[Tully Archer]

I had to pivot away from this class at the very beginning. Then, I did a (very fun) mad catching up period. Now, I have to pivot away again. I see that this is a big feedback swapping lesson ahead. Just want to put this here: If you are also coming at this lesson way late, hit me up. Maybe we tardy students can make something work whenever we get here. 🙂

[Tully Archer]

Okay here’s the thing, I started a spreadsheet and I really super duper don’t feel like typing everything out again. If anybody cares, I’d be happy to email it.

[Tully Archer]

As we did above with The Sixth Sense, create each piece of this “Deeper Layer” puzzle.

• Surface Layer: Kavish wants Lacy to move in with him, then marry him, and be happy as a traditional wife as he is a traditional husband.

• Deeper Layer: He doesn’t want to be a traditional husband, he wants to be a stay at home dad. His own dad gave him a lot of psychological *stuff* around “having a real job” type stuff as well as a fear of rejection.

• Major Reveal: The ghost haunting them has a tragic past that they could help with. Also, Kavish’s real want, but that’s at the end when he and Lacy are coming back together.

• Influences Surface Story: Ghost’s ruts and sadness make sense now. Also, Kavish’s neuroses and fear explain why he was in ruts not dissimilar from Ghost’s.

• Hints: The way the landlord talks about the ghost. Also, Kavish’s inability to listen to Lacy when she’s honest; he doesn’t recognize it well, having not been honest himself.

• Changes Reality: We see that the ghost has a problem that can be solved (and our protagonists solve it). Also, we have empathy for Kavish and root for him to win Lacy back.

[Tully Archer]

Starting with a much simpler version for now.

KAVISH in four acts:

1. finally got my girl to move in with me OH SHIT IT’S HUANTED!

2. fine, fuck, I’ll tick these fresh boxes too

3. oh, the ghost needs help, and my girl’s more interested in that than me but okay

4. girl-less, I was brave anyway – DAY SAVED, GIRL BACK!

LACY in four acts:

1. okay really gotta make a decision about this relationship OOH YAY A DISTRACTION!

2. I am loving this adventure, and not loving boy’s resistance to it

3. okay the ghost needs help, and apparently I have to lose my bestie to fly

4. boy-less, I moved independently – GHOST SAVED, BOY FOUGHT FOR ME!

MATT in four acts:

1. yay, my life is great OH SHIT MY WIFE IS MISSING

2. gonna do everything I can to find her

3. it’s been years and it’s not working OH SHIT I’M DEAD

4. might as well help these idiots HOLY FUCK THEY FOUND MY WIFE WE’RE HAPPY AGAIN!

[Tully Archer]

N: Deepika.

R: Kavish’s mom.

MP: to explain why he’s like this.

V: keeps Lacy longer. galvanizes Kavish; gives him permission to be brave, via new insights into their past.

N: Sanjay.

R: Kavish’s step dad.

MP: to show how scared, distrustful, and protective Kavish is. (because Sanjay is simply wonderful but Kavish still doesn’t like him LOL.)

V: keeps tone in check by being so pleasant, helps the kids investigate.

N: dunno, need like three each of these:

R: Lacy’s relatives, and Kavish’s roommates at the start.

MP: start the movie; their living situations are bad enough for them to both want to do something new.

V: we’re excited to see these people get pranked.

N: dunno.

R: landlord.

MP: lock them into the story. he won’t budge.

V: gives important info for the investigation, and something early for our lovers to agree on (that he’s a dick). also an early theory on the supernatural: “I figured he’d just gradually fade away. I’m sure he still will!”

N: Brian.

R: the murderer (of Matt the ghost’s wife, all those years ago.)

MP: created the whole thing, really.

V: gives us an act three, adventure and a common goal for our then broken up couple. brings us resolution for Matt.

N: ? and ?

R: racist neighbors (an old couple).

MP: light info on Matt.

V: Kavish and Lacy’s interactions with them show how in sync they are on day-to-day stuff. their nonverbal communication, comedic timing, and instant back-you-up instincts.

[Tully Archer]

KAVISH MANDAL

9. can’t separate dad triggers from actual Lacy behavior. kind of being a communication hypocrite.

11. “do everything right” according to like, what the internet says girlfriends want, or keep this actual individual human woman who is his girlfriend?

LACY PETERSON

9. a bit infuriating to be around, having given up on what’s in HER control because of being broken down so bad by things that were NOT in her control.

11. keep the boy or ever be fulfilled?

(values are in no particular order, inside the sections)

VALUES – THAT THEY HAVE IN COMMON

1. trust

2. purposefulness

3. strength

4. teamwork

VALUES – THAT KIND OF OPPOSE

5. K: comfort, L: agility

6. K: home, L: freedom

7. K: certainty, L: risk taking

8. K: calm, L: excitement

9. K: safety, L: challenge

VALUES – REMAINING FOR KAVISH

10. authenticity

11. discernment

12. leadership

13. family

14. proactivity

15. growth

16. protectiveness

17. optimism

18. resilience

19. communication

20. dedication

VALUES – REMAINING FOR LACY

10. courage

11. impact

12. obstinance

13. vindication

14. abundance

15. boldness

16. logic

17. rebellion

18. tenacity

19. skill

20. ferocity

[Tully Archer]

KAVISH MANDAL

1. protagonist.

2. early 30’s. dresses conservative-looking, zero creativity at all, total safety picks.

3. thoughtful, scared, caring, linear.

4. want: get rid of ghost, marry Lacy. need: to be loved surely/fully/safely.

5. can’t face: that his fully true and honest and open self wasn’t enough and got rejected. by his dad, whose job was to love him, that’s how not enough he was.

LACY PETERSON

1. protagonist.

2. early 30’s. a cacophony of patterns.

3. funny, depressed, empathetic, restless.

4. want: help the ghost, leave this town forever. need: validation, permission to fly.

5. can’t face: that cause and effect were taken from her, that logic was corrupted, that hope for change was vilified and then obliterated, and that as a result she just does not know what the fuck to do, in general or daily.

[Tully Archer]

Kavish and Lacy are in a doomed relationship, and move into a house haunted by Matt, whose life stopped the day his wife went missing (which we find out as part of the midpoint).

LIKEABILITY

Kavish: Thoughtful. Tries real hard. Loves Lacy very much.

Lacy: Funny. Empathetic. Loves Kavish very much.

Matt: Not at first, but after the midpoint: Loved Claire so much he never stopped looking for her, kept everything exactly the same so she’d feel right at home when she got back, for 30 years.

RELATEABILITY

Kavish: Feeling stupid and unsure in a relationship. On the wrong side of the balance between protecting yourself and committing your whole self to your partner.

Lacy: Feeling stuck in a relationship, despite all the positive feelings. Has given up, for now, in many ways; just so tired.

Matt: Suffered a major loss, like most of us have.

EMPATHY

Kavish: He’s being haunted! He almost lost his girlfriend, and scrambled to fix it. When we meet his dad (if I decide to do that LOL) it’ll be like, well shit, no wonder.

Lacy: She’s being haunted! Her family is truly antagonistic. And things keep blowing up in her face.

Matt: He has been suffering every day for decades.

[Tully Archer]

Kavish and Lacy are the couple in my horror/comedy where their relationship is repaired because they moved into a haunted house.

HIDDEN AGENDAS

Kavish: Plotting to get married, via “proving his worth” in these ways that are not what she actually needs.

Lacy: Plotting to break up, or see if they should break up, or get him to be real with her for one second.

COMPETITION

Kavish: Winds up competing with the ghost for Lacy’s interest and attention.

Lacy: With her family, for silly oneupsmanship and pettiness.

CONSPIRACY

Not sure, for either of them.

SECRET

Kavish: Everything he really wants, how scared he is.

Lacy: Everything she really wants, how sad she is.

DECEPTION

Kavish: Lies by omission on a lot of stuff (has to protect his heart, you know)

Lacy: Lies by whatever the reverse of exaggeration would be called, about how bad things are for her.

UNSPOKEN WOUND

Kavish: My daddy was mean to me and I could never make him happy.

Lacy: My family broke me down and now I have no strength.

SECRET IDENTITY

Kavish: The glue? Maybe?

Lacy: The comic relief? I think?

[Tully Archer]

TITLE: Fearly Beloved

GENRE: Horror (Rom) Comedy

CONCEPT: A couple on the verge of a break up is brought together by the challenges of living in a haunted house.

CHARACTER: Kavish Mandal

ROLE: Main character / boyfriend

COVERT TRAIT: Fearful.

COVERT IDENTITY: A little boy who’s hoping for lasting comfort.

COVER ACTIVITY: Giving to others, in ways that feel safe. Protects his heart.

SUBTEXT LOGLINE: Kavish has an acceptance wound, is scared of a broken heart; covers by giving in ways that feel safe; when triggered, will flee to the comfort of linear task-doing or worse, what he thinks of as “cold logic” (it will have ignored many facts unhelpful to him in that moment) no matter how irrational.

[Tully Archer]

TITLE: Fearly Beloved

GENRE: Horror (Rom) Comedy

CONCEPT: A couple on the verge of a break up is brought together by the challenges of living in a haunted house.

CHARACTER: Kavish Mandal

ROLE: Main character / boyfriend

1. What about this role would cause an actor to want to be known for it? –> He’s a male romcom lead who’s NOT an ass. Vulnerable, charming, funny, truly TRYING at life.

2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in your story? –> Lots of irony and projection. Mistakes and effort.

3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead takes in the script? –> Goes full ghostbuster. chickens out on a proposal. Demos a kitchen. Steals a hand.

4. How was the role introduced in a way that sold it to an actor? –> Contrasting his roommates, and then trying and failing to stand up for his girlfriend with her roommates.

5. What is this character’s emotional range? –> Fear, love/devotion, hopelessness, bitterness, total commitment to an insane plan.

6. What subtext did the actor play? –> Trying to solve problems but he’s mad; trying to communicate but he’s not being truthful.

7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character had? –> With Lacy; they’re best friends, but they’re so far away from each other, but they have the exact same philosophical errors.

8. How was this character’s unique voice presented? –> Very linear thinker but his sentences are short and snappy? I really have no idea on this one still.

9. What made this character special and unique? –> He’s a new kind of sex symbol. Sure he’s cute, whatever, but you could have an entire fucking CONVERSATION with this guy. And at the end he is SUCH A GOOD PARTNER! 🙂

[Tully Archer]

Concept: A couple on the verge of breaking up is brought back together by the challenges of living in a haunted house.

ROMCOM

1A: he can feel it all slipping away

1B: both of their living situations suck and get suckier, he thinks in terms of helping her, suggests they live together

1C: it’s haunted (and I’ve already failed, whee)

1D: still dunno

2A: I can’t please an unpleasable again, it’s just like my father!… is Lacy just another one??

2B: solve the problem and impress her

2C: ghost immovable; girlfriend increasingly interested in the ghost more than anything

2D: the ghost needs help and empathy… also finding out that L was about to break up with him before they moved in together? still unsure

3A: how did I not see that; is there a point to even trying, now??

3B: help the stupid ghost then, it’s what she wants

3C: great, now the ghost is stuck AND even sadder, and I’m less one girlfriend

4A: no, I will fight for what I want and think is right ANYWAY

4B: it worked, on both counts! ghost is gone and we’re together and happy coz I’m all arced and shit and so is she!

[Tully Archer]

Concept: A couple on the verge of demise is brought together by the challenges of living in a haunted house.

Main Conflict: How will Kavish help his girlfriend improve her life when he chose a haunted ass place for them to live in and can’t solve the problem?

Old Ways: Acting from scarcity. Assuming everything will turn to shit. Not actually listening to her. Keeping what he really wants to himself.

New Ways: Acting from abundance. Assuming they can figure it out together. Listening and communicating well. Sharing his deepest wishes with her.

Act 1

Opening: Both of their already bad living situations get worse; he chickens out on proposing but suggests they live together alone instead of the places they are now.

Inciting Incident: Well shit, this place is haunted.

Turning point: Not totally clear on this one.

Act 2:

New Plan: Let’s get rid of the ghost and get back to me trying to keep you / prove to you that I could be a good husband some day.

Plan in Action: They try lots of stuff, and the ghost won’t budge, OR let them change a single thing about the house.

Mid Point: Probably a twofold: 1, learning the ghost’s backstory, which brings a shift from annoyance to empathy, and 2, learning that… something about Lacy, not totally clear but I have some brewing ideas.

Act 3

Rethink Everything: 1, we gotta help the ghost, right? 2, depends on what MP 2 is.

New Plan: When they try to help the ghost, they get into adventures with danger and everything and their relationship still isn’t strong enough, though it wants to be, leading to…

Low Point: They break up. And the ghost is still stuck.

Act 4

Climax: Each of them independently comes up with a half-baked plan to try again to help the ghost, and they meet there doing that. It proves that they really do belong together; they help the ghost and are able to work through their remaining issues.

Resolution: Fully honest with each other and on the same page, they prank their families (it’ll make sense I promise), elope, and fuck off to more adventures and zero money, totally happy.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Subtext Plot(s)

PRIMARY: Competitive Agendas

SECONDARY: Fish Out Of Water

COMPETITIVE AGENDAS:

Kavish’s goal is to proceed along the traditional prescribed marriage and children path. Lacey’s goal is to break up with him and escape this town and her family and live a crazy made-up-as-she-goes life. Meanwhile what Kavish REALLY wants is to be a stay-at-home dad, not the traditional provider role. And what Lacey REALLY wants it to keep her (best friend and) fiance Kavish in her life and have that freedom – she just doesn’t think she can have both.

FISH OUT OF WATER:

Neither of them have ever lived in a haunted house before. They don’t know what it’s like. They have to learn the ghost’s patterns, and navigate them. They also have to re-figure their worldviews, and they wind up exploring other elements of the supernatural during the task of helping the ghost.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Transformational Journey

Well I have a two hander, so I’m doing both.

KAVISH MANDAL

Arc Beginning: Engaged but unsure of the relationship and dreading the future.

Arc Ending: Married and fully confident in the partnership and excited about life.

Internal Journey: From afraid to buck tradition to following his own heart.

External Journey: From an engaged accountant to a married future stay-at-home dad.

Old Ways:

· Doing what his mother/subculture expects even though it’s not what he wants.

· Not actually listening to Lacey.

· Panicky.

· Confused.

· In love but bad at it.

New Ways:

· Doing what he wants to do with his life.

· Listening to Lacey and communicating back to her.

· Calm.

· Confident.

· Capable of giving Lacey what she needs.

LACEY PETERSON

Arc Beginning: Engaged but doubts Kavish’s feelings and feels herself like a caged animal.

Arc Ending: Married and feels loved and has left her toxic family behind forever.

Internal Journey: From thinking everything’s pointless to excited about what they’ll do next

External Journey: . From stuck to free. From fighting small battles to winning the big one.

Old Ways:

· Staying in the mud with her family.

· Runs away from problems.

· Complains and catastrophizes.

· Intensely bored.

· Hurts Kavish without realizing she even can.

New Ways:

· Exploring higher panes for herself.

· Picks her fights and fights them.

· Solves problems with a can-do attitude.

· Following her interests.

· Is sensitive to Kavish’s feelings.

And you know what? I’ll do it for their anthropomorphized relationship, too! 😊

THEIR RELATIONSHIP

Arc Beginning: Ending would make them both happier (but that wouldn’t help them in the long run).

Arc Ending: Ending would make them both sad (but they’d both be okay in the long run).

Internal Journey: From heading for a breakup to having all the tools they’ll need to last forever.

External Journey: From neither fighting for themselves or each other to both doing both.

Old Ways:

· Avoiding conversations.

· Allowing stagnation.

· Fear over love.

· Two individuals hoping things will magically work out.

· Valuing others above their partner.

New Ways:

· Communicating effectively.

· Nurturing growth.

· Love over fear.

· PARTNERS, partnering.

· Valuing their partner above others.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Intentional Lead Characters

(FEARLY BELOVED, a horror/comedy: An engaged couple on the verge of a breakup is brought together again by the daily challenges of living in a haunted house.)

KAVISH MANDAL is engaged to Lacey Peterson, and buys the house in a panic.

LACEY PETERSON is engaged to Kavish Mandal, and becomes obsessed with solving the ghost’s problem.

MATTHEW WEITZEL is a ghost, with clear unfinished business.

KAVISH is an accountant who feels his fiancé slipping away but responds with frantic energy instead of listening to her or telling her what he really wants.

LACEY is a grocery store employee whose family has bad tall poppy syndrome but who is desperate for a change and can’t see the forest or the trees.

MATTHEW is dead, and going through the same daily routine he did for the last 30 years of his life, which essentially ended the day his wife went missing.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Title, Concept, and Character Structure!

GENRE: Horror/Comedy.

CONCEPT: An engaged couple heading for a breakup are brought back together by the daily challenges of living in a haunted house.

TITLE: Fearly Beloved.

CHARACTER STRUCTURE: Dramatic Triangle. (The ghost is the third.)

[Tully Archer]

Tully Archer

Three features, a handful of shorts. One feature that was co-written and we’re rewriting it now.

I hope to get way better at this craft.

I’m an INTJ, shoutout to all my misunderstood creatives haha 🙂

[Tully Archer]

Tully Archer.

I agree to the terms of this release form.

