is still alive. It looks like Mirror Mirror has already begun making modifications to her.

Horror Situation: Face to face with the monster – Distracted, Qade and Ike don’t see that Mirror Mirror has entered their room. Mirror strikes down Qade with several fatal knife stabs (or something else that fits his MO – maybe Mirror Mirror injects him with the sedative, drags him into the “surgery” room and starts taking vital things off of him to put on Vivi – maybe if he catches Ike).

Reaction: Escape – Ike runs into the surgery room to find Vivi still alive. He frees her from the surgical table/gurney on wheels and they run back through the house of horrors and make it outside.

The thrilling escape from death: Ike douses the shack in gasoline from his car and lights it on fire. The shack is dry and made of flammable materials and it quickly turns into an inferno.

Death returns to take one or more: Ike sees Sheena in the flames. Distracted, he doesn’t see Mirror Mirror emerge to grab Vivi and pull her back into the inferno of the house.

Reaction: Fight – Ike heads into the burning building to get Vivi but Mirror Mirror had dragged her deep into the flames.

Horror Situation: Dilemma – Vivi screams in pain and horror. Ike tries to go in further, but Sheena crashes into the burning structures of the house so they start to fall around him. Vivi can still be saved, but when Ike sees Sheena at the doorway, he knows he has only one chance to jump through it before she rams it and the whole place collapses on him. He saves himself.

Resolution: Ike lives. He gives his statement to the local police exposing Mirror Mirror. He’s a local hero. But at night when he sleeps, he dreams of killing himself over the guilt of leaving Vivi behind. When he’s able to calm himself and return to sleep, Vivi whispers into his ear and Sheena joins her to increase Vivi’s power of influence.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Horror Plot

What I learned doing this assignment is that the simple act of filling in plot points will help you start to hammer out a story in a big way. I had no real idea what to do with the concept, but then I started working to meet the criteria of the plot points and before I knew it, I had the skeleton of a story. Such an easy process and rather amazing. It was painless. And also a lot of fun!

1. Knowing your concept, fill in one or two sentences for each of the plot points.

ACT 1 — SET UP FOR HORROR

Atmosphere of Evil established – A young girl, traveling at night, gets gas at a lonely station in a woodsy area.

Connect with the characters – The young girl chats to her mom as she puts gas at the unmanned station.

The characters are warned not to do it. – Her mom warns her to stop at a motel and not drive all alone by herself at night.

Denial of Horror – The girl assures her mom she’ll be fine.

Safety taken away – She’s run off the road by a serial killer that has been stalking her and flees from him on foot. She flags down a fan of thuggie guys that won’t help her because she doesn’t have anything to give them. She says she’ll haunt them if they don’t help her and they leave her on the side of the road.

Monster: The serial killer dismembers her.

ACT 2 — THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Isolated / Trapped / Abducted – The group of thuggie guys experience paranormal activity.

One of us killed – One of the members dies by running into the street after encountering a phantom. Then the head thugs berates the group for letting some bitch ghost scare them into doing “stupid shit” and points out that her scare tactics are actually harmless.

MIDPOINT: The monster is worse than we thought!

Full pursuit by the killer – A serial killer starts to stalk the members of the group

Terrorized – The serial branches out to members of the group’s family that fit his MO. The group realizes that the serial killer killed the girl they failed to rescue and she is the one guiding the serial killer to go after them.

ACT 3 — FULL OUT HORROR

Fight to the death – They try to find the serial killer to stop him.

Hysteria – The serial killer picks off more of the group.

The thrilling escape from death – They find a serial killer and do a ritual to sacrifice him to the vengeful spirit in order to appease her and get her to cross over.

Death returns to take one or more. – The ritual actually imbues the vengeful spirit with demonic powers and she kills the innocent Vivi as her act of vengeance.

Resolution – Quade is left to more his friends, but the spirit of Vivi needs her revenge.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Characters for Horror

What I learned doing this assignment is that just naming the people in the group helps to shape the story.

1. Tell us your Concept and the Group you have chosen.

Concept: What if a spirit had to use a serial killer to carry out her vengeance against the group of people responsible for her murder.

Group: Sinners/Social Group

2. Tell us the Dying Pattern of this movie.

Pattern A – Put 6 to 8 characters together and kill them off one by one.

3. Give us an Identity and a sentence for each character that makes up your group.

Leader: Quade – wannabe thug, sets the tone for his group of boys, too “hard” for his own good. He’s either the last one to die or he has the biggest arc and redeems himself enough to make it to the sequel, although what state he’ll be in is the question.

