[VICTORIA Brooks]

Subject: Victoria Brook’s Basic Structure Version 1

What I’ve learned doing this assignment is I have to restructure my entire script as my current script’s inciting incident is about 1/3 way in. I was told that’s the good part then it falls apart after that. It’s also good to have options. The more options I generated the more possibilities I saw to carve out something entirely different from the same situation.

Everything Changes

Logline: Ambitious, always-in-control tech sales superstar gets cancer. No longer in control. Facing death. Starts living. Everything changes.

Main Conflict: A successful control freak deals with something she can’t control: cancer

Opening: Emily prepares for an awards ceremony along with her boyfriend, Hugh. She’s interrupted by a horrible case of diarrhea which spurs a fight through the door. <div>

Inciting Incident: The
ongoing diarrhea is cancer

By page 10, you know
what the movie is about: Cancer
will change everything about her life.

The first turning point at
end of Act 1: Rewind to how she got
to that moment
Mid-Point: Leaving her job and dealing with the fallout of chemo.

The second turning point at
end of Act 2: Her boyfriend leaves

Crisis: Alone with no one but her dogs, crying
and vomiting unable to shit and no one to call besides her too busy Dr’s
nurses.

Climax: She cries
silently over the woman across from her dying of cancer and decides to
embrace her second chance.

Resolution: Starting over on a trip around the
country.

REWORKED AND BRAINSTORMED:

Main Conflict: A successful control freak deals with something she can’t control: cancer

Opening: Emily prepares for an awards ceremony along with her boyfriend, Hugh. She’s interrupted by a horrible case of diarrhea which spurs a fight through the door.

Main Purpose: Demonstrate the good and bad of her life. Different options:

Since
the movie uses voiceover, she could start off sitting on the toilet,
happy. Her boyfriend pounds the door which starts the passive-aggressive fight. We’ll revisit the toilet near the end. Bathroom philosophizing, I
mean what else are you gonna do there. Watch TikTok? </div>

Clips of her
success/pre-cancer life intercut with her Dr. visits with no information provided to her and her resulting frustration.
Emily predicts how she’s going to close someone, then does it, smiling a knowing smile back at her colleague. She doubles over and runs out of the room as the client is signing papers. Her nurse calls back while she’s on the toilet, while a coworker makes rude comments in the next stall.

Inciting Incident: The ongoing diarrhea is cancer. Different
options:

The doctor breaks the news to her.

A cancer sniffing dog sits
down in front of her and starts barking.
The handler tells her.

A colleague tells her about his 80-year grandpa who had similar issues and found it out was cancer.

Donated blood only to be told that they can’t use it because it indicates cancer.

Searched her genealogy to find out cancer runs in her family.

Her boyfriend jokes that she probably has cancer. One more reason to hate his ass. Especially when he turns out to be correct.

A person reads her tarot and gives her an ominous warning by pulling the death card.

By page 10, you know what the movie is about: Cancer will change everything about her life.

The first turning point at end of Act 1: Rewind to how she got to that moment

Option
1:

The
binge partying lifestyle
The trashy fast food
The late nights studying
(or working) with takeout
Graduating the university
Repeat with title overs
20’s, 30’s, the 40s

Option 2:

Toxic
relationships
Workaholicism
Constant disappoint with
fighting her heart to be responsible
The push-pull of her love
relationship with Hugh and the resulting heartache.

Mid-Point: Leaving her job
and dealing with the fallout of chemo.

Option
1: Stages of grief demonstrated in different situations

Option
2:

The
push-pull of working while chemo
Weird reactions
Dealing with the physical
symptoms
Making sense of the
financial fallout
Bad sex and tiring
arguments.

The second turning point at end of Act 2. <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Different Options:

Her boyfriend leaves or worse yet,

He stays and resents her
even though he treats her like shit, he enjoys the public admiration as
he cheats on her and generally treats her poorly in private.

He creates
“accidents” and makes the disgusting food that she won’t eat
then plays the victim that he does “everything” and she doesn’t
appreciate all he does for her.

Crisis: Alone with no one but her dogs who stare in concern, crying, vomiting, unable to shit and no one to call besides her too busy Dr’s nurses, who are tired of hearing from her. She tries to find a
therapist but no one will return her calls. She sits on the toilet with tears streaming and attacks the toilet roll, creating TP snow, only to be left without TP because the rest of the TP is in the storage room.

Climax: Emily meets another patient who reminds her of how great her life is because she has a second chance. Emily runs to the bathroom to cry for the woman dying of cancer. She embraces her second chance and finds a well of inner strength, probably with a mirror scene. I love mirror
scenes.