3. Please leave the entire text below to confirm what you agree to.

GROUP RELEASE FORM

As a member of this group, I agree to the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Tully Archer]

ASSIGNMENT 2

Tully’s Character Emotions

What I learned doing this assignment is that I will be using this emotional profile for every single thing I ever write ever again. I LOVED this!

TESSA

A. Situational: Hope / Fear

a. To be victorious and love / To fail and find out she’s as dumb and worthless as they say, unloved

B. Motivation: Want / Need

a. Independence / Confidence (worldview)

C. Mask: Base Negative Emotion / Public Mask

a. Actually every bit the rich bitch / somewhat bewildered innocent good person

D. Weaknesses

a. Sensitive, can’t plan, not quick to look inward, easily bored according to ISFP weaknesses.

b. and training means easily irritable in a self centered way (boredom = someone needs to come entertain me, where are you?!?)

E. Triggers

a. Someone calling her a rich bitch.

b. Someone talking down to her.

F. Coping Mechanism

a. Denial — ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen.

b. Shut down — hide, cry, seclusion, inaction.

c. EMOTE – just have a cry. (I added this one.)

d. Call for help — pleading, praying, feeling helpless.

AVA

A. Situational: Hope / Fear

a. To gain permanent pervasive approval / To be cast out like Tessa the favorite was

B. Motivation: Want / Need

a. To stay involved / To not be forgotten.

C. Mask: Base Negative Emotion / Public Mask

a. Pathetic / powerful? Productive? Monolith of control?

D. Weaknesses

a. Actually not well boundaried, self loathing, victimitis, anger issues covering the self loathing. Dichotomy in head like mine: I know this isn’t right, but I can’t argue against it if I’m shit, tho??

b. Stubborn. Tactless. Resistant to change. guilt issues. Says ISTJ weaknesses.

E. Triggers

a. Someone calling her a lackey.

b. Someone getting away with something.

F. Coping Mechanism

a. Fight back — blame others, attack back, lash out.

b. Lie — distort, scheme, cover up.

c. Distract — change subject, misdirect.

d. Manipulate — guilt, blackmail, threats, humiliation.

DANA

A. Situational: Hope / Fear

a. To be happy / To be controlled

B. Motivation: Want / Need

a. Adventure / Freedom

C. Mask: Base Negative Emotion / Public Mask

a. Crazy / eclectic? Or… Sad / The Funnest?

D. Weaknesses

a. Well, ADHD.

b. Unintentionally self-centered, hypersensitive, lack of follow through, according to ENFP weaknesses. SE is bottom, she’s probably not observant unless distinctly interested.

E. Triggers

a. Someone telling her what to do. (She’s kind of an Abed??)

F. Coping Mechanism

a. Fight back — blame others, attack back, lash out.

b. EMOTE – just have a cry. (I added this one.)

c. Alter their state — overeating, sex, drink, drugs.

d. Denial — ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen.

[Tully Archer]

Assignment 2:

Tully’s Intriguing Character Layers

What I learned doing this assignment is that there’s plenty still to discover about my three most compelling characters. And so far it’s still fun!

<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>TESSA: Main character. Recently cut off rich kid. New to the world of professional fundraising.

1. Hidden agendas

a. I could see her thinking people are gonna do stuff for her. Her rich bitch mentality that she hasn’t actually shaken. Hasn’t tried, she’s too busy still comparing herself to rich actual active assholes and being better than them, she thinks of herself as a good person. By default. So she thinks she’s gonna breeze through this and others will just fill in the gaps for her, coz… she’s just special.

2. Competition

a. Tessa is naturally competitive, especially if combined with joy. Combined with stress and an upheaval to her self-identity, it’s a MESS. Obvious targets are everyone at this new job, that she’s wildly underestimating. The job itself very much encourages competition, so that’s rife for comedy. Also, by the end of season one she’ll be focused on a different kind of competition, with her parents, for who’s “winning” in a weird social way. They want to not have a daughter who’s helping gross homeless people. She wants to shame them in any way she can, and also feel a little bit of that old self-righteousness that she kind of relied on in the past. I mean… she IS right.

3. Conspiracy

a. No idea here, I’ll brainstorm. She could conspire for housing. She could conspire to sneak back into the old house to get some stuff. She could conspire with Dana to play hooky one day. She could conspire with something to do with food. She’d definitely jump into any conspiracy or any other way of getting to go have a good time like she used to do.

4. Secrets

a. I think she’s been downright awful to poor people before, specifically homeless people. Said or did something horrible, that isn’t coming to me right now. It’s shocking because her veneer is that it’s not her fault her parents are wealthy, she’s a good person who shouldn’t be judged!

5. Deception

a. I think these would be discreet and punchy, with her. Like, at first she deceives her old friends and tries to pretend that nothing happened. She might go on a deception campaign about her job performance. Stuff like that, where she tries and kind of quickly fails. She just keeps thinking she’ll be able to outsmart/best people, and it’s not so.

6. Wound

a. Tessa was never good enough for her parents. Her childhood intentions were 100% pure: to love, and be loved. To have fun, with her loved ones. It never flew. Everything was weird, and hierarchical, and distant. And sometimes it was like her goodness in particular is what wasn’t good enough. And when people call her a rich bitch, she just thinks about how lonely she used to be. She, as a child, would absolutely have traded all that money for a hug – and now, as an adult, she kind of wouldn’t, and that’s a wound too. She lost that innocence, and there’s cognitive dissonance where she wants to be treated like a good person but hasn’t DONE anything to earn that title. That title isn’t the default, but she wants it to be FOR HER.

7. Secret Identity

a. Rich Bitch. That mentality is a giant comfort blanket and moral fallback, and she has not yet seen a reason to let it go. Everything’s someone else’s fault, and people are “just being mean” to her. Easy peasy, moral squeezy.

AVA: Sister of Tessa. Connection to the family unit. The go-between, a spy.

1. Hidden agendas

a. She is essentially spying on her sister Tessa. Trying to influence her this way or that, based on what Hugo and Miranda want. Oooh, and… some new character that just occurred to me… some kind of family business manager slash clean up expert… yeah, I wanna write that person!!!

2. Competition

a. She sees herself as always winning against Tessa, but only just, and not in the ways that she can’t look at. Tessa sometimes captures joy, and Ava is intensely jealous of that. And the fact that people tend to like Tessa, even though she ain’t shit. Meanwhile Ava is smarter, works harder, is pulling more weight, and still has to practically die to get a little bit of parental approval.

3. Conspiracy

a. She’s conspiring all over the place, that’s like her main function LOL. Her parents tell her to go and she goes, and it doesn’t matter if she has to lie or cheat or whatever.

4. Secrets

a. Aside from all the secrets she keeps from Tessa, I think she needs a secret hobby or obsession or love or something that’s not coming to me right now. Or she might know something about someone else in the family… I will have to think on this. Something that haunts her.

5. Deception

a. A ton. But… she’s missing some kind of overarching thread of this. Will do a lot of thinking here.

6. Wound

a. Ava was never good enough for her parents either, she can FEEL that they’re all just pretending she is, it’s only because she’s proven useful many times. She can feel it, but she can’t acknowledge it. She’s built her life on this, and it’s all sunk cost fallacy with her. And Tessa seems to have gotten to do whatever the fuck she wanted, without consequence. So what’s wrong with Ava? She doesn’t know, and she’s terrified to find out that there is Some Actual Answer to that.

7. Secret Identity

a. Rage. People even know her as a somewhat hard and even angry person, but they have no idea. She could go on a killing spree and feel 20% bad, 80% catharsis.

DANA: Weird new mother figure to Tessa. A coworker, fellow fundraiser.

1. Hidden agendas

a. She’s really protective of her rights to do whatever the fuck she wants. Bullish about it. Her secret agenda is to attack with surprising force anyone who tries to change her.

2. Competition

a. This comes and goes for Dana. ADHD means most things come and go for her. She’s a lateral thinker, though – if she’s in a competition, she’ll be acting in VERY unpredictable (and very funny, and very cheat-adjacent) ways, with glee.

3. Conspiracy

a. If it’s fun, and she cares about the end goal that minute, she’s an EXCELLENT conspirator.

4. Secrets

a. Oh, a ton. Her life is a patchwork quilt of randomness that she mostly doesn’t share.

5. Deception

a. Not really. This one’s insecurity-based, and she just doesn’t fuck with it. She’d rather confess and move onto the next thing that let anything fester, and an ongoing deception campaign is a big fester. It’s a lot of WORK.

6. Wound

a. School was hell for her. She’s in her early 50’s, ADHD wasn’t a thing back then, she was just a shit child and everyone agreed. So now her fastest reaction is YOU’RE shit and I’m gonna do exactly what the fuck I want JUST to rub it in your face that you’re not better than me!

7. Secret Identity

a. Nurturing. Which is a long term gig, which is why she feels (wound-ily) that it’s “not for her”. She can’t take care of plants, let alone animals, let alone a child. Which is why, when she realizes that she’s somehow wound up in the mother figure role for Tessa, she’s secretly very deeply pleased.

[Tully Archer]

Assignment 1:

1. Character Name: Dean Winchester.

2. Role: Brother to Sam, Hunter.

3. Hidden Agenda: To drag Sam back into the Family Business.

4. Competition: With Sam for dad’s approval and who’s better at hunting. And at being a cool dude, generally.

5. Conspiracies: Nothing yet.

6. Secrets: Nothing yet.

7. Deception: Nothing yet.

8: Wound: The loss of his mother. The subsequent loss of his childhood. The way his dad gets so emotional about Sam… but just acts sort of businesslike with him.

9: Secret Identity: A wannabe Dad. Thinks he’s too messed up. (Having seen the series… he has no clue yet LOL poor thing.)

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s
Engaging Main Characters

What I
learned doing this assignment is a lot of stuff about Tessa’s emotional journey
and her strengths and weaknesses as an ISFP raised by tyrants and hiding her
own very privileged mindset.

Journey: From
completely helpless without daddy’s money to somewhat stable. Emotionally, from completely aimless to
having at least one, admittedly petty, goal she’s going to cling to with full
stubbornness: stay in this job that she doesn’t like, because it pisses off her
family that she’s helping poor people.

The Characters That Will Sell The Show: Tessa, the lead, Ava, her sister of suspicious loyalty and primary link back to the family and that world, and Dana, her quasi-mentor at work and well meaning but somewhat chaotic sort of mother figure. Yes, I need to change some names LOL they all rhyme.

TESSA:

A. Role in the show: Former rich kid, as of right now, aimless stubborn streak, desperate to make ends meet.

B. Unique Purpose / Expertise: Purpose: To adult. In all meanings of the word, including ones she doesn’t realize right now. Expertise: Quickly embraces new ideas. Charms people into following her enthusiasm. (Needs enthusiasm first.) Her ability to stay in the present moment and find joy in baking a bread, that makes her near unstoppable. Creative, flexible – BUT, her trauma has squashed that for now.

C. Intrigue: What is secret beneath the surface? She IS a rich bitch. She’s been all over the world, she can watch the news like anyone, she’s on facebook she can talk to whoever she wants… she IGNORED the poor. She took advantage of the way you’re raised to think as a wealthy kid: that others are to blame for their own suffering. She DID that, and that’s why at 26, she’s fucking clueless as to how life works for anyone else. To qualify as something that will make other characters never look at her the same… it’d have to have been some real, dastardly ACTION that she took that she’s now pretending she would never take. Like… something HORRIBLE. Against a poor person.

D. Moral Issue: What moral boundaries are they crossing? Well her own morals are murky… but going ahead even though she’s not sure is also murky? It’s more about her vague sense of “impropriety”, maybe? Or at least, in season one?

E. Unpredictable: What will they do next? Maybe she still thinks the rules don’t apply to her. She might lie. She might make excuses. She might think she can charm her way out of rent.

F. Empathetic: Why do we care? She gets joy out of new experiences, she has all these wonderful stories of stuff she’s done all over the planet, but she can’t afford them anymore and that’s bumming her way out. That’s the first arc, probably, to adjust downward financially and rediscover joy and adventure here. (Their favorite memories are spontaneous events – she can do that poor, too!) She really is trying. When you force her to see that she’s been wrong, she feels bad and she makes actual effort to correct the problem. So we’ll come back to her, week after week. We learn to trust her, we learn FROM her.

AVA:

A. Role in the show: Sister of Tessa, and primary connection back to her family and that old world.

B. Unique Purpose / Expertise: To communicate between parties; even spy.

C. Intrigue: What is secret beneath the surface? She’s way farther gone than Tessa thinks she is. It’s BECAUSE she still has emotions – she’s sacrificing them on the daily. She’s WORSE than a sociopath, she’s a flying monkey.

D. Moral Issue: What moral boundaries are they crossing? Full on, nothing-else=to-call-it-but-BETRAYAL of Tessa will be hard for her. But she’ll do it. Maybe allowing her own small children to be pulled into all of this is her biggest stomach churn. Tessa’s done drugs before, she can wrap her head around Tessa no longer deserving any respect, but her kids are kids.

E. Unpredictable: What will they do next? We only know her through Tessa, so whatever Tessa doesn’t expect, we won’t really either.

F. Empathetic: Why do we care? She’s in survival mode. She really believes that she’s safest this way.

DANA:

A. Role in the show: Mentor at the job, mother figure for Tessa personally/emotionally. Also a force of chaos.

B. Unique Purpose / Expertise: Purpose: To enjoy the absolute shit out of life. In a very messy home, 90% of the time. Expertise: How to appreciate forward movement of any kind. How to be a proud ADHD person, and by extension, how to be a proud Figure-It-Outer.

C. Intrigue: What is secret beneath the surface? Hmmmm. I’m playing with the idea of her being like, a drug dealer on the side. I picture lots of random “on the side” stuff, and see D moral issue… I kind of think she doesn’t mind telling the difference between “random, whee!” and “this is actually a very bad idea”.

D. Moral Issue: What moral boundaries are they crossing? She is messy in her personal life. It’s cool to accept that your kitchen will always smell, but she also accepts being an asshole. She doesn’t pay attention to things that DO matter, either.

E. Unpredictable: What will they do next? Literally whatever grabs her fancy.

F. Empathetic: Why do we care? She cares, about the people she’s decided to care about. She struggles with her ADHD, and has found ways to be happy anyway, which we all could learn from.

[Tully Archer]

DEAN WINCHESTER:

A. Role in the show: Co-lead with his brother Sam. The one dedicated to The Family Business, and their father. Ladies’ man and joker, with a soft widdle underbelly.

B. Unique Purpose / Expertise: To find their father and continue the work. All the hunter skills.

C. Intrigue: He’s secretly trying to drag Sam back into The Family Business permanently.

D. Moral Issue: He’s very “shoot first, ask questions later”. And he is a complete asshole to women.

E. Unpredictable: One minute he’s killing, the next he’s comforting a child.

F. Empathetic: His brother, and now his father, abandoned him. He wants peace in the family. He never had a childhood. He just wants love.

[Tully Archer]

ASSIGNMENT 1:

Supernatural Character Circles:

1. Main Characters Circle

a. Sam Winchester.

b. Dean Winchester.

c. John Winchester.

2. Connected Circle

a. Mary Dead Mom, sort of.

b. Jessica Dead Girlfriend, sort of.

c. Dad’s journal is basically a character.

3. Environment Circle

a. Cops, involved in the case or just getting in the way.

b. Other hunters and supernatural experts.

c. EITHER: One person who represents Sam’s side of this week’s argument plus one person who represents Dean’s side,

d. OR: One person who represents this week’s argument itself.

e. FBI agents.

f. Ghost, ghouls, goblins, all the monsters.

g. All the victims of said monsters.

h. The skeptic, tangentially involved, who will surely get themselves killed.

i. Hotel peeps.

j. Coroners and other non-supernatural experts they consult.

k. Witnesses to the current Stuff.

l. Survivors of previous iterations of the Stuff.

ASSIGNMENT 2:

What I learned doing this assignment is that I don’t know who is closest to Tessa. I basically guessed, or decided arbitrarily. I need to do some more work on who is most closely related to her journey.

The Secret Life of Fundraisers: A young woman recently cut off from her wealthy family must learn how to survive on her own, with help from the coworkers at her desperately-chosen new job of professional fundraising.

Main Characters Circle:

1. Tessa Delaney, our Main Character.

2. Ava Delaney, her sister, and I’m now realizing, her primary connection to that old world now.

3. Friend 1, I haven’t fleshed out who these are yet, they don’t stay with her very many episodes in.

a. Quickly replaced by Ivy, the crush who she doesn’t seem to have any interest in her.

4. Friend 2, see above.

a. Quickly replaced by Dana, the new mother figure.

5. Friend 3, see above.

a. Quickly replaced by Nolan, her new boss.

Connected Circle:

1. Gavin, the guy literally dressed as a Viking, with utter mystery as his personal life.

2. Ellowyn, the bleeding heart flower child older lady coworker, quite a presence in an office.

3. Cedric, the ladies’ man.

4. Marcus, the rule follower.

5. Lorena, the office manager with the personality of a president.

6. Hugo, her father, who seems to be an asshole.

7. Miranda, her mother, who seems to have more interesting things to do than help her.

8. As we progress, we meet the rival company:

a. The INTJ boss, no name yet.

b. The flirt, no name yet.

c. The creep, no name yet. That’s 11.