Complainer: Sunny – the star child of his family, smart, egotistical, unhealthy attitude towards women. Definitely second to last to go.

Obnoxious: Jean Tyrone – ladies man, at least he thinks so, handsome but offers not much else. Second of the guys to go. Almost gets taken out by the spirit before Quade chides him for letting the spirit’s “parlor” tricks get to him.

Rescuer: Ike – could be a nice guy if he wasn’t a mindless follower. If Quade doesn’t have a redeeming arc and survives, then Ike will be a survivor, if not soul survivor. But he becomes nice enough to matter to the audience, so the stakes are higher around his death.

Obnoxious: Targ – another follower, disaffected, makes fun of “try-hards”, ironically is the most superstitious. First of the guys to go. He’s a real jerk, so audiences might not be rooting for his survival. He might actually be killed by the spirit because he lets his fear get the better of him and he runs out in traffic.

The Innocent: Vivi – Jean Tyrone’s sweet little sister, the one woman Quade and his boys actually likes and protects. Her death is devastating, unless Quade has that redeeming arc and saves her.

Love Interest: Faye – Quade’s mean girl queen bee. Fayes is the second lady to be killed.

Moral One: Liv – Vivi and Jean Tyrone’s young, single mother. Liv is the first to be killed by the serial killer because she fits his M.O.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Terrifying Monster

What I learned doing this assignment is that mystery and mythology are not the same thing.

1. Tell us what or who your monster is.

My monster is a vengeful spirit.

2. Give us a few sentences for each of the following for your monster:

Their Terror: It stalks its prey, moves objects, makes spots cold, shows up in mirrors, photos, hallways, eventually it manipulates a serial killer to carry out the terror and murder its prey

Their Mystery: Eventually, the vengeful spirit uses a serial killer to carry out their vengeance, so the group has to find and stop the serial killer

Their Fear Provoking Appearance: Dead girl phantom – the state the serial killer left her in

Their Rules: no real supernatural powers other than appearance, some object movement, cold spots, typical ghost stuff but she knows the identity of a serial killer and can logically think – also can’t/ isn’t allowed to cross over until she avenges herself

Their Mythology: The vengeful spirit was a girl that the group had a chance to rescue from certain death at the hands of a serial killer but chose not to because she could not give the group anything to save her (no money, no smokes, etc)

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Marketing Campaign

What I learned doing this assignment is that no Marketing Campaign for my writing will be successful if the quality of my writing isn’t professional and engaging.

1. I’ve selected MARKETING CAMPAIGN #1: Can’t Travel

2. Taking that campaign, make a plan of action, listing the actions you’ll take.

Plan

-Elevate quality of writing to a professional letter by taking the necessary SWU class

-Once I have a draft I think is professional, I’ll get coverage

-Enter contests

-Get recommends

-Grow my network on LinkedIn and target small/indie producers

-Send out Quality Query Letters

3. Tell us the first action you are going to take…and take it.

My first actions are going to be to make sure my writing is at a professional level by taking the SWU classes that will help me build-up the necessary skills and by getting coverage.

Thank you to the participants of the Power Players 19 Forum and to ScreenwritingU. I really enjoyed working with everyone during this course. I learned a lot! Good luck to you all!

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Query Letter Draft TWO

Thank you to Lin Fuentes and Terrell Harris for their wonderful feedback!

What I learned doing this assignment: Make sure that all the hooks are working, especially for the opener and the characters. Use specific terms to provide clarity and try not to pose too many questions within the body of your query letter. And if you have a chance to use Linda Blair, put her up front.

Title: Dating with Demons

Genre: Horror Comedy

Dear Producer,

Did Linda Blair have to deal with any dating nonsense after her exorcism?

All Bethany wants is one, decent date, but her demon and her priest won’t allow it.

Demon 23, despite being exorcised from Bethany, still hangs around acting more like a toxic ex than a supernatural force. And Priest Anders assigns her penance every time she swipes right. Bethany vows to stop all the bad dating, but can’t figure out where to begin.

Then she stumbles upon an unlikely support group: The Survivors of Bethany.

Someone has been sending Bethany’s suitors evidence of her demonic entanglement. As she digs deeper, she discovers that Priest Anders is not only behind the betrayal, but he’s a closet conjurer with plans to kill Bethany as the catalyst to possessing his way to the Vatican for the papacy.

Can Bethany and Demon 23 put aside their differences and stop Deacon Anders before it’s too late? Or even worse, can she deal with Demon 23’s realization that he wants to love her, not possess her?

