A Screenplay Exercise

To get us started today, let's take something that we already know and put it in a new context to create something fun and vibrant on the page.

Here's an exercise from Zacuto.com:

The Superhero Effect

Pick your favorite superhero and write an everyday scene for them – IN COSTUME. Maybe they have to go to the dentist or the supermarket. Maybe they’re appealing a parking ticket or attending a child’s recital.

How is everyone around them reacting to them and what do they do about it?

Example: Wonder Woman at the library, or Xena taking her costume to the dry cleaner.

MONDAY we'll be working on your DREAM SCREENPLAY scenario, so this weekend, jot some notes in answer to these questions:

1. If someone offered me a movie deal today, what would I want my film to be about?

2. What might I brainstorm about title, theme, characters?

3. What actors would I hope to get to play my characters?

4. Who would be my intended audience?

5. Since the FIRST SCENE is hugely important, what MOOD do I want to create in my audience with the first scene?

After you finish those ideas, you can also start reviewing for our final exam, which will have a section on every one of our units:

Point of view

Character

Setting and Description

Plot and Pacing

Dialogue

Craft (what makes good writing)
Revision (via your notes on all three stories)

Some things to review for above:

--What elements allow us to flesh out a character?

--What are the points of view? What is vantage point?

--How can setting and description enhance a story?

--What is show, don't tell?

--What is the eight-point-story arc?

--How can one avoid redundancy? Cliche? 

--What is proper dialogue form? How can I study it?

--What are some of the mistakes people make in writing dialogue?

   

Use this blog as an aid to dialogue: http://www.mitchellbogatz.com/blog/2015/3/21/common-dialogue-mistakes

Welcome back!

I hope you had a great break.

Start us off with a quick Haiku about your vacation, and then we'll move on to:

SCREENWRITING.

Generating Plot. After sharing your mini-plots generated by the "first line" choices, listen to some advice from a master plotter: Stephen King.

Then consider King's advice and use a piece of it to generate further work on a plot.

Plot in Poetry

Consider the poem "The Migration of the Grey Squirrels." In a few stanzas, William Howitt told an entire saga about squirrels in a kingdom threatened by the encroachment of pigs, then has them travel in search of a new home, pursued by predators, until they heroically crossed a stream and found their promised land.

Choose your own animal and write a "plot poem" which tells a story. Consider our eight point story arc as a way to guide you.

https://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/miscellaneous/mhowitt-squirrels.htm

What Makes a Scene Exciting?

What makes a scene exciting? What makes a plot move forward so that it does not become boring to the reader or viewer?

We will discuss these questions today in PLOT AND PACING.

Today, along with our DIALOGUE POEM, we will try this activity to help with rhyme and meter.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold,

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay.

Please read the short Robert Frost poem with the title "Nothing Gold Can Stay." Then read it again. Consider its thematic possibilities, and different ways that we interpret the word "gold."  What is Frost ultimately saying?

THEN, in an appreciation of Frost's style, try your own version of the poem.  Each line, aside from the title and the final line (which is the title again) should be six syllable rhyming couplets.

EXAMPLE:

NOTHING SWEET IS BAD

My chocolate cake is good

It’s happy-making food.

My frosted cupcake’s fun

When the long day is done.

So sweets go to the sweet

Deserving of a treat

So sugar makes us glad:

Nothing sweet is bad.

NOW you try!  Count your lines and choose only true rhymes.

OUR FAVORITE SETTINGS

SMALL TOWNS
    --everyone knows everyone
    --if an event happens, everyone knows it
    --town gossip
    --town drunk

HOGWARTS CASTLE
    --Diagon Alley with shops and wizard clothing, products
    --Familiar--school-like setting, returning after summer, stern teachers
    --Different--witches, wizards, odd clothing, strange courses, monsters, moving staircases
    --NEW WORLD--we investigate the castle WITH the characters, every year we learn
       new things about it
    --Common rooms--students gathering in houses (mysterious paintings/passwords)
    --Quidditch

THE GIVER
     --Everything is the same
     --Scary,  Dystopian, but compelling
     --Big Brother--type setting
     --Future

THE SECRET HISTORY--college campus
     --Intense snowstorms
     --Isolaton
     --Ivy-covered stone walls--academic setting
     --Aura of mystery, suspense

DIVERGENT
--Factions in various  parts of CHICAGO
--Characters must belong to one or another
--Factions reveal description, allow reader to know characters
--We are drawn in by finding our PLACE in the setting
--in FUTURE

THE LION, THE WITCH, and THE WARDROBE

--Fantasy
--Escape
--Child goes through wardrobe into another world
--Time stops in real world so no one realizes someone was gone.