Environment Circle:

1. Every single utterly random person on the street literally every episode.

2. Client contacts.

3. Rich people throwing fundraising events and inviting them? Is that what happens?

4. Cops, sometimes.

5. Her landlord(s).

6. City officials.

7. Politicians (oooh, that’s interesting… they’re more cause-a-week than the fundraisers, for sure!)

[Tully Archer]

Supernatural 5 Star Model

What I learned doing this assignment is that these 5 things really do have a big impact on your experience watching a pilot!

Big Picture Hooks. What is the big hook of this show?

Two brothers hunt the things that go bump in the night in search of their recently missing father and the thing that killed their mother 22 years ago.

Amazing and Intriguing Character. What makes these main characters intriguing and interesting?

Dean is committed to the life, Sam wants to live a normal one. They’re both highly skilled, but with different moral views. Their dad seems to have been an alcoholic who trained more than raised them, but was or was not that the right thing to do when he knows that monsters are real?

Empathy / Distress. What situation causes us to feel both empathy and distress for this character?

They’re in frequent life or death situations. They’re both funny. Their relationship has “jerk/bitch” moments as well as real issues that don’t seem solvable. They’re family.

Layers / Open Loops. What questions are created by this first episode that can only be answered by watching the entire season?

Will they find their dad? Will they come to an understanding? Will Sam get to go back to his normal life at some point? What killed their mom? What killed Jess?

Inviting Obsession. How does this pilot create the need to see every single episode?

They’re hot and compelling. There’s an endless supply of supernatural entities to provide the Monster Of The Week. There’s worldbuilding to do. I gotta watch the next one!

SUPERNATURAL PILOT OUTLINE

22 years ago: Mom finds man in baby’s room, supernatural shit happening, it’s NOT her husband, he/it horrifically kills her (her body’s on the ceiling), house goes up in flames, dad takes baby and brother outside, no idea WTF just happened. He hands Sam to Dean, establishing their relationship right there honestly LOL. Dean is half brother, half dad, at 4.

Now: Sam is a law student with a cliché-gorgeous girlfriend. Someone breaks in, they fight – it’s his brother Dean. (They both fight real good!) Dad’s gone missing, on one of his “hunting trips”. They talk casually about poltergeists and stuff. Debate about whether he’s a good dad for teaching all this stuff. They haven’t found what killed their mom but they’ve helped a lot of people. They’ve been trained, more than raised.

Basically Dean is loyal and still hunting and Sam wanted to lead a normal life. But Dad’s missing and it’s suspicions and Dean convinces Sam to help him try to find their dad. Sam thinks he’ll be back in time for the law school scholarship interview on Monday, Jess is a little worried but supportive.

Now we meet a young man who sees the classic woman in white on the side of the road. He gives her a ride home, but it’s a long-abandoned house. She says “I can never go home” which was in the background of a voice note their dad had, in the course of his investigation. Then she somehow kills him.

Dean is way more confident than Sam about lying to cops and having fake ID’s and fraudulent credit cards, but Dean and Sam are actually a pretty good team – even if they then immediately fight about it.

Local teens tell a local tale of a girl who got murdered decades ago and who now asks for a ride and whoever gives her one, disappears forever. They research and find it was actually a suicide. She had called 911 an hour before, saying she found both her kids drowned in the bath. She’d jumped off the very bridge upon which Sam and Dean questioned those cops, that’s where the boy’s car was found.

Dean thinks Sam is running away from who he really is, Sam thinks who he really is, is a law student. As they’re fighting, they see the ghost woman (Constance), there on the bridge, doing her swan dive again – then their car roars to life without them. It tries to run them down.

Dean always uses rock band member names for his fake ID’s, that’s how they find out they just checked into the same hotel as their dad did (he does the same). They find protection spells, and research: the basic archetype of Constance’s afterlife is the “Woman In White” lore – the thing these victims have in common is that they’d have been happy to take advantage of her. Dad had a picture of the three of them.

The cops are onto them. Dean is spotted, and tells Sam to hightail it, which he does. Dean is under suspicion for the whole thing, having been found in a room full of victim info and “satanic stuff”, including the journal their dad kept – which Dean is clearly alarmed to see. (Later: Dad never goes anywhere without that thing.)

Sam follows their dad’s last lead to Constance’s husband. Dad was asking where she’s buried (so he can salt and burn her bones). He says their marriage was great but his face says they didn’t. Sam tells him the woman in white lore – their husbands cheated, they had moments of insanity and killed their children, then themselves, now they wander around killing unfaithful men they find. Constance’s husband is horrified and says he made mistakes but Constance would never have hurt their children.

Dean easily escapes from the police station as soon as they leave him alone, which was because Sam did a fake 911 call. She’s supposed to be buried in the back yard so that’s where dad should have gone. As they’re talking, Constance shows up in the back seat of Sam’s “borrowed” car. When he refuses to take her home, she possesses the car again, takes it home, says “I can never go home”. Then starts trying to kill him, but he’s not unfaithful so she has to try harder, starts attacking him – Dean shoots her, she dissipates.

Sam has realized that she’s AFRAID to go home, so he rams into the building with his car, since she’s maybe probably still in it? She picks up a photo of the kids, looks distressed, attacks the boys again. Then, water down the stairs, and the kids are standing at the top, they run into her in a scary hug, hellish disappearance of all three.

Now they have dad’s journal, they figure where he probably went next. (Small plot hole? Why are they so sure Constance didn’t kill him and he just wandered off?) Sam’s like that’s enough, I got that interview. Dean takes him home. Sam finds Jessica, dead in EXACTLY the same way that his mom died, gut wound, on the ceiling, room lights on fire. Dean hears him screaming, drags him out of there.

Well NOW they’re a team again. Sam says “We got work to do” and throws a weapon into their awesome trunk full of weapons we saw earlier.

[Tully Archer]

Tell us the following:

1. Tully Archer

2. Four features, three or four shorts.

3. A pilot and bible I can go out confidently with.

4. I’m gonna be behind on this class for a little while, and then I’ll catch up. I’m swamped at the moment but didn’t want to miss out! ☺

[Tully Archer]

1. Tully Archer.

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

3. GROUP RELEASE FORM

As a member of this group, I agree to the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Tully Archer]

ASSIGNMENT

Tully’s Pitch Fest Pitch

What I learned doing this assignment is that short and to the point is good. Yay!

Hi, my name is Tully Archer. I have a feature being pitched to named talent by the director/producer duo who are interested in it.

Today I have a thriller called “Painter”. It’s about a serial killer who is hunted down, and killed, by his own mother.

One to five million dollars.

Someone with great nuance like Joaquin Phoenix, NAME, or Jeffrey Donovan. For the mother, a powerhouse like Sissy Spacek, Helen Mirren, or Meryl Streep.

In act one, Mother flips out when she learns that a girl who went missing in their little town twenty years ago was found, her throat slit probably the very day she disappeared. Mother viciously murders her abusive husband when he claims to not recognize that girl’s picture on the news. She grabs that girl’s high school yearbook from her attic and a few hundred dollars from her husband’s rainy day fund and leaves town in a hurry.

Everyone assumes that whoever killed the husband also killed the wife but when forensics come back, Mother is officially on the run, as she looks for clues in act two. Meanwhile, the serial killer is out there, carefully selecting victims, scouting locations, and executing a perfect date followed by a perfect murder over, and over, and over again.

Mother finds the confirmation she was looking for: the name of a man, a painter, whose appearance in a town always coincides with a missing curly-haired blonde woman or two, just like the girl in the yearbook. A man whose face, if not his name, matches another picture in that same yearbook. She’s getting close. And so is the detective who is hunting her.

Mother finds an address and is almost there, just as the killer has almost lured his new target to the kill spot, but Mother doesn’t show up and save the day. She was going to the house of another curly-blonde from that same damned yearbook – and here we learn the truth: The old lady is the mother not of the girl who went missing, but the boy who ran away that same day. Her son. Who killed that girl for the sin of looking like his first love, who lives and breathes and gets horrifying love letters from him every month.

Act three begins with the disposal of Son’s most recent body. Armed with the return address on the most recent “please take me back, things will be perfect when you do” letter, Mother does show up at the killer’s short term apartment. Mother finds the confirmation that she was hoping to never see: that her son will never stop. Mother holds her son in one final embrace, and then stabs him in the back. The cops find their bodies together on the floor, and all the evidence they could want in the paintings he never shared.

[Tully Archer]

ASSIGNMENT

Tully’s Query Letter

What I learned doing this assignment is that this is actually way easier than I thought. Because it makes sense. And I love efficiency!

Hello PERSON,

I saw online that you’re looking for Thriller features. Thought you might like this one.

If you were a parent, don’t you think you’d know if your kid was out there killing people?

An elderly woman sees a news story: the body of a girl who went missing twenty years ago was found nearby, a girl who the woman instantly recognizes. She then ends a fifty-year abusive relationship with spectacular violence and leaves her entire life behind…

A serial killer methodically moves through his process: the target selection, the vetting, the luring, using tricks he learned from Disney movies and our shared damsel/savior complex. When he’s done with the fairy tale, he slits their throats, exactly like the body they found.

The frail and fearful old lady is practically invisible in society, and nobody but her seems to be aware of what her son is up to – until the one detective curious enough to be interested in her puts it all together. Now she’s in a race against the man hunting her and the FBI agents hunting her son, who has no idea anyone’s coming.

If that was your son, what would you do if you found him first?

BIO: Tully writes horror and thriller features and is a little bit obsessed with serial killers. You can find her at email, phone number, and address.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s High Concept / Elevator Pitch

Today I’m working with my project “Fonzi McFly”.

What I learned doing this assignment is that this is WAY more fun and accessible than a logline! Serious Yay!!

HIGH CONCEPT

A cowardly doggie must become brave to save his human from a demon she can’t detect.

ELEVATOR PITCH

I’m working on a homeward-bound-looking horror/comedy about a neighborhood’s pets working together to save their psychic-as-a-stump humans from the ancient demon who’s slowly eating them.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by  Tully Archer.

[Tully Archer]

ASSIGNMENT:

Tully’s 10 Most Interesting Things

Doing this homework for project “Painter”, a thriller about a serial killer and the mother who is hunting him.

A: Eric (serial killer) is going through the steps of a narcissist’s prey selection process. We rarely get to see that up close and personal. Shelley (the mom) is an elderly woman, who’s been abused by her husband for 40 years, she’s small and quiet, everything about her makes her invisible to people, but they should really pay attention.

B: Extreme violence at the end of the opening sequence, for a compellingly mysterious reason.

C: Shelly realizes she doesn’t have to worry about hiding, because nobody sees her. Shelly gets confirmation about his identity and doings. A target manages to wriggle out of Eric’s mental control. The one detective who’s been paying attention realizes what she’s doing.

D: Either Shelly finds him and stops him or she killed her husband and is going to prison for no reason.

E: This “first victim” we’ve assumed is dead (classic serial killer lore, a la Silence of the Lambs) is not dead at all. She’s his ultimate target, he’s doing all this for her attention.

F: We think she’s the mother of his first victim, but actually she’s HIS mother. It’s not revenge, it’s something else.

G: Shelley literally stabs Eric in the back.

H: End of act two (ish) we think she’s almost upon Eric and will get there in time to save the most recent target he’s closing in on, but no – she was almost upon First Girl’s house (that’s when we’ll learn she isn’t dead.)

I: Amazing roles for an elderly female, a late 30’s male, and another male as the cop who figures all this out. (I want Jeffrey Donovan for him!!!)

[Tully Archer]

ASSIGNMENT

Tully’s Producer/Manager

What I learned today is that they just want the bottom line (there was no contempt in that sentence. I love efficiency.)

1. I’ll present myself and my project simply and straightforwardly, focusing on the marketable aspects of the project.

2. I’ll present myself as proficient and flexible.

[Tully Archer]

<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Tully’s Marketable Components

What I learned doing this assignment is that I should really develop the pitch alongside the script from now on.

1. Picking a different one today. “Fearly Beloved”, a horror/comedy: A couple at a crossroads decides to flip a house together but the ghost who resides there won’t let them; now they must help the ghost move on or face financial and interpersonal ruin.

2. Unique? Yeah, I think so. Great title? Maybe. I’m still on the fence about it. True? Nope. Timely? Yeah, I think so. Us millennials are struggling so hard with housing LOL. A first? There are some details that are first-y, but I don’t think it’s at the level that the lesson specifies. Ultimate? Not really. Wide audience appeal? Yes, it’s got heart, scares, humor, and a quick pace. Adapted? Nope. Similarity? Zombieland budget 23.6M, gross 75.6M. Boo! A Madea Halloween budget 20M, gross 73.2M. A Haunted House budget 2.5M, gross 40M. A great role for a bankable actor? Yes, two very funny, insecure people in love.

3. Timely. The desperation of being a broke millennial taking a wild risk and figuring out if you want to get married or disappear into Zambia with only a backpack is a set of very relatable jokes. Similarity. A horror comedy with heart tends to do well, such as Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Project and Market

What I learned today is that this is doable steps.

1. Well I don’t actually know which script I want to go out with first, so I’ll just pick one at random. 🙂 It’s a horror, “Unconditional” – After moving into a haunted house with her abusive mother, an 11-year-old girl must deal with the supernatural threat all alone, before the jealous entity destroys them both.

2. I think what’s most attractive is the arc of this little girl, how it’s not an age thing, it’s a maturity thing – lots of people five times her age are only just now learning that they can’t put their parents’ approval over shit they need, like self respect.

3. For this one, I’d go for producers, because I don’t have anyone in particular in mind as far as actors.

[Tully Archer]

Hi, starting way late over here. 🙂

1. Tully Archer

2. Three features, a handful of shorts.

3. A clear plan forward.

4. Last night I had a dream that Greg Davies appointed me the new Taskmaster. LOL.

[Tully Archer]

1. Tully Archer.

2. I agree to the terms of this release form.

3…

GROUP RELEASE FORM

As a member of this group, I agree to the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Transformational Events

What I learned doing this assignment is that THIS MAKES TOTAL SENSE TO ME!!! But I have a lot of brainstorming to do. LOL.

CHANGES THAT NEED TO BE MADE, FROM EASIEST TO HARDEST:

1. Understanding that decisions are better than hope.

2. Seeing that she’s truly invisible to people, unless she deliberately makes a splash.

3. Understanding/feeling what it’s like to have opposition. (That it’s exhilarating! And not the same as abuse.)

4. Understanding that people who don’t want help can’t be helped, and people who do are unstoppable. We are all unstoppable no matter what we’re doing. And no matter what we THINK we’re doing.

5. Accepting that she is capable.

6. Seeing that her son has found a way to be seen, like she could never have dreamed.

DRAMATIC EVENTS OR TESTS THAT COULD CAUSE THOSE CHANGES:

1. The feeling of clarity and freedom that comes from killing Howard. Not because of the killing, but because it solves a problem she had for years. Now that problem is gone, because she made a decision.

2. Though it should be obvious she killed Howard, it doesn’t even occur to them. They think someone killed both him AND her, since she’s missing. They’re vaguely looking for her body.

3. The first time the cop outsmarts her – and how she responds. Exhilarating!

4. Oof, I need something for this.

5. The accepting is what’s hard… I need something for this too. If she accepts that she’s capable, she has to accept retroactive blame for her son, in her mind.

6. She is able to watch him at work one day. The way he eases in and out of attention, either charming and lighting up the room or slinking into the shadows – and because he’s like her, because he’s “off”, because he’s “broken”, no one ever looks for him there. Killing is how he’s coped with everything. And that’s the hardest because while she can’t blame him for soothing his pain however he can… she does have to stop him.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s 4 Act Transformational Structure

What I learned doing this assignment is that I need to stop thinking of the antagonist as another character we’re also following, who’ll need an arc, and instead think of him as a rolling boulder, who’s going to keep going no matter what. All the focus of personal journey type stuff needs to stay on the protagonist. She’s the only one of the two who is even capable of it.

Concept = An elderly mom hunts down an as yet unknown serial killer.

Main Conflict = She has to evade capture herself, as the cops are hunting her for murder.

Old Ways = Head buried in sand. Blind hope instead of decisive action. Stay as forgotten as possible.

New Ways = Clear eyes. Decisive action over comfortable fantasy. Front page news.

ACT ONE

Opening = Shelley lives in hell, with a verbally and physically abusive husband, Howard. Doesn’t seem to be any family around, no pictures anywhere, and Shelley is very isolated. She keeps her head down – decades of practice – but still gets whacked for some imagined crime. All part of her normal day.

Inciting Incident = She sees a news story, a body was found, a young girl dead twenty some years – Sherrie recognizes her, very obviously, and turns to Howard and says “They found her, they found Cassidy” – and he says, “Who?”

Turning Point = After a moment of utter disbelief at this response, Shelley loses all of her shit. She grabs the nearest weapon and with clarity she hasn’t felt in years, KILLS Howard. Viciously. Decisively. Like there’s absolutely nothing else in the world that needs doing but this, and it HAS to happen. And now she’s on a path. It’s not even about the fact that she’ll be running from the law now. It’s the fact that she just solved a problem, one of two big problems she has, and the feeling is beyond anything she could have imagined. And she’s not going to stop until she feels it one more time.