If you like the concept of Dating with Demons, I’d be happy to send you the script.

Thank you,

Tasha Espinoza

BIO: Tasha is a horror screenwriter who has listened to over 100 hours of eye-witness accounts of paranormal activity including demonic possession.

CONTACT INFO: My email/my phone #

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Horror Conventions

What I learned doing this assignment is that the conventions of horror can really start to shape your story even at just the concept phase.

HORROR MOVIE I ANALYZED:

Title: The Hitcher (1986)

Concept: While transporting a car from Chicago to San Diego, Jim Halsey picks up a hitchhiker named John Ryder, who claims to be a serial killer.

Terrorize The Characters: Jim Halsey is doggedly pursued by a disappointed serial killer who continues to kill the people that come into contact with Jim until Jim figures out how to stop him.

Isolation: A long stretch of lonely, desert road in 80s Texas with only a handful of gas stations and diners along the way, half of which are not operational.

Death: Dismemberment, Beheading, Explosions, Shootings, Vehicular Manslaughter, Child Murder

Monster/Villain: John Ryder, The Hitcher, a phantom-like serial killer who relentlessly torments Halsey until Halsey finally stops him.

High Tension: Every place of sanctuary Halsey seeks is visited by Ryder where he racks up a high body count. Halsey’s not even safe at a police station surrounded by cops. Also, Halsey’s realization that there’s no escape from the nightmare until he takes on the Hitcher head on, for better or worse.

Departure from Reality: Ryder pops up to corner Halsey at every impossible turn and Halsey is forced to break the law in order to seek help.

Moral Statement: Stranger Danger! Never pick up a Hitchhiker! Also, driving solo across the country isn’t just dangerous for the driver.

WHY THE MOVIE WAS A GREAT HORROR FILM:

This movie is an excellent horror film. Not only is it very effective in delivering the horror conventions by isolating characters, creating the fear of the unknown with the enigmatic Hitcher that is a lethal, phantom-like serial killer and driving characters to the point of hysteria and fear for their lives as the body count mounts and the kills become more gruesome, but it was written with budget decision in mind; characters and locations are kept to a minimum and it has a trim running time. It is super effective on all fronts.

MY CONCEPT AND CONVENTIONS:

Concept: A vengeful spirit kills off the group of guys that refused to rescue her from the serial killer that tortured her to death.

Terrorize The Characters: The vengeful spirits guides the serial killer to hunt down and pick off her prey.

Isolation: Most of the deaths occur in the abandoned country shack where the killer operates.

Death: Supernatural torture and the serial killer’s MO of bleaching his victims alive and then performing weird body modification “art” that leads to fatality without anesthesia, natch.

Monster/Villain: Vengeful Spirit and the Serial Killer

High Tension: The group is being pursued by a serial killer they can’t fight against and a supernatural force they can’t appeal to.

Departure from Reality: Serial Killers are in normal life, but a serial killer guided/manipulated by a spirit is a departure from reality.

Moral Statement: The person who has the power to save a life, but chooses to sit back and let that person die instead, shouldn’t be surprised when the same thing happens to them.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Query Letter Draft ONE

If you would like to exchange feedback with me, my email is tespinozaca@gmail.com. Looking forward to working with you!

What I learned doing this assignment is: writing from the hooks can really elevate a query letter.

Title: Dating with Demons

GENRE: Horror

Dear Producer,

An exorcism can really mess up your dating life.

All Bethany wants is one, decent date, but her demon and her priest won’t allow it.

Demon 23, despite being exorcised from Bethany, still hangs around acting more like a toxic ex than a supernatural force. And Priest Anders assigns her penance every time she swipes right. Bethany vows to stop all the bad dating, but where to begin.

Then she stumbles upon an unlikely support group: The Survivors of Bethany.

Someone has been sending Bethany’s suitors evidence of her demonic entanglement. As she digs deeper, she discovers that Deacon Anders is not only behind the betrayal, but he’s a closet occultist with plans to kill Bethany as the catalyst to possessing his way to the Vatican for the papacy.

Can Bethany and Demon 23 put aside their differences and stop Deacon Anders before it’s too late? Or even worse, can she deal with Demon 23’s realization that he wants to love her, not possess?

Did Linda Blair have to deal with any of this dating nonsense after her exorcism?

If you like the concept of Dating with Demons, I’d be happy to send you the script.

Thank you,

Tasha Espinoza

BIO: Tasha is a horror screenwriter who has listened to over 100 hours of eye-witness accounts of paranormal activity including demonic possession.

