I hope you’re already dreaming up an inciting incident for your favorite premise! I know I am. But before we do that, we need to know who our characters are. Yesterday, I outlined the hero and heroine of the Talk Show Host and the Teacher. Today, let’s take a look at the Actress and the Park Ranger Who is our Actress? Our Actress has worked hard to get where she is. She was a good girl, a hard worker growing up, and her parents put her through school. She moved to Hollywood to follow her dream, and was an overnight success. She married an A-list star and life seemed to be going her direction…until she decided to make an indy film exposing the flesh-for-sale industry overseas…and the […]
Read the RestArchive | 1. Discover your story RSS feed for this section
A little background on the Talk Show Host and the Teacher
So, maybe it would help you know which way to vote if you knew who you were vote for. Here’s a bit of Background on our characters, using the simple WHO method for developing all the key pieces: Talk Show Host Who is she? She’s a foster child with a fractured past, always inventing herself. Always tried to be all things to all people. She never wants attention for herself, so she’s good at stepping outside herself, and highlights other people. She doesn’t know who she is, so it’s hard to be true to herself. She is only confident as an interviewer and celebrity. She has the way of getting the true story out of people. Exposing the lies. Combo of Geraldo and Oprah. But she really doesn’t know who […]
Read the RestThe Bomb in the Body: a lesson on Subplots
Okay, raise your hand out there if you watch ER or Grey’s Anatomy. It’s okay, no one can see you. And, not like I’m raising MY hand or anything, but hypothetically, let’s just say that if you are familiar with these particular medical (and I’m using that term a bit freely) dramas, then you know that they are really big long soap operas. Greys is, essentially, the on again, off again, hopefully on again (not that I would know) romance of Dr. Derrick McDreamy and Dr. Meredith Grey. Inside all this romance are the daily (read: episodic) events of a hospital in Seattle. What makes Grey’s kinda cute are the running monologues of the lead heroine, the thematic nuances she puts into the story, usually centered around the events of […]
Read the RestLayers verses Subplots – the truth exposed
One of my favorite teeny-bop movies is Chasing Liberty. Aside from the theme of the story – trying to keep a teenage girl (incidentally the president’s daughter) from misbehaving (if you know what I mean), it’s a cute story about the dilemma of a secret service agent to not fall in love with his assignment. Embedded in this tale is another tale – the romance of two secret service agents tracking above mentioned duo. Their story is what makes this movie such a delight – their banter, their eventual romance, their happy ending. It’s this extra story in a story that that gives the movie the extra sparkle that takes it from teeny-bop to good-enough-for-grownups. In short, the Subplot makes the movie. This week we’re going to talk about Subplots […]
Read the Rest