ACT TWO PART ONE

New Plan = Find the man who killed Cassidy. Avoid the cops until then.

Plan In Action = Has to also learn how to evade cops. Who for now, think she’s missing. The murder was so violent that it has not occurred to them that the old – literally, old – lady did it.

Midpoint Turning Point = The FEDS are now involved – tracking the serial killer that she is tracking.

ACT TWO PART TWO

Rethink Everything = Is she still committed enough to the goal to now contend not only with those hunting her but the ones trying to beat her to the killer?

New Plan = The plan is still to find him. But now she has to do it faster than the feds – even resorting to sabotaging their investigation.

Turning (Low) Point = By now we’ve revealed that she’s the killer’s mother, not the missing girl’s mother. She talks to the woman who the killer is obsessed with (i.e. murdering over and over via these lookalikes) and understands how lost her boy really is.

ACT THREE

Climax = She fights off the cops one last time to get to her son, and asks him to stop. He says he can’t.

Resolution = She kills him. And possibly herself. Still unsure about that.

[Tully Archer]

What I learned doing this assignment is how much pain my antagonist is in and how much selfishness is at play in my protagonist.

I sort of don’t want to share any details of the actual Q & A… feels weirdly personal?

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Character Profile Part 2

What I learned doing this assignment is that there is such a thing as the right details to know about a character as opposed to the endless listing of factoids that so many people advise and which I dearly hate. Yay guidance and efficiency.

Also, not that anybody’s reading these LOL, but I changed some names.

Protagonist: Shelley Ann Ostrove. Her son was named: Ian Howard Ostrove. He now goes by: Eric Russel Hayes. Shelley’s being hunted by: Detective Jennings. She killed her husband: Howard Frederick Ostrove. I still need the name of the cop who’s hunting Eric (if any).

SHELLEY OSTROVE

Role in the story? Protagonist, a mixture of the Runner and Fighter types.

Age range and description? Mis 60’s, fitter than average because of physical labor and the fact that she cooks real good and eats when he’s not looking rounding up to basically taken care of, but the cortisol has aged her beyond her years.

Internal journey? From burying her head in the sand to facing things as harshly and truthfully as is possible, in her mind. From blank hope in a future to a solid, singular one she’s going to make happen.

External journey? A forgotten housewife to headline news.

Motivation? A genuine desire to help her son. To end his suffering. And to end the suffering of his victims. And a less than ideal desire to end her own – this is a bigger percentage of her motivation than she could ever see or understand.

Wound? Guilt. Burning freely in a part of her mind she shut off and stepped away from decades ago. And now it’s back, and it’s driving her.

Mission/agenda? To set things right. To put out all the fires. To do one good thing, and to be done letting people stop her from doing good things.

Secret? SHE doesn’t have any, but one of the twists is that she’s not that one victim’s mother, as I hope you’ll assume, but rather she’s HIS mother.

What makes her special? She truly has nothing left to lose. And she’s tapping into a determination that had long since been beaten out of her. But it’s nothing but the goal now, and that clarity allows her to grab ahold of things that are that far back in her history, in her lost personhood.

What draws us to this character? She’s an underdog. And then she surprises us – with an alarming amount of violence. And then she intrigues us – with the goal of tracking a serial killer the cops haven’t gotten anywhere with (or possibly don’t even know is one – his hides his kills really well so I still need to figure out how many of his bodies have even been found. )

Traits? Scared a lot. Really meek. But smarter than that makes you think. Intuitive, analytical.

Subtext? She gives way to you, in as many ways as possible. But she’s paying very, very close attention to everything you say and how you say it.

Flaws? She’s all extremes. Fifty years of abuse from Howard and then boom, murders the absolute shit out of him. Couldn’t save her son when he needed it, now, moving mountains to get to him. Scared scared scared and then bam, total focus to the point where it basically resembles bravery.

Irony? She’s got regrets coming out of her ears but that’s fueling her absolute dedication to the goal. She caused the problem but she’s taken it upon herself to end the problem.

What makes this the right character for the role? Her inability to see nuance. Her mental health is so bad that she really can only see one way forward. And it’s not the noble kind of determination, it’s fueled by regret and self loathing and that black-and-white overcorrection, like the dark side of perfectionism where progress becomes not good enough: she skips over “see if he can be helped” and goes right to “out of love for him, and guilt from me, END him.”

ERIC HAYES

Role in the story? One of the antagonists, of the Predator variety.

Age range and description? Mid 30’s, simply but well dressed, fastidious but he draws you in.

Internal journey? He doesn’t have an arc, but he does learn that his mother didn’t forget him.

External journey? An active serial killer to a dead body.

Motivation? To have the life he thought he was going to have, and that he believes he deserves, with the one who got away. (One of the twists is that we assume, as with most serial killers, that his first kill was the one who sort of triggered the whole killing thing – obviously not that it’s actually their fault, but you remember the whole Buffalo Bill thing where the first one was the one he knew personally, yada yada – but no, she’s still alive and receiving letters from Eric every month.) He just has to prove himself to her, that’s all.

Wound? Rejection. For things that he considers to be not his fault. But he’s gonna fix it. He’ll get it right this time, and then she’ll see. She’ll accept him once he gets it just right.

Mission/agenda? To prove to her that he’s a perfect gentleman, that he’s a fairy tale, that he’s NOT the monster that she erroneously thought he was and rejected him for. (She of course was right to break it off with him because he was a tween psychopath.)

Secret? That the paintings he’s famous for, with their compelling angst, are painted OVER his initial paintings of someone he targeted – when they prove to be subpar prey, he paints over them with his rage and self loathing and frustration. (The ones he kills, he keeps those paintings – nobody’s ever seen them.)

What makes him special? The way he hides in plain sight. The way he analyzes their responses to his initial boundary violations. (Or rather, the way we’ll WATCH him do that – all predators do that, but movies don’t usually get into it.) The fact that he actually is a gifted artist. And the fact that he is completely and utterly delusional.

What draws us to this character? His childlike qualities. He seems vulnerable. Almost innocent, or naïve. He’s a romantic. And a talented artist. And good with words – but underneath there’s that lizard vibe, that cold distance, that robotic stare.

Traits? Charming. Cool when in control, falls apart when not. Hasn’t grown up in most ways. Totally and completely self absorbed. Absolutely sees himself as the victim, always.

Subtext? Like his mother, he’s very observant. He’s running data points in his head as you talk. He’ll test your boundaries, and find a cover for it conversationally.

Flaws? Well he’s a serial killer. That’s a big one. Also he’s stuck in a loop. Even the logic inside his head would tell you, he’s stuck in a loop. But he’s too scared to take the next step.

Irony? He seems to be what Disney says you should look for in a man, but he will murder you. He doesn’t see his victims as people, merely practice, for the one woman he wants to be with – but he’s scared to reach out because what if she doesn’t see HIM as a person? He doesn’t, half the time. Like his mother, he flies back and forth between extremes.

What makes this the right character for the role? He’s a product of the environment in which he was raised. That makes him the thorn in Shelley’s moral side that will never go away. And if she was in less pain, maybe she could take more time and see a little wider picture here, but she’s not, so she has to end this, all of this, and it’s gonna be messy and fucking final.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Character Profiles Part 1

What I learned doing this assignment is that my thriller idea is a teeny bit off-formula, as described here… but I’m going to go ahead with it anyway. I’ll stick as close as I can to the genre conventions that do work within the concept and trust that the deviance will come off as interesting and fresh.

I think the closest Elsie is to any of these is the Runner and the Fighter. She’s running from the law, because she just killed someone. She’s also running from her entire past, all her neural pathways, everything in her life that kept her in that loop of accepting abuse and disappearing from the world. She’s also running TO something – her goal, a fight. She fights along the way, and she’s gotta be willing to kill or be killed at the end. She’s never fought before, but this matters enough to her to throw everything she has into it. Doesn’t matter anyway – after her reaction to the inciting incident, she really has nothing left, in the usual sense. It’s prison or death after this battle, and she doesn’t care which.

There are essentially two antagonists: the serial killer she’s hunting and the cop who’s hunting her. The serial killer is a classic Predator, moving forward unchangeably, no empathy, just killing. But he’s not directly in opposition to her, as he has no idea she’s closing in. The cop is a clear Authority type, doing their job, is a human and therefore has some empathy but that’s not going to stop the train that is The Law. I don’t know much about this person yet, though.

What other characters might be necessary? Aww geez. Let’s see: Supporting Characters: All of the serial killer’s victims. The cops involved. The woman who started it all for the killer. (In one of the twists, she’s alive!) Minor Roles: The husband, whom she kills in act one. The killer’s targets, who don’t turn out to be victims (he has a selection process as part of his MO). The people surrounding the killer at his “day job” of sorts. Background Characters: I guess the random people they interact with along the way? Really not sure.

This is a Thriller.

LEAD CHARACTER PROFILES

Elsie Ann Ostrove:

· Protagonist (a Runner/Fighter)

· Mid 60’s

· Internal: From burying her head in the sand to facing things as harshly and truthfully as is possible. From only having blank hope to feeling horribly, terribly fulfilled.

· External: A forgotten housewife to headline news.

· Motivation: To set things right.

· Wound: It’s all her fault.

· Mission/Agenda: To stop Eric.

· Secret: SHE doesn’t have any, but one of the twists is that she’s not that one victim’s mother, as I hope you’ll assume, but rather she’s HIS mother. Eric’s, the serial killer.

· What makes them special: She truly has nothing left to lose. And she’s tapping into a determination that had long since been beaten out of her. But it’s nothing but the goal now, and that clarity allows her to grab ahold of things that are that far back in her history, in her lost personhood.

“Eric Russell Hayes” (aka, Ian Howard Ostrove)

· Antagonist (one of two; he’s the Predator type)

· Mid 30’s

· Internal: He doesn’t have an arc, but he does learn that his mother didn’t forget him.

· External: An active serial killer to a dead body.

· Motivation: To get it right this time. Over and over and over and over…

· Wound: Rejection. For things that he considers to be not his fault. But he’s gonna fix it. He’ll get it right this time, and then she’ll see. She’ll accept him once he gets it just right.

· Mission/Agenda: (see above)

· Secret: That the paintings he’s famous for, with their compelling angst, are painted OVER his initial paintings of someone he targeted – when they prove to be subpar prey, he paints over them with his rage and self loathing and frustration. (The ones he kills, he keeps those paintings – nobody’s ever seen them.)

· What makes them special: The way he hides in plain sight. The way he analyzes their responses to his initial boundary violations. (Or rather, the way we’ll WATCH him do that – all predators do that, but movies don’t usually get into it.) The fact that he actually is a gifted artist.

A cOp TyPe PeRsOn?

LOL, I don’t know yet. There’s gotta be at least one who’s hunting Eric too, but I need to figure that out.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Transformational Journey

What I learned doing this assignment is that I have learned a lot since I first came up with this idea. I can totally see why it stayed on a shelf for so long – it wasn’t a movie yet.

I did listen to the audio. Your brain basically doesn’t know the difference between something vividly imagined and something that objectively happened, in case anyone’s wondering why visualizations actually work when done right. (And why WORRY works, in the opposite direction – the stress chemicals that your body produces because you vividly worried are just as real as if that thing did happen.)

Who is my Hero and what is their Character Arc that represents a Transformation?

Elsie Ostrove, she’s around 60, and her entire adult life she’s been under the abusive thumb of her husband. She had a son, Ian, who is now going by Eric. He’s a serial killer.

Her character arc is going from a powerless, forgotten, head-in-the-sand old woman full of regrets to a messily powerful, hunted, scared and broken woman who at least feels that the biggest regret of her life has been resolved. That she has done her job as a mother the best that could be done now, after everything that already happened, the things that cannot be changed.

Internal Journey: She wasn’t living, and now, she’s done living. She used to keep all her wants and hopes a secret, but now, she doesn’t care what happens next, she has relieved herself of that burden.

External Journey: She’d been isolated so long she could have popped out of existence and all that would have been said was a complaint by her husband that dinner is missing. Now, she’s headline news.

Old Ways: Burying head in sand. Accepting all abuse. Thinking that the people she views as close view her as close. Hoping that better days are right around the corner.

New Ways: Focusing completely on the truthful resolution of the problem. Messily rejecting abuse. Brutal knowledge that her sisters and “friends” never actually cared about her (and certainly her husband never did.) Closing the door to “better” days entirely, and being at peace with that.

[Tully Archer]

1. Tully Archer.

2. I agree to the terms of this release form.

3. GROUP RELEASE FORM

As a member of this group, I agree to the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Tully Archer]

Hi all,

1. my name is Tully Archer.

2. I’ve written three features and maybe six shorts.

3. I hope to gain the ability to write a screenplay in 30 days ANY time, with or without the structure and deadlines of an external thing (a class).

4. I’m training for my first ever marathon in setember ’23. weighed 304 not too long ago so it’s a big deal. 🙂

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s (And Her Writing Partner’s!) Character Death Track

What I learned doing this assignment is that it is very very fun to plan character deaths LOL, especially when the ensemble is based on people you know! Hahahahaha

First, a massive injury: to Brandon, a well-meaning, straightforward, clumsy individual who gets into a freak accident… or did something CAUSE it? He’s the mystery injury. He goes to the hospital badly hurt. WHY? To introduce the idea that people might be in danger here.

Then, Robert, a shy guy who maybe has a crush on Erin, that’s being discussed. Don’t know how he dies yet, depends on the crush thing basically. WHY? To establish that yes, people are in danger here.

Next, Tully, a logical person who logically casts suspicion on Sherrie. She goes missing first, and is found later, in some kind of grotesque state. WHY? To raise the question of: what kind of relationship is happening here between Sherrie and the ghost?

Now, Maddox, who is a showman to a fault. He’s found laying on top of a particularly high pile of garbage, his front side looking normal and his back side absolutely dripping with innards. WHY? To back up the new information that ghost guy may have been a psychopath, with a sense of humor, in life.

Now back to Brandon! As far as he knew, he just tripped or whatever, he has zero expectations that it was supernatural even though by now rumors are flying about a ghost. He walks right in and gets taken out almost immediately, not sure how, but he just does nothing to protect himself from a ghost. WHY? Honestly not sure, it’s a gut thing. We’ll keep asking ourselves that. 😊

Last, Sorven, who’s been the sort of deadpan comic relief, cracking low energy jokes about the haunting stuff and charmingly hiding her social anxiety. She sees one too many things and declares she’s out, you fools would so die in a horror movie she says, and walks away and turns a corner and SQUELCH… stabbed in the gut by Glenn, our bad guy. Was smart about the ghost but totally unaware of the serial killer who caused it. Her body is hidden in the garbage, will be found by the cops at the end of all this. WHY? To shift focus from the ghost to the guy. It’s time for act three!

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s (And Her Writing Partner’s!) Horror Situation Track

What I learned doing this assignment is just how organized this can be. Which makes my INTJ heart very happy. 🙂

So I’m going to always be posting half-assignments, basically, since there’s a lag happening where I do the homework as best I can here and then have phone calls with my writing partner… that’s fine though, like the lessons are always saying, this is a layering process and it’ll all get sorted in the end. I am super excited about this project. 🙂

The Plot, To Begin With: ACT ONE.

Opener: Credits over shots of the house, pulling into a window where we can’t see in because there’s stuff all up against it, and we start to hear an old lady quietly weeping, and then the sound of a piece of furniture moving and then there’s a GASP and then the crying stops. HORROR SITUATION: Can hear the sounds of someone else panicking. REACTION: We don’t know, but she’s probably just frozen.

Set Up: Erin is driving somewhere, in black but we wouldn’t necessarily think it’s funeral attire, in a beat up old pro-environment car, and her mom is on the phone telling her not to go, but she’s being stubborn. They disagree fundamentally. Turns out? She’s going to a FUNERAL – a fancy one, where she very clearly doesn’t belong. HORROR SITUATION: I mean, probably a jump scare of some kind. Or some body horror, with a crazy old relative. Or overhearing something truly evil being said. REACTION: Denial, for sure. Explaining it away. Or just shaking it off.

Inciting Incident: Erin learns that there is a dear old forgotten relative named Sherrie who is in need of mental health assistance but who has been ABANDONED by her family – just like she was. HORROR SITUATION:

Debate: Don’t know.

First Act Turn: Erin is 100% stubbornly determined to help Sherrie, until she’s so good she too stands as an example of what this family is too stupid to value. HORROR SITUATION:

The Plot, To Begin With: ACT TWO.

Ten Minutes: Erin goes over there and offers to help. Sherrie seems super scared, but says yes. HORROR SITUATION: Could watch Sherrie react terrified to a sound. Could do some mysterious hoarder goo. Could hear something. REACTION: She’d still be doing some form of denial.

Twenty Minutes: Erin’s gathered her friends to come help and one of them is seriously injured. HORROR SITUATION: We could nearly take them out any which way. REACTIONS: The injured person would either do a hide or an escape? Erin will take charge, but won’t be able to control the one who saw something and is creeped out, or the couple who are just bored already of helping this old lady weirdo. She doubles down.

Thirty Minutes: Now Glenn’s getting himself all involved? And like some more shit happens?

Forty Minutes: Another scary thing?

Fifty Minutes: You may notice, we don’t know a lot.

Sixty Minutes: There’s a lot of tidbits but we have to put them in order.