CONTACT INFO: My email/my phone #

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Target Market

What I learned doing this assignment is it only takes 15 minutes to find 50 producers. It only takes 15 minutes to find 50 opportunities. Also, doing a search on keywords from your title will most likely yield a large and comprehensive list of movies that are similar to yours. They might not all be blockbusters, but they will have producers attached to them.

Title: Dating with Demons

Logline: Lonely-heart Bethany would like a shot at love, but her possession really messes up her dating life.

Genre: Horror

Five (or more)Similar Movies

1. My Best Friend’s Exorcism

2. Bad Exorcists

3. The Pope’s Exorcist

4. The Exorcism of God

5. Jennifer’s Body

6. Exorcism of the 7th Demon

7. Exorcist Master

8. Teenage Exorcist

Five or more Actors:

1. Lili Reinhart

2. Kathryn Newton

3. James Ransone

4. Manny Jacinto

5. Joseph Quinn

List of Producers

1. Tripp Vinson

2. Beau Flynn

3. Atilla Salih Yücer

4. Christopher H. Warner

5. Ryan Turek

6. James G. Robinson

7. David Gordon Green

8. Stephanie Allain

9. Eddie Siebert

10. Macdara Kelleher

11. Michael Patrick Kaczmarek

12. Jeanette Volturno

13. Jason Reitman

14. Mason Novick

15. Daniel Dubiecki

16. Kevin J. Messick

17. Ali Mendes

18. Ron McLeod

19. Lauryn Kahn

20. Marc Silvestri

21. Roger Mincheff

22. Andre Lamal

23. Carol Kottenbrook

24. Scott Einbinder

25. J.S. Cardone

26. Malek Akkad

27. David Thwaites

28. Rick A Osako

29. Sean Gowrie

30. Ryan Freimann

31. Zanne Devine

32. Jamie Lee Curtis

33. Nathan Miller

34. Isaac Klausner

35. Steven Schneider

36. Samson Mucke

37. Angela Mancuso

38. John Baldecchi

39. Seth William Meier

40. Phillip Dawe

41. Betsy Sullenger

42. Sean Robins

43. Todd Garner

44. Andy Fickman

45. Bryan Brucks

46. Lindsay Williams

47. Grady Hendrix

48. Michael Flynn

49. Joe Torres

50. Joe Siedl

51. Alvaro Gonzalez Kuhn

52. Adrian Geyer

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Phone Pitch

What I learned from this lesson is that my phone pitch needs to be short and sweet and needs to deliver the correct tactic in a powerful way. Less is more and it’s how you show people you know what you’re doing.

1. Tell us which of the four strategies you are going to use to open your pitch:

Lead with a great title.

Lead with a High Concept.

2. Give us your script for phone call pitches, like I did above.

Hi, I’m Tasha Espinoza and I have a dating after exorcism horror movie.

Hi, I’m Tasha Espinoza and I have a horror movie titled Dating with Demons.

3. Give us a one or two sentence answer to the questions a producer may ask:

What’s the budget range? 2-4 million

Who do you see in the main roles?

Bethany – Lili Reinhart or Kathryn Newton

Deacon Anders – James Ransone

Demon 23 – Joseph Quinn

Koju – Manny Jacinto

How many pages is the script? 110

Who else has seen this? Just started pitching.

Why do you think this fits our company? I really like the horror films you produce and I write films in your genre and budget range.

How does the movie end?

The girl defeats the evil priest and a demon so that she can fall in love with her hunky spiritual mentor.

OR

Lonely heart Bethany thinks her messy love life is the result of her past possession but finds out that her priest, Deacon Anders, is behind her heartache in a plot to win the papacy. With Deacon Anders thwarted and the Vatican safe, Behtany finally goes on a hot date with spiritual hunk, Koju.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Hello Everybody,

I’m Tasha. I’ve written 3 scripts to date.

I hope to really master the conventions of the horror genre, so I can write and sell Scary-as-Hell screenplays with joy and ease.

Something unique about me is that Halloween 2 is the first movie I remember seeing. The unique part is that I was 2 and a 1/2 at the time. My 25 year old father and his younger brother took me to a monster movie marathon at the cheapie theaters for the air conditioning–it was the hottest day of the summer. We saw Halloween 2, Humanoids from the Deep and Silent Rage. My love of horror was born that day.

I’m looking forward to working and learning from you all!

[Tasha Espinoza]

GROUP RELEASE FORM

As a member of this forum group for Horror 28, I, Tasha Espinoza, agree to the following:

1. That I will keep the processes, strategies, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class confidential, and that I will NOT share any of this program either privately, with a group, posting online, writing articles, through video or computer programming, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class available to anyone who is not a member of this class.