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

She starts over on a trip around the country. Taking pictures of unique bathrooms of the places she visits.
She comes back to her prior life, with a completely different attitude, which sets off an entirely new adventure as people react unexpectedly to the new her.
She sits on the toilet…happy.

[VICTORIA Brooks]

What I learned: Condensing the story down to high-level generalities and what to leave in, and take out.

Everything Changes

Logline: Ambitious, always-in-control tech sales superstar gets cancer. No longer in control. Facing death. Starts living. Everything changes.

Everything Changes

One-pager by Victoria Brooks

EMILY LETOURNEAU (40s), an ambitious, controlling sales tech star, suffers from an ongoing bout of diarrhea, between her non-stop go-go-go lifestyle. Her significant other, HUGH, is a British ex-military turned US redneck – a middle-aged fuckboy who has never outgrown his delusions that he’s God’s gift to women. He lies as if his girlfriend doesn’t work in sales and can’t see through his BS.

Her diarrhea keeps getting worse despite multiple doctor visits and throwing prescriptions and tests her to see what works. Finally, her primary care physician tells her she needs to see a GASTROENTEROLOGIST.

He tells her they need to do a colonoscopy. She questions his decision because it seems like there should be a number of steps from a fully clothed initial five-minute conversation to putting her under anesthesia to stick a camera up her butt. It unearths a tumor. She needs surgery.

She does what everyone in this day and age does at this point. Becomes a medical expert via Google which keeps pulling up the word – cancer, along with a number of other deadly diseases.

Meets with Dr. Grim, the grim reaper personified, for a post-surgery follow-up. He breaks the news – cancer. All of the affected tissue has been removed but she’ll need chemo to get anything in her bloodstream they can’t see, for prevention’s sake.

Emily goes back to work and shares her diagnosis. She met with unexpected reactions. Trying to juggle work and chemo leads to crazy chaotic situations. More montages of the obstacle course of medical tests and corresponding side effects. She takes leave to focus on her health.

Hugh moves out and leaves her. Lonely, she tries to focus on preparing for a new future that seems indescribably far away. When day to day feels like torture, six months can feel like a decade.

She sits with a woman with cancer, Stage 4. The woman’s likeness is uncanny, like Emily’s sister from another mother. She shares with Emily her perspective about life, death, and the power of choice. Emily, staring at what could have been her, cries silently with a mixture of relief combined with grief. She has a second chance.

Emily trains for a new career, researching the digital nomad lifestyle. She learns to live courageously and authentically. She celebrates ending chemo by going on one helluva road trip because life is meant to be lived. We see the multi-state map, she throws her bag in the back of the car and rides off into the sunset. She’s going on an Eat-Experience and god willing, Love tour. The credits provide a montage of her trips to different states.

She meets a hot Italian man at one of the trendy restaurants in NYC. Her second chance at a new beginning. Or at least part of her new adventure. Cut to Black – credit roll. The END.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by  VICTORIA Brooks.

[VICTORIA Brooks]

1. Name? Victoria Brooks

2. How many scripts you’ve written? A couple of features, a work-in-progress, a pilot and series bible, and an uncounted number of shorts (although my computer is probably keeping track).

3. What you hope to get out of the class? A rewritten script and some strategic “tools” to add to my writer’s arsenal.

4. Something unique, special, strange or unusual about you? I’m a part-Asian, part-Caucasian former army brat, daughter of an alcoholic, who grew up on welfare after my parents divorced. I lived in “the ghetto” around gangs until I became a welfare mom at 18. After a friend’s violent death, I relocated and started over. I left everything I knew behind to start over with a dream of becoming a middle-class professional. Yes, you read that correctly. Not a writer. After all, I figured, only one of them seemed to make any money – Stephen King. So I wanted the American dream – a middle-class professional. Maybe I’d have 2 or 3 kids, a house in the ‘Burbs, and a crossover SUV. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Business with an emphasis in Marketing. I’m here to tell you if you aim low enough, dreams do come true. I’m finally a middle-class working professional. The kids never came and I don’t really like the upkeep of a house. It wasn’t quite what I expected, but then reality never matches up to the dream. Onward…there’s new mountains to climb…

Once upon a time, I loved writing. I still love reading unexpectedly profound masterpieces and reveling in people’s journey to buck the system and find success on their own terms. That and a series of clicks led me here. Hello. It’s nice to meet you. -Victoria Brooks