Seventy Minutes: Stuff!

The Plot, To Begin With: ACT THREE.

Depends on too much we don’t know ROFL but we do know that Erin beats the shit out of Glenn, and then in wrap up Sherrie has moved in with her mother June.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Marketing Plan

What I learned doing this assignment is that “this is a numbers game until it’s a relationship game”, that stood way out. Everybody talks about the latter and doesn’t explain how you get there. Yay!

My Email Request For Writing Assignments

Subject: About (Movie Title You Did)

Hi (producer’s name),

I absolutely adored (Movie Title You Did). (In particular, this cool thing about it.)

I’m a screenwriter, and my specialty is supernatural horror/comedy. I would love to work with you on your next project. I am available for assignments; writing your idea, rewriting something for you, treatments, adaptations, anything you need.

I can of course send you a writing sample, in the horror/comedy genre or if you prefer, straight supernatural horror.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and have a fantastic day!

Tully Archer

(phone)

(LinkedIn profile)

A Plan For Marketing Myself

When I’m ready to start marketing, I will build my LinkedIn presence by continuing to connect with people and coming up with some kind of good content to put up at least weekly, nothing fluffy, but I currently have no idea what. I will attend film-related events, which is currently my Achilles heel but I will figure out how to make it a strength, I will sign up for Toastmasters if I have to. Then, I will address the numbers game that this currently is for me, and send out at least 200 of those emails to people who have made horror/comedy movies.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Plan For Increasing Perceived Value

What I learned doing this assignment is that I’m starting from zero, sure, but, everything that needs to be done is totally doable. It’s just some work, some steps. Coolio.

What is my specialty?

I do supernatural horror comedies with real characters that we’ll be laughing at as much as with.

How many producers do I have in my LinkedIn network?

Looks like zero.

How will I increase my perceived value today?

I will plow through a couple more lessons. Look, I won’t lie to you, I’m really behind, on this and a few other things. Right now in order to increase my perceived by others value, I need to get back on top of my own perceived value, and that means catching up.

How will I increase my perceived value in the next 30 days?

As soon as this class wraps I have a goal of bringing that number of first-level connected producers to 150, focusing on horror and horror comedy producers.

How will I increase my perceived value in the next six months?

I will polish up two very good writing samples, one straight horror, one horror comedy. I will get into LinkedIn and actually post and interact with people. I will start going to film festivals and talking to humans. I will reach out to producers and pitch myself as available for writing assignments.

[Tully Archer]

Tully Is A Note Taking Professional!

What I learned is that everything is malleable. If you know the CORE CONCEPT, you can go anywhere with it.

“Unconditional” logline: After moving into a haunted house with her abusive mother, an 11 year old girl must deal with the supernatural threat on her own, before the jealous entity destroys them both.

How to cut the budget in half?

· Remove all the cats but one

· Remove the neighborhood sequence

· Cut pages and end it with the sisters helping Hannah out of the house, thereby cutting an entire location

· Make it one psychic instead of two

How to write it for a different quadrant?

· Make Hannah a boy

· Make Hannah a middle aged man, caring for an ancient abusive father instead of Sharon

· Make the ghost mess with dad’s perception, same as Sharon, except he’s got guns, and there’s like, a manic shootout sequence

How to double the conflict?

· Make Sharon a different, more combative style of abusive

· Make Hannah angry, and picking fights with people

· Spend more time with the psychics in the house, trying more things, real battles between them and the ghost

How to change the sex and age of the lead character?

· Well… do?

· You mean how to support that?

o In the example above, the parent changes as well

o The psychics would be there to prove themselves to the main character, not the mom, so that dynamic would be different – brings up, what’s his grown up flaw that might fuck that up?

o He’ll have more resources than Hannah, he could maybe sell the house, he could set it on fire, we’d need to know why he doesn’t

· How to change the genre?

o This could work as a thriller or drama/thriller where it’s not a ghost but just a human who is crazy who wants to replace Hannah in Sharon’s life, and it would still be Hannah trying to solve everything, having realized the dangers to Sharon well before Sharon does, and it would still be about her choosing to protect herself instead of trying to save her mother.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by  Tully Archer.

[Tully Archer]

Tully (and her writing partner’s) Horror Plot

What I learned doing this assignment is that um yeah… wow. This is the formula. I’ve seen so many horror films and not actively analyzed them, but here they all are! LOL

Act One – Set Up For Horror

· Atmosphere of Evil Established

o Depending on my partner’s opinion… either we open on Erin being trapped by something non-threatening, like some clothes fall on her from her top shelf in her closet and it’s immediately light again, OR, we do opening credits over creepy shots of the hoarder mansion and the cat who is trapped for realsies under some garbage. (fear not – Erin will rescue that cat later!)

· Connect With The Characters

o Erin is a do-gooder. Heart of gold, possibly a little too forceful about it. We like her. We get that she probably thinks too simply about Morals.

· The Characters Are Warned Not To Do It

o She’s told that Sherrie is insane and her house is dangerous. But she’s already on a mission.

· Denial Of Horror

o Erin fears nothing when she knows she’s Right. So there’s mold everywhere. She’ll get masks! No turning back.

· Safety Taken Away

o Depending on my partner’s opinion…. I’m thinking a FAST injury. Like they’ve been there two minutes before someone looses a hand or something. I like violence. But it would be something that could easily be explained as a freak accident. She’s not deterred.

· Monster: The Nature Of The Beast

o I think given the shock of the last beat, this should be seeing more of Sherrie’s inner life – how it’s all about fear, fear of the ghost, and fear of something else… (we don’t know yet at this point, but – it’s the brother.)

Act Two – The Point Of No Return

· Isolated / Trapped / Abducted

o This might be revealing that Sherrie can’t leave?

· One Of Us Killed

o Much debate on this. Working on it. 😊

Midpoint – The Monster Is Worse Than We Thought!

· Full pursuit by the killer

o By now we understand the ghost is just pissed, angry, wanting to torture – but why?

· Terrorized

o This is when we’d have clarity that the brother is a serial killing psychopath and a danger to Erin and the others. And that he’s the reason for the ghosty season.

Act Three – Full Our Horror

· Fight To The Death

o We want this to be very literal. We want Erin to beat the shit out of the brother, a real fight sequence, now that she knows that’s what you do with Evil. You don’t bargain, you don’t share your rosy worldview, you kill it dead.

· Hysteria

o Not totally sure.

· The Thrilling Escape From Death

o Sure, brother is hard to kill.

· Death Returns To Take One Or More

o The ghost actually ends the brother. I think.

· Resolution

o Sherrie sets the place on fire, from sheer joy of freedom.

So….. we have a lot of work to do LOL!

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s (and her writing partner’s) Characters For Horror

What I learned doing this assignment is that it’s really hard and annoying to have this many characters LOL!!

CONCEPT: An idealistic young woman determined to help her long lost relative with a hoarding problem learns that there’s much more hiding in there than just the junk.

GROUP: All the friends that Erin pulls in to help her on her crusade.

DYING PATTERN: So… it’s like a mixture of A and C? They one by one EITHER leave OR get killed… we’re still deciding if anyone will actually get killed. But certainly there will be horrific injuries. None of them have Erin’s pathological desire to be a savior, so when they’re hurt (or when they understand that this house is haunted), they bounce. So there’s the “one by one” element, but they’re not necessarily dying they might just be leaving the group. Yeah.

CHARACTERS:

LEADER/RESCUER/MORAL ONE – Erin, the protagonist. Charismatic, but it’s not enough for these people to stay and be terrorized by a ghost. But she’ll keep going without them, laser focused and stubborn.

THE CARRIER/INNOCENT – Sherrie, her aunt, who lives in the house. She could have saved Erin and the others, but her desperate desire for human interaction is too much. She lets them in, and the ghost has at them.

RESCUER/POSSIBLE SACRIFICIAL LAMB – Erin’s mother June. We’re still developing this character, who may need to die to get Erin through the final stages of her arc.

THE POSSE – top of head, guessing what roles will be filled in by various people Erin ropes into this:

· Out Of Control / Obnoxious

· Red Herring

· The Psychic One (not on the list, but you know what I mean – the one who can FEEL that something is horribly off here)

· Rebel / Rule Breaker

· Monster Bait / Innocent (someone pure hearted like Erin but more afraid, an easy target)

· Complainer

· Too Cool (not on the list, but you know what I mean – disinterested, winds up a red herring or a monster bait / red shirt)

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s (and her writing partner’s) Terrifying Monster

What I learned doing this assignment is that the
monster is a character even if it’s The Thing. Gotta flesh out that character.

Our monster is the ghost of a man who was murdered by a seventeen year old psychopath. It was the kid’s first kill, which he was very excited to do. Being dead for decades does not improve your mental health. It warps you. This guy has been stuck in this house with the murderer’s little sister, Sherrie, under whose floorboards the dead man was stashed, and she was told she’d join him if she told the secret. Now she’s old, and the house is filled with junk. Her hoarding behavior set in and stuck as her mental health just fell apart, driven by the desire for the world to stop spinning around her – classic hoarder urge to Stop Time. The ghost has been tormenting Sherrie, along with the fear of her brother, but now that other people are showing up in the house (because our protagonist is determined to help Sherrie) he’s ready to terrorize some new people. He wants to trap you, to keep you, to have you, in the hell that he himself is stuck in.

The TERROR: Being Stuck. It’s already a danger, in a hoarder’s house. But the ghost will use what’s around him to physically pin you down and then… slowly… APPROACH….

The MYSTERY: Not sure… gotta be something around the idea of freedom… or that if you give him that psychopath brother, he’ll leave YOU alone.

The FEAR PROVOKING APPEARANCE: The wounds that killed him. The madness in his eyes. The fact that Sherrie is just… letting him.

The RULES: He can’t leave the house. He can use what’s in the house. Not sure what else?

The MYTHOLOGY: See above, I guess?

Still working on it, LOL. 😉

[Tully Archer]

I’m skipping ahead, hope that’s okay, I’m still working on some of the interviewing stuff but was excited to do this lesson. ☺

TULLY’S DECREASED BUDGET

What I learned doing this assignment is that it’s really not that complicated! And in most instances, all you need is a little cleverness and to really understand (a) your characters and (b) what the PURPOSE of the expensive thing was. Like, for realz, I can do this!

ASSIGNMENT

In the beginning of this class, I asked you to bring in your highest budget script. Now, let’s pretend that the producer asks you to reduce the budget by 25%.

So. My higher budget script is called “Unconditional”, and it’s the story of an eleven year old girl (HANNAH) who moves into a haunted house with her abusive mother (SHARON). Hannah’s cat (BERT) is her only friend, and it just so happens that the ghost (WILLIAM) died at eight years old because his mother was even worse than Sharon – and a crazy cat lady. William accidentally hurt a cat so she threw him out, and he froze to death in the snow right under Hannah’s window. And you guessed it – I wrote in scenes with ALL HER CATS. hahahahahaha CUT!

MAIN VARIABLES

Number of Locations – This is honestly fine, it’s essentially three houses and some exterior shots of a neighborhood. If I had to, I could cut both other houses and bring it down to one.

Expensive locations – None. Just normal everyday poor-ish people houses.

Number of characters – Very small. I could cut two though.

Special effects – A little bit. But with some visual style tweaks, we don’t need the ghost of William to be fancy at all, I’m sure I could make him doable by just a little boy and no CGI experts. 🙂

Number of pages – It’s 106 right now, but if I was going about making the aforementioned cuts to locations and cast, it would be like, maybe 90.

Crowd scenes – There are none.

Stunts – There are none.

Chase scenes – There are none.

Fight scenes – There are none.

Special sets – There are none.

SECONDARY VARIABLES

Rights to music – Totally up to the director. Could be as obscure as we need.

Brands – Nope.

Books, etc. – Nope.

Explosions and Firearms – There are none.

Kids – Yeah, that’s unavoidable. There are two, and one of them is a ghost.

Animals – Could change up the story just a little bit, mainly tweaking the character of William’s mother, and eliminate all the cats but one. It’s still important that Bert exists. He’s important to the story. To the character, to the elements that are competing for attention in her poor little kid brain, to the conclusions that she draws based on the information that she’s taking in. Bert is absolutely necessary to her arc, and the essence of who she is.

Weather — Snow is important. William’s supernatural powers are tied to the cold. But we don’t need it to BE SNOWING at any point, we just need a ton of fake snow to throw around.

Water and underwater scenes – There are none.

Night scenes – There are a couple, but they are important. Things that happen in secret, etc. I could maybe make one of these happen in the daytime, though.

Helicopters, aircraft, drone shots – None are necessary.

Green screen work – I don’t believe anything currently requires green screen.

Extensive Make-up – Just a couple wounds, on limbs. Very doable.

Archival Footage – None required.

Anything else dangerous that increases preparation time and/or Insurance – I don’t believe so.

With a major scene that depends upon a “high budget variable,” take it through the process of finding another way to deliver on the dramatic goal. Tell us about the high budget item in your script that you are letting go of. Ask, “What is the dramatic goal am I trying to accomplish with this scene? ”Ask, “How can I accomplish the dramatic goal without the expense?”

Let’s say the sequence where Sharon believes she’s just accidentally killed Hannah is too expensive, what with the flying backwards and hitting her head stunt and the head wound makeup. (This is an elaborate hallucination that William is perpetrating, to get Sharon to believe that she’s all alone in the world.) The point of that scene is twofold: (a) to show that William is in complete control of what Sharon sees and hears, and (b) to show (to Hannah) that Sharon’s response to her daughter dying is to be irritated that she has to clean it up and figure out how to do a cover up. Such a chore. So. A stunt-free version of this would be for Sharon to find Hannah dead in the snow, and not even know why Hannah just laid down to freeze to death, whether it was an accident or an eleven year old suicide, she’d have the same “problem” of not wanting to answer any questions about how her offspring wound up deceased. Much simpler makeup, no stunts. Same character reaction of “oof, what a bother, my stupid daughter went and died” – and the same reaction from Hannah, of finally realizing that her mother is neither redeemable nor on her side. (It’s act three stuff, Hannah has to stop trying to save Sharon and just focus on saving herself.)

[Tully Archer]

What I learned being the “producer” is that this is just WEIRD! Someone’s digging around in my brain LOL – but seriously it’s easy for us writers to forget that producers are just people. With hearts and brains and feelings. This is a PARTNERSHIP, and trust is king.

[Tully Archer]

The Orphanage Horror Conventions

What I learned doing this assignment is that “Smart Horror” is a GOOD thing, not me being pedantic. LOL.

TITLE

“The Orphanage”.

CONCEPT

A woman buys the orphanage where she grew up, her (adopted) son disappears, taken by the ghosts of the children she had no idea had died there.

TERRORIZE THE CHARACTERS

Her son is missing for like nine months. It’s awful, it’s every parent’s nightmare. And these ghost kids are like, haha play with us and it’s like, you can’t even point your anger at anything. The woman who killed the children got hit by a bus even, she’s gone. And nobody believes the main character (the mom) that something supernatural is happening. Her husband thinks his wife is going insane, she has a husband who thinks she’s insane. All terrorized.

ISOLATION

It’s not that she can’t leave, it’s that she WON’T leave. Which I feel is just as compelling. Helpful too, because the thing I’m developing (with my writing partner) for this class has the same quirk, the main character CHOOSES to keep going into that house, for a good reason.

DEATH

The kid has HIV. If he doesn’t get his medicine, he’s going to die very soon even if he is being kept somewhere by someone. Mom gets injured a couple times, bad, to sort of anchor the tone, but the problem isn’t really that she might die, it’s that her son WILL die if she doesn’t find him.

MONSTER/VILLAIN

The true villain is the woman who poisoned five children because they accidentally killed her son with their mean spirited prank that got him drowned. The kids didn’t mean to kill him, they just were being sometimes mean kids and were then murdered.

HIGH TENSION

The ghost kids now play keepaway games, “treasure hunt” the alive kid had called it, where they take something you love and you have to follow the clues to get it back. They took the kid’s special coins, and then they took the main character’s beloved son. But since she’s neither a child nor close to death, she couldn’t just SEE them like he could, to play the game. So high tension for her because he’s missing, high tension for us because we understand before she does that they were just playing the game with HER now. She figures it out and gets a psychic and all that, but the ticking clock is always there.

DEPARTURE FROM REALITY

Sure, ghosts.

MORAL STATEMENT

None really. Just a very sad story.

OTHER NOTES – WHAT MADE THIS A GREAT HORROR FILM?

It was some great acting, first of all. The mysteries unfolded pretty well. The memorable thing, the thing that really made it stick and anchored the tone as a horrible drama with supernatural stuff around it, was the ending. I don’t want to spoil it for you so if you haven’t seen it, look away!!! à okay if you’re still here, she finds her son. He died fast. He got stuck in a secret room. She HEARD him banging on the wall, but she thought it was the GHOSTS. It was early on, she saw one of them, then the kid went missing, then she heard banging, and it was like, “part of the set up” that the kids took him but it was a trick, yes they took him but that sound was just the regular sound of a kid trying to bang on a wall and get someone to hear it and come save him. And he just died down there normal, of dehydration presumably. So she OD’s on his HIV medication and stays with ALL the kids to be their forever mother.

Now, filling in for my concept (me and my writing partner!) “HOARDER”!

TITLE

“Hoarder”.