2. That each writer’s work here is copyrighted and that writer is the sole owner of that work. That includes this program which is copyrighted by Hal Croasmun. I acknowledge that submission of an idea to this group constitutes a claim of and the recognition of ownership of that idea.

I will keep the other writer’s ideas and writing confidential and will not share this information with anyone without the express written permission of the writer/owner. I will not market or even discuss this information with anyone outside this group.

3. I also understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes and from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.

4. If I have an idea that is the same as or very similar to another group member’s idea, I’ll immediately contact Hal and present proof that I had this idea prior to the beginning of the class. If Hal deems them to be the same idea or close enough to cause harm to either party, he’ll request both parties to present another concept for the class.

5. If you don’t present proof to Hal that you have the same idea as another person, you agree that all ideas presented to this group are the sole ownership of the person who presented them and you will not write or market another group member’s ideas.

6. Finally, I agree not to bring suit against anyone in this group for any reason, unless they use a substantial portion of my copyrighted work in a manner that is public and/or that prevents me from marketing my script by shopping it to production companies, agents, managers, actors, networks, studios or any other entertainment industry organizations or people.

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Pitch Fest Pitch

What I learned is: if brevity is the key to requests, I’d like to pack that quick little punch!

Hi,

I’m Tasha and I specialize in horror.

Today, I have a Horror Movie called DATING WITH DEMONS.

It’s the story of a formerly possessed girl who defeats her ex-demon and her occultist priest to find love.”

The budget range is $2-4 million.

Actors I like for the lead roles are:

Bethany – Kathryn Newton or Lili Reinhart

Deacon Anders – James Ransone

Koju – Manny Jacinto

Demon 23 – Joseph Quinn

In Act 1, lonely-heart Bethany lands a promising date despite a warning from her priest, Deacon Anders, to skip it due to her past possession by Demon 23. His warning proves true when Bethany has to fight off a paranormal attack in front of her suitor at the restaurant, which causes her suitor to flee.

In Act 2, Bethany joins hunky Koju’s spiritual center to learn how to fight Demon 23, but discovers that Deacon Anders is the bigger threat. He’s a closet occultist with plans to possess his way to the Vatican using Bethany in a fatal way.

In Act 3, Bethany must use what Koju taught her and join forces with the Demon 23 to defeat Deacon Anders.

Ending

With the Vatican safe and Bethany’s spiritual power awakened, she makes peace with Demon 23 and banishes him out of her life for good. Deacon Anders is defrocked and goes to prison for attempted murder, and Bethany is finally able to fall in love with Koju.

Credibility – What have I done:

I’ve built my expertise in the horror genre by listening to over 100 hours of interviews about the supernatural and taking ScreenwritingU’s class, “Creating Terrifying Horror Scripts.”

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Query Letter

What I learned doing this assignment is giving yourself the freedom to brainstorm hooks is a lot of fun and you end up having new insights about your screenplay.

AN EXORCISE IN LOVE

GENRE: Horror Rom Com

An exorcism can really mess up your dating life.

All Bethany wants is one, decent date, but her demon and her priest won’t allow it. Demon 23 acts more like a toxic ex than a supernatural entity. And, Deacon Anders keeps assigning her penance every time she swipes right. Still optimistic about finding love, Bethany vows to put a stop to all the bad dating once and for all. But where to begin?

Then she discovers an unlikely support group: The Survivors of Bethany.

Turns out someone has been sending Bethany’s suitor concrete evidence of her demonic entanglement. As she digs deeper down the rabbit hole she discovers that her father figure and mentor, Deacon Anders, is not only behind the betrayal, but he’s a closet occultist Hell-bent on possessing his way to the Vatican and using Bethany’s death to do so.

Can Bethany and Demon 23 put aside their differences and stop Deacon Anders before it’s too late? Or even worse, can she deal with Demon 23’s realization that he wants to love her, not possess?

Did Linda Blair have to deal with any of this dating nonsense after her exorcism?

If you like the concept of AN EXORCISE IN LOVE, I’d be happy to send you the script.

Tasha Espinoza

BIO: Aside from studying scary movies since the age of two, Tasha has actively increased her expertise in the genre by writing several horror screenplays and taking ScreenwritingU’s course on Creating Terrifying Horror Scripts.

CONTACT INFO: My email/my phone #

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s High Concept/Elevator Pitch

What I learned doing this assignment is how easy it is to start to brainstorm hooks when you think of them as headlines. That was a really helpful tip for how to write them.

1. Main Hook – Lonely-heart Bethany could find love if only her suitors didn’t keep finding out about her exorcism.

2. How can you tell it in the most interesting way possible?

Dilemma – Is it okay to date when you have a demonic attachment?

Main Conflict – Dating is hard, but when your possessive ex is a demon, the problems are supernatural.

What’s at stake? Heartbreak is one thing, but losing your soul is everything.

Goal/Unique Opposition: When a priest can’t save her, Bethany must figure out her own exorcise routine.

3. Using the 10 Components of Marketability, what is your Elevator Pitch?

“I’m finishing up a story that answers the question What if Reagan from the Exorcist started dating.”

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by  Tasha Espinoza.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Synopsis Hooks

What I learned doing this assignment is you can really narrow down your story and see where the points of interest or marketability could be elevated and how that would inform a rewrite. I really want to tell the story in my synopsis and it has made me excited for the rewrite.

Chosen Hooks:

1. How hard is it to find love if you were once possessed by a demon?

2. Bethany tries to date but her demon and her priest won’t let her.

3. Demon 23 acts more like a toxic ex than a supernatural entity

4. Bethany has to fight Demon 23 in the middle of a date

5. Bethany discovers that a video of her exorcism has been sent to her ex suitors and there’s a support group for guys who dated her.

6. Priest Deacon Anders is a closet occultist who wants to possess his way to the Vatican and he’ll kill Bethany to do it.

7. Bethany has to team up with the Demon 23, in order to survive.

8. Bethany and Demon 23 undergo a couple’s counseling session to try and resolve their issues

9. Demon 23 realizes he wants to love Bethany, not possess her.

10. It’s The Exorcist after Reagan recovers and starts dating.

Synopsis – First Draft

Title: An Exorcise in Love

Written By: Tasha Espinoza

Genre: Horror / Rom Com

Love. Most of us want it. There’s a whole industry out there dedicated to making romantic connections. But what good is your dating app, if you were once possessed by a demon?

All Bethany wants is one, decent date, but her demon and her priest won’t allow it. Demon 23 acts more like a toxic ex than a supernatural force, interrupting her dates with paranormal activity bordering on domestic violence. And she can’t turn to her priest, Deacon Anders, because he keeps assigning her penance every time she swipes right.

Finding love is already hard enough as it is. But when Bethany discovers that a tape of her exorcism has been circulated amongst her potential and it has resulted in a support group called, “The Survivors of Bethany”, she vows to put a stop to the bad dating once and for all.

As she digs deeper down the rabbit hole she discovers that her father figure and mentor, Deacon Anders, is not only behind the betrayal, but he’s a closet occultist Hell-bent on possessing his way to the Vatican and using Bethany’s death to do so.

If Bethany is going to survive, she must team up with Demon 23, but will a round of couple’s therapy help her get past the whole soul possession thing in order to trust him? Or even worse, can she deal with Demon 23’s realization that he wants to love her, not possess.

Did Reagan from The Exorcist have to put up with this kind of nonsense when she recovered and started dating?

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s 10 Most Interesting Things

What I learned doing this assignment is that breaking down a script into bite size chunks not only helps you see the marketable points that are interesting, but it helps you see the possibilities for the rewrite.

1. Go through your project and see which of these specific hooks you have:

A. What is most unique about your villain and hero?

-Hero tries to date but her demon won’t let her.

-Villain is a priest who practices summoning demons.

B. Major hook of your opening scene?

-Hero participates in performing her own exorcism.

C. Any turning points?

-Bethany’s has to fight her demon during a date

-Bethany’s finds out that previous suitors stopped dating her because they received copies of her exorcism.

-Bethany father tells her Deacon Anders filmed her exorcism.

-Deacon Anders knocks her out and preps her for his demonic demonstration.

D. Emotional dilemma?

-Bethany has to team up with the Demon that tried to possess her soul in order to stop Deaco Anders from killing her.

E. Major twists?

-Bethany’s so spiritually powerful she can send multiple demons out of this world

F. Reversals?

-Amy is a barista who has a strong knowledge of the occult

-Demon 23 realizes he wants to love Bethany not possess her

-Bethany exorcises herself during her exorcism

G. Character betrayals?

-Deacon Anders goes from Bethany’s Father figure and mentor to trying to kill her.