CONCEPT

A young woman tries to help her long lost great aunt with her hoarding problem, but the big old house is inhabited by more than just junk.

TERRORIZE THE CHARACTERS

The aunt is being terrorized by the ghost. The main character is being terrorized by a constant assault on her overly cheery worldview and desire to connect to the rest of the family (her mom was the black sheep and she’s only ever met like two of them before). In the house, people get injured, trapped, creeped out, attacked, all the fun angry ghost stuff with the added horror and often deep disgust of being surrounded by mountains of literal rotting garbage. The aunt was eleven when her brother hid a body under the floorboards under her bed and told her to keep the secret or she’d be dead too. This life is what has happened since, as she was continually terrorized by her creepy ass violent brother, and their rich parents just basically didn’t parent.

ISOLATION

The house is in the middle of nowhere, sure, but it’s being trapped in there that spikes the isolation, and at the end they’re trapped inside because the secret alive villain has LOCKED them in. (Battle scene and so forth.)

DEATH

Plenty. We’re playing with the idea of how many will die, probably one or two. The main character starts the process, in her usual go-getter way, by bringing a bunch of her friends over to tackle the problem. One by one they quit… or die. That, and, we find out the ghost is the murder victim of auntie’s brother, who is a serial killer, he loves killing, and then we understand that there’s a real threat of death on our heroine, who is poking at the mysteries he wants to keep hidden.

MONSTER/VILLAIN:

Aforementioned psychopath brother. Ghost who is just angry.

HIGH TENSION

Hopefully the mystery will unfold well and the fact that the main character is just being bullheaded by showing up repeatedly and continually poking the situation will be enough, similar to “The Orphanage”.

DEPARTURE FROM REALITY

Sure, ghosts.

MORAL STATEMENT

Still working on that.

OTHER NOTES – WHAT’S GOING TO MAKE THIS A GREAT HORROR?

Hopefully it’ll be dope to have this new location style in a movie. You hear something – are you being stalked by a dead guy or did a newspaper from 1982 fall over into some goop? We’re very excited about the set’s inherent possibilities, and also about this aunt character who is so mentally ill but like zero percent of anything is really her fault, but she’s old, and warped, and so socially bizarre, but alllllll she wants is safety and love. Like everyone, like the main character, like all of us.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Fantastic Treatment

What I learned doing this assignment is that prose is still a skill we need. This is essentially prose. I could be WAY more brief with my prose.

Title: Picket Fence

Genre: Supernatural Comedy

Logline: A codependent man must learn to stand up for himself when a ghost tries to ruin his life and his parents don’t like the woman he falls in love with while trying to solve the ghost problem.

I’m using the 12-sequence structure from Writer’s Bootcamp.

ACT ONE

KAVISH, 35 today, wraps up a one night stand like a total gentleman, and he’s got the routine down pat. On a zoom call with his coworkers, he volunteers for more work to make up for someone else dropping the ball. His friend EUGENE calls him for emergency babysitting. The two kids adore him. Eugene confides that he wants to start a business – Kavish tells him not to, because he has kids and most businesses fail. He doesn’t see how hurt Eugene is. We have a couple funny jump scares, to establish both genres.

Kavish goes to his parents’ house for his birthday party. There’s a distinct air of sadness about them. From context clues we understand there used to be a fourth member of the family, ARI. There’s a lot of protecting each other from risk, Kavish and his parents, most notably that an offer for matchmaking is swatted away not by Kavish but by his mother. He bends over backwards for them, to emotionally regulate them. For his birthday, they have bought him a HOUSE. He’s surprised by that, but he makes a tension-breaking joke about the five months he has left on his lease and accepts it with gratitude.

Kavish briefly meets one of his next-door neighbors, LACEY, while moving in – she’s prickly and funny and he’s drawn to her vibe. As his parents help him move in, little creepy things occur, an object not where he put it, a closing door noise – just a couple possibly-innocuous things. Then they leave, and around seven, as Kavish is starting to think about some food, we drop the veil – there is 100% a ghost in there, it’s an old man, and he is weeping at the dining room table. Kavish has a very humorous and real reaction, screams, pacing, peeking back in to see if he’s still there, wondering what else is in here, cut to him with no luggage at all in line to check in at the local hotel. As a (heretofore) non-believer, this is a mind-bender for him.

ACT TWO PART ONE

His parents call the next morning on their way over for breakfast – he has to scramble to beat them there, and lie about how it’s all great everything’s great it’s totally great. He then tries to just ignore the problem, but it grows. The ghost won’t let him make any significant changes to the house. Paint just slides off the walls, holes dug in the yard are filled back up when he blinks, funny etc. He tries to hire handyman BRIAN, but when he gets there he mysteriously refuses to come inside and just drives away. A series of comedic scenes of him trying to basically live but he can’t. Try to sit through a zoom, with a cold spot in the room at your elbow. Try to eat, with a ghost staring into the distance sort of at you but not actually at you. Try to pee, when you hear footsteps. He picks up a girl, but the ghost scares her away. Final straw? He tries to wank, and the ghost walks through him as soon as his dick is in his hand. Beat down, he gets in his car, and autopilots to his parents’ house.

He tries to talk to his parents about ARI, his brother. They won’t have it. They’re not harsh, they don’t have to be, they just look hurt and he drops it. Still lies about things being great. Next day he calls for a psychic. Starts noticing that the ghost seems to be following some patterns, does the same things every day at the same time. The psychic shows up and so does Lacey! Psychic is her sister, and a fraud. This is a new side of Lacey – so forceful, so devil-may-care, and so sarcastic, following her sister around Kavish’s house just talking about all the scams she’s pulled. Sister finally gives up and leaves. Lacey’s job here is done but Kavish is absolutely captivated by now and asks her if he can buy her lunch.

Lacey is on a warpath with her entire family, not just the sister. She learned recently that her childhood of being sick all the time was a lie, that her mother had Munchausen By Proxy – and all those cowards sided with her mom, who is still very much manipulating everybody. She’s so angry she literally spends time every day just fucking something up for one of them. They both had something taken from them, didn’t have the lives they otherwise would have. Kavish tells her that his brother, Ari, disappeared thirty years ago. They still have no idea what happened. Statistics of course will have you assume he’s dead, but the lack of closure has been, Kavish thinks, the worst part. He can’t be angry with his parents – who could survive what they’ve been through? – but he admires her for being so direct, and is envious that she CAN be. He can’t even bring Ari up. But they are honest with each other, and it’s easy. There is some definite sexual chemistry here.

ACT TWO PART TWO

He shows her the ghost and his patterns. Lacey gets excited about tackling a problem. She tries some stuff, but it backfires – the ghost, who had been just doing his own thing, now SEES them. It’s way creepier, and now he’s mad. She pivots to research, and Kavish mentions Brian’s weird behavior. They do some digging. The ghost’s wife disappeared (JOHN and RAMONA) about twenty five years before he died, and nobody knows what happened but there were rumors that she ran off with a dude who also disappeared at the same time. Kavish is emotionally all over the place, Lacey is more attracted to him than ever for having compassion on a ghost, that strong moral core he has even though he’s not as boundaried about it as he could be, there’s no doubt he’s doing his genuine best. They have a funny and sweet sex scene, making love in the background with John doing his usual cry in the foreground. In the morning they talk about life, they both want kids, but he couldn’t do that to his parents. They still need him. And he can’t be the parent he’d want to be without feeling like he’s rubbing their noses in… everything.

Kavish has John’s patterns memorized by now and has moved his life around accordingly. He and Lacey are going okay. They’re still trying to figure out what happened to Ramona and are pretty sure Brian is involved but don’t know how. Then, a bombshell: a detective shows up to beg Kavish to testify. Testify at what? Why, the trial. Of the guy. The guy who confessed to your brother’s murder? Turns out, his parents ALREADY KNEW ABOUT THIS, and not only didn’t tell him, but told the police that Kavish didn’t want anything to do with it either. But they found the body, and the trial is happening, because this guy confessed to A LOT of murders, once arrested for one. The guy lived nearby at the time and Kavish remembers him. As far as Kavish knew, closure would change everything. He put his life on hold for his parents until that closure could come. And apparently they don’t even want it. He’s super emotional, and Lacey goes with him on an impromptu trip to the old house, a few hours’ drive away. She’s very much there for him.

In all the emotion, Kavish forgot that his parents were set to visit that day. They show up, he’s not there, he’s not answering his calls… they’re triggered and distraught. He calls them back when he gets the messages, but the next day he and Lacey are together when they show up to discuss it. He wants to discuss the case. He tries to be angry with them, but lacks the neural pathways for it. They say they were only trying to save him from the pain. They’re bewildered that he thought he wasn’t supposed to start his life yet, completely unaware of how much they do lean on him for emotional support, which is nearly impossible to explain when you’re trying not to cry in front of your girlfriend, your parents, and a ghost you’re still trying to hide from them. Lacey tries to stand up for him, to bring the conversation back to Kavish’s needs, but she’s too harsh – she makes Kavish’s mom cry. Kavish makes a horrible, old-programming mistake. He chooses his parents. He’s harsh back to her. Lacey’s exact dealbreaker is not being chosen. That’s what her family did, they chose her mom instead of her even though basic moral logic would have dictated otherwise. She’s out. Kavish tries to confide in Eugene about it later, but Eugene is brutally honest with Kavish and tells him he was happy to let the friendship fade when he moved away, tired of how Kavish would try to make others smaller in the name of “caring for them”, not quite true… but damn close and painful to hear.

ACT THREE

Kavish is devastated. And he has to sit there with a sad ghost and realize that his parents and Lacey are right, that he COULD have had a life without or around his legitimately grieving and fragile parents – but he doesn’t know how he could have, without being an asshole. So like. What the fuck. His parents try to cheer him up: Kavish honey, if you wanted a girlfriend, you could have told us. Here, here’s some blind dates for you. And he goes on some blind dates. And they’re all terrible. He’s spoiled now, he doesn’t want small talk, he wants BIG talk, he wants someone who gets pissed off at injustice and burns bridges and has a complex moral code and fucking hates small talk too. And one night, the ghost activity is just too much – he finally gets properly ANGRY.

Kavish is done with blind dates. Lacey was determined to help the ghost move on. He’s gonna do that. He finds the last piece of the puzzle – Brian and the dude Ramona supposedly ran off with both had a kid in her class. It’s enough to go over there and ask Brian some questions. He runs into Lacey, who’d also figured it out and had the same idea. Brian is a coward – Ramona came over to discuss his son’s disturbing behavior and a legitimate accident took her life, but he decided to sweep it under the run. This required killing the witness, the dude, who was Brian’s casual friend. Brian tries to kill Kavish and Lacey, but their amazing teamwork is more than enough to stop this turd of a man. Before calling the cops, they recover one bone from where he hid Ramona’s body.

At the house, John ages back to when he lost Ramona when her remains cross the property line. We see them embrace, and go into the light together. But Kavish and Lacey are still done. He apologizes, but she doesn’t know what to do with that. He tells his parents he’s not only going to testify but that he’s going to be leaving his great low-risk well-paying job to work with a nonprofit that helps families in the same situation they were in. It’s the best way he knows to start over. He tells them that he loves Lacey, and that he’s going to keep trying to fix things even though he has no clue what to do. But Lacey heard all that – she had shown up at his parents’ house to apologize herself. She has been making such a hobby of burning bridges that she didn’t realize it had become a crutch, and while she stands by every other burned bridge in her life, this one she should have thought twice about. They forgive each other and Kavish’s parents do their absolute best to get on board, even if it means differing from him, seeing less of him, worrying, all that stuff Kavish was trying to save them from. Cut to his next birthday, Lacey is pregnant, Kavish’s entire career revolves around the thing they will never be able to talk about, but Kavish no longer drops everything to smooth things over. Awkward and sad moments happen but everybody’s going to be okay because everybody loves each other. And Kavish and Lacey couldn’t be happier, in their un-haunted house with a baby on the way.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by  Tully Archer.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by  Tully Archer.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Synopsis for Producer Interview

Title: “Picket Fence”

Genre: Horror-Comedy

Logline: Bruh… I’m still developing LOL it’s bad… I genuinely have no idea how to phrase this one.

Synopsis: Bruh… this is like three and a half pages but it’s early days and I know nobody’s going to read it anyway so this what I have for a synopsis not even sorry. LOL.

KAVISH is turning 35 today. We begin on him being a perfect gentleman and making breakfast for his one night stand. After their brief and pleasant conversation, he puts her name on a list called “Wants Kids”. At his (remote) job, he volunteers for extra work. He’s called to his friend’s rescue (EUGENE) for some emergency babysitting of his two kids. Upon his return Eugene confides in Kavish that he wants to start his own business. Kavish encourages him not to, because he has kids and most businesses fail. Eugene is hurt, but Kavish is unaware. We have a couple jokey jump scares to establish both genres. He’s absolutely great with the kids.

Kavish goes to his parents’ house for his birthday party. There is a noticeable air of sadness around them. Kavish will change his mood, bend over backwards, protect, serve, anything to emotionally regulate his parents, and he’ll do it all cheerfully. We understand from conversational context clues that there used to be a fourth member of the family, and that’s the source of great pain for his parents. There’s a lot of protecting each other from risk, most notably that an offer for matchmaking is swatted away not by Kavish but by his mother. For his birthday, they have bought him a HOUSE. He’s surprised by that, but he makes a tension-breaking joke about the five months he has left on his lease and accepts it with gratitude.

Kavish briefly meets one of his next-door neighbors, LACEY, while moving in – she says something smart and prickly and funny and he’s very drawn to her vibe. His parents help him a little bit, but he assures them he can handle the rest. As this is happening, little creepy things occur, an object not where he put it, a closing door noise – just a couple possibly-innocuous things. Then around seven, as Kavish is starting to think about some food, we drop the veil – there is 100% a ghost in there, it’s an old man, and he is weeping at the dining room table. Kavish has a very humorous and real reaction, screams, pacing, peeking back in to see if he’s still there, being scared, pacing outside on the sidewalk, cut to him with no luggage at all in line to check in at the local hotel. As a non-believer, this is a mind-bender for him.

His parents call the next morning on their way over for breakfast – he has to scramble to beat them there, and lie about how it’s all great everything’s great it’s totally great. He then tries to just ignore the problem. But the problem grows. The ghost won’t let him make any significant changes to the house. Paint slides off the walls. Things torn down are back up when he re-enters the room. Holes dug in the yard are filled back up when he blinks. He hires a handyman, well two – one mysteriously won’t come in the house and just abruptly leaves, but the other’s work is undone as well, confirming that it’s not just that Kavish doesn’t know how to renovate (which, he doesn’t). A series of comedic scenes of him trying to basically live but he can’t. Try to sit through a zoom, with a cold spot in the room at your elbow. Try to eat, with a ghost staring into the distance sort of at you but not actually at you. Try to pee, when you hear footsteps. He picks up a girl, but the ghost scares her away. Final straw? He tries to wank, and the ghost walks through him as soon as his dick is in his hand. Beat down, he gets in his car, and autopilots to his parents’ house.

He tries to talk to his parents about ARI, his brother. They won’t have it. They’re not harsh, they don’t have to be, they just look hurt and he drops it. Still lies about things being great. Next day he calls for a psychic. Has another intriguing interaction with Lacey. Starts noticing that the ghost seems to be following some patterns, does the same things every day at the same time. The psychic shows up and so does Lacey! Psychic is her sister, and a fraud. This is a new side of Lacey – so forceful, so devil-may-care, and so sarcastic, following her sister around Kavish’s house just talking about all the scams she’s pulled. Sister finally gives up and leaves. Lacey’s job here is done but Kavish is absolutely captivated by now and asks her if he can buy her lunch.

Lacey is on a warpath with her entire family, not just the sister. She learned recently that her childhood of being sick all the time was a lie, that her mother had Munchausen By Proxy – and all those cowards sided with her mom, who is still very much manipulating everybody. Lacey’s going to wield the sword of truth, or sabotage, or whatever on every one of them. She literally spends part of every day ruining something for one of them, planning stuff, just so, so angry. As opposite as that is to Kavish, it’s also similar. Things were taken from them, their childhoods were not what they were supposed to be. Ari, Kavish’s brother, disappeared thirty years ago. They still have no idea what happened. Statistics of course will have you assume he’s dead, but the lack of closure has been, Kavish thinks, the worst part. He can’t be angry with his parents, who could survive what they’ve been through? But he admires her for being so direct, and is envious that she CAN be. He can’t even bring Ari up. But them, together, in this sequence of them getting to know each other, they are honest with each other. She asks him direct questions and answers his directly. He understands that when she shares her hard, logical, think-y thoughts with him, that is her version of what most people would call “opening up”. There is some definite sexual chemistry here, some deep attraction.