H. Or any big surprises?

-It’s not Brad, it’s Demon 23 possessing Brad to try and date Bethany

2. Make a list of any other things in your script that could interest a producer.

-The foster kids that Bethany volunteers for are her real family

-The Survivors of Bethany’s support group

-Koju’s Spiritual Center awakens Bethany super-power-esque spirituality

-Bethany studies metaphysical spirituality to banish demons

-Koju wants Bethany to have a couple’s counseling session with Demon 23

-Bethany becomes a fearless exorcist and removes demons from possessed kids

3. Organize both and select the 10 most interesting things. Post those to the forums.

-Bethany helps perform her own exorcism.

-Priest Deacon Anders is a closet occultist.

-Bethany’s has to fight her demon during a date

-Demon 23 possesses Brad to try and date Bethany

-The support group for guys who dated Bethany

-Deacon Anders goes from Bethany’s Father figure and mentor to trying to kill her.

-Bethany studies metaphysical spirituality to banish demons with superpower-esque spirituality

-Koju wants Bethany to have a couple’s counseling session with Demon 23

-Bethany has to team up with the Demon 23, who tried to possess her soul, in order to stop Deacon Anders from killing her

-Bethany becomes a fearless exorcist and removes demons from possessed kids

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha Producer/Manager

Imagine you have two meetings set up — with a producer and then with a manager. What would you say and do differently based upon this model?

Answer two questions:

1. How will you present yourself and your project to the producer?

I will present my project with a major hook that the producer can sell in their market. And I will pitch the script via the specific elevated components of marketing that pertain to it, so the producer can easily attract a director, actors, funding, distribution, etc.

2. How will you present yourself and your project to the manager?

I will present myself as highly collaborative, proficient at taking notes and ever-willing to do what is necessary to a script to get it made. I will present them with my highly marketable script and work with them on ways to improve it to make it sell. I will bring them more highly marketable scripts. I will take paid writing assignments and be collaborative and instrumental in using the producer’s notes to arrive at a version of the script that they can sell.

3. What I learned today is that a producer can’t get a script made unless it’s highly marketable, so it becomes the job of the writer to make sure they are meeting the necessary criteria to make that script marketable and that they should always be thinking about how to present the most marketable parts of the script even at the concept level.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Marketable Components

1. Current logline:

A woman who was once exorcised has to navigate the world of dating as she tries to find the one guy who isn’t scared of her possessive other half.

2. Two Components of Marketability that have the most potential for selling this script:

Unique – Not many possession stories follow the character after they’ve been exorcised. Usually it’s just about the possession.

Great role for a bankable actor

Bethany: girlfriend material/formerly possessed by a demon/ wounded by her family’s abandonment/ desperate to hide her past from her current relationships

3. Brainstorm to elevate those two components:

Unique:

I should really emphasize the idea that this story follows a person after her possession. How does the stigma of having been possessed affect how the character navigates the world? Do people have a hard time trusting that she won’t become possessed again? If she talks in her sleep, do people think it’s starting all over again?

Great Role:

Maybe the main character is no longer possessed, but the demon is still attached to her, which means she’s still dealing with the supernatural. And the demon interferes in her dating life like it’s a bad ex that doesn’t want to see her happy. She could try to figure out how you get a restraining order on the demon.

4. What I learned doing this assignment is brainstorming how to best deliver on even just a few components of marketability is a great way to elevate your script.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Project and Market

Genre: Horror

Title: Possession of Love

Concept: What is dating like after you’ve been exorcised?

2. The most attractive element of this story is the idea that you would have to disclose your past possession to a new suitor like you would herpes or having a kid. How would that affect your chances of finding a partner and how risky would a relationship be once you did?

3. I would first target producers to get better at the process so I could be a good collaborator with a manager.

What I learned today is that marketing my script can and should be fun and that rejection is not the correct state of mind for selling scripts.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Hi there,

My name is Tasha. I’ve written 3 feature length scripts.

I hope to master the 4 Great Pitches.

Something different about me is I was once grabbed by a ghost…at least I hope it was a ghost.

[Tasha Espinoza]

GROUP RELEASE FORM

As a member of this group, I, Tasha Espinoza, agree to the following:

1. That I will keep the processes, strategies, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class confidential, and that I will NOT share any of this program either privately, with a group, posting online, writing articles, through video or computer programming, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class available to anyone who is not a member of this class.

2. That each writer’s work here is copyrighted and that writer is the sole owner of that work. That includes this program which is copyrighted by Hal Croasmun. I acknowledge that submission of an idea to this group constitutes a claim of and the recognition of ownership of that idea.