He tells her about the ghost. She’s as skeptical as anyone, but it’s not hard to prove – the ghost is still on his weird repeats clock. Lacey gets excited about tackling a problem. She tries some stuff, a Ouija board, sage, but it backfires – the ghost, who had been just doing his own thing, now SEES them. It’s way creepier, and he’s like, pissed off. She pivots to research, and Kavish mentions the handyman (BRIAN) who balked once he got here. They do some digging. The ghost’s wife disappeared, about twenty five years before he died, and nobody knows what happened but there were rumors that she ran off with a dude who also disappeared at the same time. Kavish is emotionally all over the place, Lacey is more attracted to him than ever for having compassion on a ghost, that strong moral core he has even though he’s not as boundaried about it as he could be, there’s no doubt he’s doing his genuine best. They have a funny and sweet sex scene, making love in the background with the ghost doing his usual cry in the foreground. In the morning, he makes breakfast like he always does with a partner, but instead of sending her off they eat it together, and discover that they want the same things in life: marriage, and kids. Kavish wants kids so bad, you guys. But his parents aren’t ready to be around kids who will inevitably, hopefully, reach Ari’s age when he was taken – and Kavish isn’t ready to be the fully present and focused and emotionally available parent that he wants to be in front of them, who long ago stopped being that.

Kavish’s parents come over unannounced, and Kavish instinctually makes it a mutually exclusive choice, he’s either hanging with them OR Lacey. He later explains more about how things work with them to her, but it raises questions for her. Kavish has the ghost’s patterns memorized by now, moves his zoom calls depending on the time of day, eats in the living room, etc. He and Lacey do relationship stuff, things are going pretty well, they’re still trying to figure out what happened to the ghost’s wife and are pretty sure Brian is involved but don’t know how. Then, a bombshell: a detective shows up to beg Kavish to testify. Testify at what? Why, the trial. Of the guy. The guy who confessed to your brother’s murder? Turns out, Kavish’s parents ALREADY KNEW ABOUT THIS, and not only didn’t tell him, but told the police that Kavish didn’t want anything to do with it either. And sure enough, they haven’t since returned this guy’s calls. But they found the body, and the trial is happening, because this guy confessed to A LOT of murders, having been caught red handed hiding the latest body. It’s someone who lived in the same neighborhood they did, in another state, when it happened. A guy that Kavish remembers. As far as Kavish knew, closure would change everything. He put his life on hold for his parents until that closure could come. And what the fuck is THIS? He’s super emotional, and Lacey goes with him on an impromptu trip to the old house, a few hours’ drive away. She’s very much there for him.

In all the emotion, Kavish forgot that his parents were set to visit that day. They show up, he’s not there, he’s not answering his calls (left his phone in the car at that moment), basically all the things you’d use to deliberately trigger the shit out of them. They’re distraught. He calls them back when he gets the messages, but the next day he and Lacey are together when they show up to discuss it. He wants to discuss the case. He tries to be angry with them, but lacks the neural pathways for it. They explain that they were only trying to save him from the pain. He truly believed that they wanted to know what happened, that knowing would change things, make them feel better, and they’re bewildered that he thought he wasn’t supposed to start his life until they did, completely unaware of how much they do lean on him for emotional regulation, which is nearly impossible to explain when you’re trying not to cry in front of your girlfriend, your parents, and a ghost you’re still trying to hide from them. Lacey tries to stand up for him, to bring the conversation back to Kavish’s needs, but she’s too harsh – she makes Kavish’s mom cry. Kavish makes a horrible, old-programming mistake. He chooses his parents. He’s harsh back to her. Lacey’s exact dealbreaker is not being chosen. That’s what her family did, they chose her mom instead of her even though basic moral logic would have dictated otherwise. She’s out. Kavish tries to confide in Eugene about it later, but Eugene has a moment of too-brutal honesty with Kavish and tells him he was happy to let the friendship fade when Kavish moved away – Kavish has a pattern of the thing we saw, of cheerily shitting on someone’s dream in the name of risk aversion, because he’s always using his parents as an excuse to do nothing and be nothing and using “I care about you” as an excuse to try and keep everyone else down and small with him. It’s not quite true… but it’s damn close.

Kavish is devastated. He fucked up with Lacey AND his parents, who are still shaken and leaning on him while not understanding that they’re leaning on him. Eugene yanked a few rugs out from under him. And he has to sit there with a sad ghost and realize that his parents and Lacey are right, that he COULD have had a life without or around his legitimately grieving and fragile parents – but he doesn’t know how he could have, without being an asshole. So like. What the fuck. His parents try to cheer him up: Kavish honey, if you wanted a girlfriend, you could have told us. Here, here’s some blind dates for you. We’ll find a girl for you, don’t you worry! And he goes on some blind dates. And they’re all terrible. He’s spoiled now, he doesn’t want small talk, he wants BIG talk, he wants someone who gets pissed off at injustice and burns bridges and has a complex moral code and fucking hates small talk too. And one night, as he’s trying to have one single uninterrupted thought, the ghost activity is just too much (even though it’s the exact same as yesterday at the same time) – Kavish slams his fist down on the table and says HEY! *I’M* the one who fucking lives here!

Kavish is done with blind dates. Lacey was determined to help the ghost move on. He’s gonna do that. He finds the last piece of the puzzle – the thing that ghost’s wife and the dude who went missing had in common was not that they ran off together, it’s that guy Brian. Brian and the dude both had a kid in the wife’s class (she was a teacher). It’s enough to be brave and risk at the least embarrassment at the most danger, to go over to Brian’s house and confront him. Well. Lacey’d had the same idea. She also figured out the link and figured she could find out more by showing up. She’s still mad at Kavish but what made them work as a couple, their differently-motivated but same instinctual commitment to clarity and communication, that makes them work great as a team here: in the sequence where Brian’s true colors appear. Long story short, the wife came over to discuss Brian’s son’s disturbing behavior and died in the house via legitimate accident, but Brian wanted to cover it up – which required killing the witness, the dude, who was Brian’s casual friend and was over for beers or whatever when it happened. Swept it under the rug and stole closure from her husband and the family of the dude as well. Realized who’s house it was Kavish called him to and just freaked out and left. I don’t totally have this fleshed out, but the story all comes out and they have to physically fight him because he tries to get rid of them too. They find where he hid the wife’s body, and they take a bone before calling the cops.

At the house, the ghost senses his wife’s remains coming and meets them in the front yard. Beautiful moment when we see his wife appear, and we see him age backwards to where he was when he lost her, and they go into the light together. But Kavish and Lacey are still donezo. He apologizes, and she believes him, but needs to process, and for that needs to leave. Truly alone in the house for the first time, and feeling very alone indeed without her, he goes to his parents’ house. He tells them he’s not only going to testify but that he’s going to be leaving his great low-risk well-paying job to work with a nonprofit that helps families in the same situation they were in. It’s the first different branch chronologically, in the alternate timeline of what if he hadn’t fixated on being everything they needed. It’s the best way he knows to start over. And he tells them that he loves Lacey, and why, and that he’s going to keep trying to fix things even though he has no clue what to do. But Lacey heard all that – she had shown up at his parents’ house to apologize herself. She has been making such a hobby of burning bridges, and she didn’t realize what a crutch it had become, and while she stands by every other burned bridge in her life, this one she should have thought twice about. They forgive each other and Kavish’s parents do their absolute best to get on board, they’re still shaken from everything that happened but ultimately they truly do want Kavish to be happy, even if it means differing from him, seeing less of him, not understanding why THIS woman. But Lacey says just the right thing – no idea what, but I know she shows them that she is understanding and does care about them too. Cut to Kavish’s next birthday, Lacey is pregnant, things are still sometimes awkward what with Kavish’s entire career revolving around the thing they will never be able to talk about, but Kavish no longer drops everything to smooth things over. The awkward moment exists, they sit in it, the conversation moves on. Everybody’s going to be okay, even though there are disconnects that will likely never be resolved, because everybody loves each other. And Kavish and Lacey couldn’t be happier, in their un-haunted house with a baby on the way.

[Tully Archer]

1. Tully Archer

2. I’ve written two features and I think six shorts.

3. I hope to scare the shit out of some people.

4. I once weighed 304 pounds and I’m going to run the Ely Marathon in 2023.

[Tully Archer]

1. Tully Archer

2. I agree to the terms of this release form.

3. GROUP RELEASE FORM:

As a member of this group, I agree to the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Supernatural Horror Writing Sample Plan

What I learned doing this assignment is that you can totally “cheat” on a writing sample! 🙂

“Unconditional” SET-UP: Hannah is 11. Bert is her big orange cat and only friend in the world. Sharon is her abusive mother. Bert is always nervous or scared in Hannah’s room. They all just moved into this house, and it’s haunted. Sharon went out drinking last night. We saw a woman in the early 70’s who brought a baby boy into this house but totally ignored it, focusing on her several cats instead. When we’re in William’s POV, the world is grey, with a few exceptions.

INT. SHARON’S ROOM – DAWN

Sharon is passed out on her still-plastic-covered bed, no pillow, just a blanket wrapped around her like a burrito.

We hear CRYING. Soft, a bit far-away… but clearly a CHILD.

It’s abject depletion crying, deep heavy sobs.

It wakes her. Just barely.

Groggy as hell, she processes the sound. Raises her head.

SHARON

(alarming force)

KNOCK IT OFF!

INT. HANNAH’S ROOM – SAME TIME

Hannah JOLTS awake at the sound of her mother’s voice.

Notices Bert is missing, but waits for more danger noises…

INT. SHARON’S ROOM – SAME TIME

The crying stopped.

Sharon puts her head back down and is out again instantly.

INT. HANNAH’S ROOM – SAME TIME

… silence.

Okay. Well… maybe mom was dreaming.

She leans over the side of the bed, toward the door.

HANNAH

(whisper-yelling)

Bert!

… no response from mom.

HANNAH

Berty!

He comes trotting in. Jumps up, licks her face.

HANNAH

It’s okay, Berty Bert.

She squeezes him and tries to relax.

INT. DINING ROOM – DAY

Hannah sits at the table with a MATH BOOK, doing equations.

Bert swats at one of her pencils.

She absentmindedly sets it back so he can swat it again.

In the kitchen behind her, everything’s put away, the boxes are broken down and neatly piled.

Sharon groggily enters.

SHARON

Hi.

Hannah slides her math stuff over as Sharon sits.

SHARON

What’s this?

HANNAH

Math stuff.

SHARON

Why?

HANNAH

I like it… sorry.

SHARON

Did you make dinner?

HANNAH

Yes!

She practically LEAPS out of her chair to go get it –

Bert swats a pencil toward Sharon, who sweeps it off the table. Bert follows it down.

Sharon pulls out her phone.

Hannah gathers some courage –

HANNAH

Can we go mini golfing tomorrow?

SHARON

It’s winter.

HANNAH

It’s indoors. It’s seven dollars.

SHARON

Per person?

HANNAH

Yeah.

SHARON

We’ll see. Do you wanna tell me what you were crying about?

She doesn’t look up, but her attention IS on Hannah.

Hannah freezes.

HANNAH

I don’t… know what you mean.

Sharon still doesn’t look up, and it’s ominous.

SHARON

I do. You were crying. And I was trying to sleep. Ring a bell?

The microwave BEEPS. Hannah doesn’t move.

HANNAH

(so, so careful)

I heard you yelling to knock it off, but that’s what woke me, I —

Now Sharon looks up.

SHARON

Oh I’m sorry, did I wake you?

HANNAH

I just mean, I think you might have dreamed it. Or – I just, I don’t remember crying.

She avoids eye contact. Head down.

Sharon glares at her, daring her to defy.

SHARON

I don’t care what you remember, I’m telling you what happened. Understood?

Hannah breathes through the boiling emotions and confusion.

She finally manages a short nod.

Sharon waits.

HANNAH

Yes ma’am.

Sharon goes back to her phone.

The microwave BEEPS a reminder beep.

SHARON

And fucking get that.

Hannah leaps to. Plate, silverware, serving through the awkward silence.

Sharon SIGHS at the food, as though it’s unsatisfactory.

SHARON

I want you to shovel today.

HANNAH

Yes ma’am.

EXT. FRONT WALKWAY – DAY

Hannah’s straining face, under her little beanie hat, LIFTING another shovel load of snow –

– the shovel is nearly as big as she is –

– she manages a neat toss. In fact the whole job has been neat: all along the walkway going toward the sidewalk, tidy little snow plops on either side. She’s about 1/3 done.

EXT. SIDE YARD – EARLY AFTERNOON

We now see that she’s finished; all concrete visible, with the same tidy piles of snow alongside.

Hannah trudges along carrying the shovel, following her own snow prints back to the shed, passing the house.

We overhear…

SHARON (O.S.)

Well that’s ridiculous!

Hannah gets on tippy toes to look into the KITCHEN WINDOW.

HANNAH’S POV: Sharon paces in the kitchen, phone to ear.

SHARON

Exactly… no that’s what I’m saying, he’s an idiot…

BACK TO SCENE: Satisfied that it doesn’t involve her, Hannah continues trudging.

SHARON (O.S.)

(fading)

No, no, she said that he was late every single time. Zero respect…

EXT. BACK YARD – MOMENTS LATER

Hannah CLOSES the shed door, now without a shovel.

Turns around, heads for her own BEDROOM WINDOW at the back side of the house.

Right up against the window, she looks in and cheerily WAVES-

HANNAH’S POV: Bert is bathing himself on the bed. Looks up, sees her, MEOWS silently. We can see her shadow on the floor.

BACK TO SCENE: She giggles, keeps waving. Then, CONCERN –

HANNAH’S POV: Bert SCRAMBLES off the bed and out of the room in an absolute PANIC –

– we can still see Hannah’s shadow on the floor, but next to it now is a SECOND SHADOW. As if a smaller kid is standing right fucking next to her –

ON HANNAH’S FACE: Shock. Confusion. THE HEEBIE JEEBIES –

– She whirls around – there’s nobody there –

– Then we see it. SHE SEES IT –

– Down at her feet, in the snow, is BLOOD. A lot of it, in an oval shape, no trail to it. Right under her bedroom window.

She RUNS.

INT. LIVING ROOM – MOMENTS LATER

– Hannah SLAMS the front door shut behind her and heads for the kitchen, panic-breathing.

INT. KITCHEN – CONTINUOUS

Sharon turns just as –

HANNAH

Mom! Something… There was blood, and a shadow, and –

SHARON

I am. On. The phone.

Sharon’s face is absolute stone.

Hannah catches her breath.

HANNAH

I’m sorry. But –

Sharon POINTS, toward the hallway.

Hannah pauses but there’s nothing to say – or at least, nothing that it would be safe to say –

– She leaves, fighting tears.

Sharon stares daggers after her, and raises the phone again.

INT. HALLWAY – CONTINUOUS

SHARON (O.S.)

Sorry about that, she’s eleven and I already want to strangle her. Lord help me when she’s sixteen…

Hannah angrily takes off her jacket, shame filling her chest.

INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY

SUPER: 1975

The house is now a mess, fur and dust everywhere. The Woman knits, hunched in her chair.

There are now about A DOZEN CATS roaming around.

WILLIAM (4, dirty, distinctive LIGHT BLUE EYES) walks toward her.

He holds a small WOODEN HORSE, a toy.

WILLIAM

Mama!

The Woman does not look up from her knitting. William looks around and spots the horse’s companion, a WOODEN RIDER. He retrieves it and takes it to the KID CHAIR in the corner.

A big FLOOFY CAT is on the chair. William ponders with toddler logic… puts down the toys… and tries to gently push the cat off with his little toddler hands.

The Woman flies into a rage.

WOMAN

UH-UH!

She stands up, CLAPS once, and POINTS to the floor.

WOMAN

Leave him alone!

She watches William cower, pick up the toys, and sit down on the floor a foot away from the chair. He doesn’t look up.

She sits back down and goes back to her knitting.

The Boy instinctually waits for some kind of “all clear”.

When she doesn’t turn her attention back to him, and it seems safe, The Boy sets the rider on the horse, and starts clopping them around together – CLOP! – CLOP! –

INT. SHARON’S ROOM – NIGHT

SMASH CUT: – CLOP!

It rings out, and Sharon gently wakes – and looks around, groggily, not registering that there was a noise.

But she’s up now, and has to pee.

INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT

We hear the FLUSH fade as Sharon exits the bathroom.

She heads for her room, but stops – looking down –

– there’s a tiny bit of a dusting of SNOW on the brown carpet underneath Hannah’s door.

INT. HANNAH’S ROOM – CONTINUOUS

Sharon comes in, and sees the same light dusting of snow ALL OVER the floor, sparkling in the moonlight.

She takes a few steps in the dark – SMACK – CLATTER! – It sounds like she kicked a hard, heavy object, and a little GLIMMER flashes on the floor, heading for Hannah’s bed.

SHARON

(quietly)

Ow, fuck!

She bends sideways, to see what it was – but it’s UNDER Hannah’s bed, and she can’t see it.

She gets closer.

On her knees –

– she bends sideways again, dipping under the bed…

There’s a shape, way up against the wall. It’s at least football sized, and the moonlight catches it a little bit – but we still can’t tell what it is.

She reaches out toward the object.

Her fingers approach –

They brush up against it –

She GASPS, recoils, STUMBLES backwards onto her butt.

SHARON

Shhhiit!

She looks at Hannah, who is still sleeping.

Looks down between her feet, back to where the object is.

She gets down on her belly, and goes fully UNDER the bed –

CLOSE ON: It’s Bert. FROZEN SOLID.

Sharon stares at it, on her stomach under the bed, wide-eyed.

His fur is spiked up along his arched back. His face is mid-hiss, terrified. Ice crystals sparkle around his eyeballs.

SHARON

What the FUCK.

She scrambles backwards –

INT. HALLWAY – MOMENTS LATER

Sharon opens the supplies closet and grabs a TRASH BAG –

EXT. DRIVEWAY – NIGHT

Sharon lifts the lid of the garbage can and SLAMS Bert into it, in the garbage bag. Like he’s nothing. Problem solved. Creep over.

She turns, and STARTLES –

There’s William, standing in the yard, looking about 8 years old. He looks up at Sharon with a sickening, raw, twisted kind of HOPE in his eyes.

Her faces registers horror and a sort of gut-instinct repulsion, but when she blinks – he’s gone.

She looks around. Sees nothing. Hears nothing.

How’s about some denial? Denial’s good.

Sharon walks back inside, at decidedly her normal speed.

INT. HANNAH’S ROOM – MORNING

Hannah turns over. Reaches for Bert. Opens her eyes.

There’s no Bert, and the blankets are… DAMP?

She gets up – it’s freaking cold – the carpet is also DAMP.

She looks around – no apparent reason for dampness.

HANNAH

Berty?

INT. HALLWAY – MORNING

Hannah peeks into the open laundry room.

HANNAH

Bert?

She looks into her mother’s bedroom –

HANNAH

(whispering)

Berty Bert?

She puts the door back at exactly the same spot it was before, careful to match literal inches between door and jam.

INT. KITCHEN – MORNING

Hannah opens lower cupboards, moving faster, a definite flavor of panic in her voice now.

HANNAH

Bert, are you hiding?

Sharon crosses to the front door, behind her.

HANNAH

Mom! Wait!

SHARON (O.S.)

Gotta go to work hun!

She quickly closes the door behind her.

EXT. DRIVEWAY – MORNING

Sharon rushes to the car, opens the door –

– THUD. The door STOPS, halfway open, and bounces back a little, as if it hit something.

She looks down… and there’s TWO LITTLE FOOTPRINTS in the snow. Two little footprints, right there, positioned to explain why a car door would hit a solid object – except there’s nobody there.

She stares at it for a second. Processing…

VIOLENTLY SHOVES the door open, and looks back down –

– the footprints are gone.

She gets in, starts the car, pulls out.

At the very edge of the property, right up against the street, are TWO LITTLE FOOTPRINTS in the snow, as if they’re watching her leave.

[Tully Archer]

Hi, I’m doing Supernatural Horror. Also, I have some extra free time right now so aside from one person who wants to be my partner, let me know if you just want an additional feedback on your sample and I will happily do that. Mine’s going up a little later today.

Cheers, everyone!

Tully

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Key Business Decisions

What I learned doing this assignment is that I’m not as terribly far off as I thought? Maybe?

GENRE: Supernatural horror.

TITLE: Unconditional.

CONCEPT: An eleven year old girl faces off against a violent ghost without the help of her mother, who is abusive and neglectful and if anything making the situation worse.

AUDIENCE: Anybody who had a shit childhood. Probably millennials, who are trying to have standards but feel like there’s no guidance to navigate them. I’d say both older quadrants.

BUDGET: $5 mil or so.

LEAD CHARACTERS: Hannah, an intelligent but always fearful little girl. Her mother Sharon, darkly funny and sometimes stressed as shit to remind us that she’s also human, but mostly a toxic abusive evil asshole.

JOURNEY / CHARACTER ARC: Hannah learns to let go of her urges to protect and parent her mother, through the journey of the haunting stuff revealing to her just how far down things can go and her mother still doesn’t give a shit. She’d assumed she could love and serve her enough to be loved one day, but here she is at the end of the movie about to die and it’s still not enough. So she chooses to live, which can only be done by leaving.

OPENING / ENDING: Hannah clinging to the one positive thing in her life, her cat Bert. Who is later murdered by the ghost. Ending, she’s putting together a little memorial shadow box for him, with the gentle supportive help of the two women who have taken her in, the psychic sisters Sharon hired and then promptly fired in act two when they showed more concern for Hannah than Sharon.

What could I do to make it more marketable? Jeez, fewer cats, that would lower the budget quite a bit. And choosing a decade to flash back to that is less expensive than the 70’s, since it doesn’t super matter when he died.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Specialty – Supernatural Horror

I know it said watch two of the TOP movies, but I know I’m going to analyze many more films this way and was curious SO, instead for the second movie I watched a bad one. Wow!!!!

Title: The House Of The Witch

How it delivered on Genre Conventions:

PURPOSE: It was scary if you aren’t thrown off by people behaving like idiots or there not being any rules to this. So, I was not scared.

ISOLATION: It closed all the doors and windows, bada bing bada boom.

DEATH: Everyone died different, this witch has zero MO.

MONSTER/VILLAIN: A witch, though no clear motives, no clear reason why the goal they eventually reveal to us couldn’t have been accomplished ages ago, why she needed these particular teenagers I still do not know.

HIGH TENSION: Not really, it was pretty clear they were all gonna die, so I already know the ending.

DEPARTURE FROM REALITY: Sure, a witch, some hallucinations, bizarre injury and death, people staring at things they have no logical reason to know are going to be significant to the “plot” later, people guessing stuff out of thin air, people finding the one letter they didn’t know they needed in a room full of books without knowing they needed to find anything in particular, lots of departures.

MORAL STATEMENT: None. Barely even “don’t break into houses”.

Outline of the movie: Some teens go into a house to party and/or bang and one by one they’re murdered in various ways until the last chick is murdered and for some reason that’s the critical mass of murders by which the ghost of the witch is able to come back to the living and kill some cops on her way out. Mokay.

A HILARIOUSLY different experience than watching a good one, once we have a clearer set of things we’re intentionally looking for! Very fun. 🙂

P.S. I just realized there were two entire characters who served zero purpose. LOL.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by  Tully Archer.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Specialty – Supernatural Horror

What I learned from doing this assignment is that holy crap, I asked those questions for every scene using the outline function of Microsoft Word so it counted them and there were only FIFTY SCENES. I need to do this exercise a bunch more times because that number is WAY smaller than I was expecting. Is Demonic the exception or the rule?? Am I overcomplicating everything for myself??? LOL

Title: Demonic

How it delivered on Genre Conventions:

PURPOSE: I wasn’t terribly scared that often but there was a lot of sneaking around dark hallways at night, holding a knife in her house at night, trying to find a friend in the forest at night, creepy stuff that’s easy to shoot and you can’t help but feel a little tense about.

ISOLATION: Yeah it was mostly psychological until the battle scene which happened in an abandoned sanitorium. The isolation of having a mother who just murdered twenty four people, the isolation of thinking maybe demons are real, stuff like that.

DEATH: Not actually a lot of that, a couple deaths in dreams/visions but we didn’t see much or feel threatened by it much.

MONSTER/VILLAIN: A demon who goes after one person for decades and also messes with the people around them. Since possessed mom has been in a coma, it has been stuck in her mind, surrounded by mom’s memories of the main character Carly, since of course mom loved her, so it becomes obsessed with Carly. The exorcists show up and make a bit of a mess, giving it an opportunity to go and GET Carly.

HIGH TENSION: It was… competent. Or I’m a sociopath LOL.

DEPARTURE FROM REALITY: Demons always do this, and they did a good job with the fact that you can’t tell just anybody that you think your mom’s crimes might have been coz a demon. But the science stuff was basically laughable.

MORAL STATEMENT: I honestly couldn’t tell you what this was, if there was one.

Outline of the movie: Carly gets a text from old friend Martin, who tells her that her very estranged mother Angela is in a coma. We find out Angela has been in prison for twenty years, for a mass murder. Scientist guy says they can put Carly INSIDE her mother’s MIND, with this technology, but once inside Angela tells her to go. The second time, creepy stuff happens and Carly sees a demonic figure in there. Carly and Martin grew up with Sam, who shows up creepy in a dream Carly has, and when she wakes Carly finds out Sam has gone missing. Martin’s like hey I did all this research, you called me crazy way back when but like it’s a demon and those scientists are exorcists, and you are NOT going to go get Sam because it is 100% a trap. They both go, and it is a trap. Sam dies in a fire, Martin gets tortured by the demon who took one of the priests. Mom chooses to die now that she’s free of the demon. Carly gets possessed but stabs herself with a special Catholic knife, demon dies, Carly wakes up in hospital with Martin bringing her flowers. Carly visits grave of mother she now understands was never evil.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by  Tully Archer.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s LinkedIn Profile Is Amazing!

What I learned doing this assignment is that LinkedIn industry categories are weird. LOL.

I added skills, I’m going to get some friends to swap recommendations and endorsements with, I added a script as a “Project”. Onwards!

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Credibility Is Going Up!

What I learned from doing this assignment is that I am starting from zero. LOL.

CREDIBILITY CHECKLIST:

1. I have a sample, it delivers on genre, it could dial back on budget.

2. I have none of these.

3. At least the top results are me, but, nothing to do with my being a professional.

4. I just got on LinkedIn BUT, a friend has tons of people, including producers.

5. I have none of these. Unless you count a scholarship to Writer’s Bootcamp (middle of).

6. I have none of these.

7. I have none of these.

8. I have judged a film festival a couple times, but it itself has no credibility LOL, so tiny.

THE PLAN:

1. I’m going to go through everyone in my well-connected friend’s LinkedIn roster, and connect with all the producers.

2. I’m going to clean up my online presence; there’s an abandoned blog, stuff like that.

3. I’m going to get some good photos to put up. If that’s possible LOL self burn.

[Tully Archer]

Tully’s Projects and Insights

Finished: UNCONDITIONAL: (horror): After moving into a haunted house with her abusive mother, an 11-year-old girl must deal with the supernatural threat all alone, before the jealous entity destroys them both. Budget: 1-5 Million.

Idea: PICKET FENCES: (horror/comedy): A man who can’t stand up to his parents buys his first house and discovers it’s haunted. He tries to live around the ghost, but it’s messing with his life – he used to be great at one night stands but now he’s striking out when the girls see a transparent old man weeping at the kitchen table. He tries to flip the house, but the ghost won’t let him renovate. Then he meets a woman on a war path, who seems to do nothing BUT stand up to her parents. They fall in love, they learn from each other, they’re dorks together, the intended tone is fairly madcap. They help the ghost move on and he learns to tell his parents “no” after the final hurdle of them not approving of her. Budget: Less than 1 Million.

My favorite thing I learned from the audio is that there are five to ten thousand producers at a given time who are the target market for me right now, and that in a two year cycle all of them will have needed to hire a writer at some point. This is a numbers game. I just need to write good scripts, be professional, and – I’m really looking forward to the lesson on how to make and efficiently USE a network. But that’s all very doable, so if I just keep going I WILL be successful.

[Tully Archer]

1. Tully Archer.

2. Two features, I think four shorts, and I’m seriously considering two TV ideas. Currently outlining a third feature.

3. As part of my recent decision to go pro, this class and the other class I’m taking and the general butt-in-chair-ability that I’m working on will lead to me making a living of this within a year.

4. There were TWO recent decisions, the other was to get healthy, also within a year; my brother and I are going to do the Ely Marathon in September of 2023.

[Tully Archer]

1. Tully Archer.

2. I agree to the terms of this release form.

3. GROUP RELEASE FORM

As a member of this group, I agree to the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Tully Archer]

Solid! 🙂

[Tully Archer]

This sounds really fun. 🙂 I’m so curious, what makes them get in a portal and come to Earth in the first place?

[Tully Archer]

I love this one!

[Tully Archer]

I love the link here between confidence and not being as swayable by darkness. Nice!

[Tully Archer]

This is a great arc, I can’t wait to see it!

[Tully Archer]

I love this very strong journey!

[Tully Archer]

Noice, noice, I’m very curious what Jane wants? You said she’s torn between that and something else, what is that?

[Tully Archer]

Oooh, this sounds like a very strong triangle situation!

[Tully Archer]

Thank you!! 🙂

[Tully Archer]

LOL revenge rarely goes the way we want it to! 🙂

[Tully Archer]

Okay so we’re sort of popping back and forth equally?

[Tully Archer]

That sounds SO fun, is it meant to be a sort of comedic adventure?

[Tully Archer]

I love it, I just have one question so I can understand: what do you mean by “give up their sovereignty”? Like in a legal sense, philosophical sense… I’m currently unable to picture any person or entity going “you’ve convinced me, I’m going to GIVE UP MY SOVEREIGNITY”… like, what does that LOOK like? What do THEY think is happening?

I love how complex and stakes-y it is!!

[Tully Archer]

Thanks!!

[Tully Archer]

I love a fish out of water and finding out there are other dimensions is a great version of that! Cool cool

[Tully Archer]

That’s a bummer but it’s good to have movies about this kind of thing. Best of success to you and this!

[Tully Archer]

But won’t she also have never been born at all? Again, sorry, not trying to poke holes just trying to understand. 🙂

[Tully Archer]

Hi Ron,

I’m curious about your dirty cop who isn’t afraid of getting caught. Is that because the entire department is so corrupt that nobody who might be the one to catch him would care? So… it’s not really “caught” per se?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Mahee,

This is neat. I’m curious, what did the supervillain have against this guy’s dad?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Will,

This sounds delightful. I’m curious, is it meant to be animated?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Claudia,

This seems so solid. I’m curious, is this a contained thing? Like does it mostly happen just in the hospital?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Natasha,

I love that your sister is your antagonist. Does she get her revenge?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Tony,

This is such a unique concept. I’m curious WHEN most of the story takes place?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Claudia,

This sounds neat. I’m curious, who’s the third in the triangle?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Will,

This sounds fun. I’m curious, did they come to Earth out of sheer benevolence or are they fleeing something?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Mahee,

This sounds fun. I’m curious about the world – does he know his journey will be “interdimensional” when he starts (is it a known part of his world) or does he discover all that after he starts?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Natasha,

This sounds cool. In the true story, did she find her sister?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Ron,

This sounds cool. Who is Derrick in all this? If the cop thinks he CAN take the C.I.’s place, I’m imagining that he’s sort of In The Drug World?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Tony,

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I don’t understand how killing her vampire ancestor would PREVENT her living as a vampire?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Anna,

So the dolphins are doing the attacks? Sorry if this is a dumb question, but you said “by dolphins”… is this a comedy thing?

[Tully Archer]

Okay here goes on the feedback questions:

1. Is the set up absolutely clear and does it make it easy to move into the ten pages?

Yes, definitely. I totally understood what I needed to dive in.

2. Did the ten pages deliver on the genre?

Drama? Yes… as far as I know. Full disclosure, it’s not my favorite genre. So I do have a question, and I think it’s a tone question – are you going for more of a “dramedy” feel? Because the stuff with pizza guy read funny to me. If so, great job!!

3. Was the writing highly compelling?

Sort of. This is a grains of salt thing, which makes sense, suicide is a very sensitive topic so everyone’s going to have a different take, but… for me, until I know WHY someone wants to kill themselves, I reserve my emotions. That may sound weird. Basically, I don’t know if it’s compelling YET because I don’t know the backstory leading up to this. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing? Especially if this is the FIRST ten pages? I assume that information comes out at some point in the script. 🙂

Good job!!

[Tully Archer]

Thanks 🙂 🙂

Oof yeah maybe not the best detail for a writing sample – reading the whole script you’d understand that we’re seeing William’s early life leading up to his death at about eight years old. I should probably fix that. 🙂

It’s winter break, she’s between schools, hence home when Sharon’s out.

“Denial’s good” that’s me being cute… I do that LOL

Thanks for the feedback!!! I’m gonna go hunt around for yours, can’t remember if you said it was up yet but I’ll just keep checking. 🙂 Have a great day!!!

[Tully Archer]

I’m still down, we’ll just be behind on this one thing, it’s all good! 🙂

[Tully Archer]

Thanks, and GREAT note especially about William in the set up – I would never have put together that black and white is how cats see the world ROFL 🙂 🙂

[Tully Archer]

Okay here goes on the feedback questions:

1. Is the set up absolutely clear and does it make it easy to move into the ten pages?

Yeah I think so. It sort of runs the danger of sounding like it’s a musical version of “The Ring”, but maybe that’s what you want? But I did feel totally prepared to start reading. However, a “Kyro” appeared and I feel like that should have been in your intro as well.

2. Did the ten pages deliver on the genre?

Totally. It *felt* like a solve-a-mystery-on-a-supernatural-clock style horror, like “The Ring”, like “Countdown”, like “Final Destination”. The arm hallucination was scary. “YourBiggestFan9” felt super ominous. Yup yup.

3. Was the writing highly compelling?

Sure, she wants to solve the mystery of her sister. The dialogue felt decently natural. I’m not experienced with reading only ten pages of something but it certainly had all the elements of compelling, yeah.

I think it’s a good job 🙂

[Tully Archer]

At the top of your screen if you’re reading this will be “Forums” in blue. Right next to that is “Your Screenwriting Classes.” If you go there, it should take you through all the lessons. I haven’t been receiving emails since the first couple, I’ve been getting the lessons and instructions for the assignments in there.

[Tully Archer]

What emailed assignment?

[Tully Archer]

Hi Stephanie,

Sure, absolutely! Yeah my ghost thing is like half drama, I gotchoo! 🙂

[Tully Archer]

Horror here, sample going up a little later today. Partners?

[Tully Archer]

I liked what you came up with for genre conventions!

[Tully Archer]

Great analysis, I love that movie!!