I will keep the other writer’s ideas and writing confidential and will not share this information with anyone without the express written permission of the writer/owner. I will not market or even discuss this information with anyone outside this group.

3. I also understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes and from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.

4. If I have an idea that is the same as or very similar to another group member’s idea, I’ll immediately contact Hal and present proof that I had this idea prior to the beginning of the class. If Hal deems them to be the same idea or close enough to cause harm to either party, he’ll request both parties to present another concept for the class.

5. If you don’t present proof to Hal that you have the same idea as another person, you agree that all ideas presented to this group are the sole ownership of the person who presented them and you will not write or market another group member’s ideas.

6. Finally, I agree not to bring suit against anyone in this group for any reason, unless they use a substantial portion of my copyrighted work in a manner that is public and/or that prevents me from marketing my script by shopping it to production companies, agents, managers, actors, networks, studios or any other entertainment industry organizations or people.

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Thank you for your feedback. I found Joanna’s new dialogue effective in establishing her passion and attachment to the things she creates. In this case, her self-published children’s book serves as a meaningful setup for how she will view her subsequent pregnancy. It’s a well-executed parallel.

[Tasha Espinoza]

No worries Ed. Happy to give you feedback when you’re ready. Congrats on the acting projects!

[Tasha Espinoza]

Thanks JT 🤣 I know what you mean! I’m taking so long on Lesson 6. I know I’m suppose to move at a faster clip, but I want to make sure I’m getting the lesson.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Hi JT,
Thank you for your lovely message. I have to say, I would see Death Cleaning in a heartbeat. Great concept and super high stakes with a pregnant protagonist in isolation with a monster! I got the chills just reading your pitch. Hope you're enjoying the Writing Terrifying Screenplays class. I took it and it really upped my game as a screenwriter of horror. Looking forward to following your rewriting journey and see the horror magic you create. Also happy to help if you need a sounding board or second opinion on anything, especially horror-wise. My email is tespinozaca@gmail.com. Drop me an email anytime.
Now if I could only catch up to the lessons🤣

[Tasha Espinoza]

Could also make a good haiku.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Thank you Jessica! Wishing the same for you 😄👍

[Tasha Espinoza]

Tasha’s Horror Plot

What I learned doing this assignment is that the simple act of filling in plot points will help you start to hammer out a story in a big way. I had no real idea what to do with the concept, but then I started working to meet the criteria of the plot points and before I knew it, I had the skeleton of a story. Such an easy process and rather amazing. It was painless.

1. Knowing your concept, fill in one or two sentences for each of the plot points.

ACT 1 — SET UP FOR HORROR

• Atmosphere of Evil established – A young girl, traveling at night, gets gas at a lonely station in a woodsy area.

• Connect with the characters – The young girl chats to her mom as she puts gas at the unmanned station.

• The characters are warned not to do it. – Her mom warns her to stop at a motel and not drive all alone by herself at night.

• Denial of Horror – The girl assures her mom she’ll be fine.

• Safety taken away – She’s run off the road by a serial killer that has been stalking her and flees from him on foot. She flags down a fan of thuggie guys that won’t help her because she doesn’t have anything to give them. She says she’ll haunt them if they don’t help her and they leave her on the side of the road.

• Monster: The serial killer dismembers her.

ACT 2 — THE POINT OF NO RETURN

• Isolated / Trapped / Abducted – The group of thuggie guys experience paranormal activity.

• One of us killed – One of the members dies by running into the street after encountering a phantom. Then the head thugs berates the group for letting some bitch ghost scare them into doing “stupid shit” and points out that her scare tactics are actually harmless.

MIDPOINT: The monster is worse than we thought!

• Full pursuit by the killer – A serial killer starts to stalk the members of the group

• Terrorized – The serial branches out to members of the group’s family that fit his MO. The group realizes that the serial killer killed the girl they failed to rescue and she is the one guiding the serial killer to go after them.

ACT 3 — FULL OUT HORROR

• Fight to the death – They try to find the serial killer to stop him.

• Hysteria – The serial killer picks off more of the group.

• The thrilling escape from death – They find a serial killer and do a ritual to sacrifice him to the vengeful spirit in order to appease her and get her to cross over.

• Death returns to take one or more. – The ritual actually imbues the vengeful spirit with demonic powers and she kills the innocent Nikki as her act of vengeance.

• Resolution – Kade is left to more his friends, but the spirit of Nikki needs her revenge.

[Tasha Espinoza]

Hi Lin,

Have you partnered up with anyone yet? If not, would you like to exchange feedback?

Tasha

tespinozaca@gmail.com