Hello, my fellow artists! I am recapping my weekly experiences of the writing course I’m taking at the Sundance Collab. These recaps are a cool insight into the creative process and personal journey of building something from scratch. In this case, a feature film treatment.
Recap: Week 3. First, my causative routine is going great. The schedule that I have created has set me up for success with this course. This week was about the creation and exploration of the antagonist and other supporting characters in my protagonist’s world. Just like I did last week with my protagonist, I had to fill out the same character questionnaire for at least two more characters in my story. I chose the antagonist and the love interest. Keep reading below 🙂
In addition to filling out the character questionnaires, I also had to identify character qualities for my antagonist and love interest to create conflict and opposition with the protagonist. In other words, their assets and liabilities (like I also did last week for my protagonist.) There were certain qualities I was able to identify quickly, while others became placeholders. To get more clarity on these placeholders, I looked them up in different online dictionaries. I also looked at my protagonist’s qualities and asked myself, “What’s the opposite of these?” So if Luke (the working name of my protagonist…remember, I jokingly lamented last week that I’m bad with creating character names LOL) is reserved and shy, then Adam (the working name of my antagonist) is loud and cocky. Now I have Abbott and Costello. I have the beginnings of conflict. Keep reading below 🙂
I want to keep carving out my antagonist to make sure they are not bad just for the sake of being bad. In their mind, they are doing the right thing. They don’t think their actions are wrong. Keep reading below 🙂
I also wanted to share that I had to be willing to turn off “My Story Can Beat Up Your Story”. I’ve used this book by Jeffrey Alan Schechter since 2014, so I had some fear and nervousness of letting it go. But going into this course, I made a commitment to lean into this new teaching instead. I wanted to be open and present to a different approach. And it’s been going great! That being said, Jeffrey’s book has come in handy a couple of times as a reference point, a translation point, where I said to myself, “Oh, Jeffrey calls that the thematic synthesis. Oh, he calls that a compelling goal. I got it. It makes total sense in terms of what I’m learning now.” It’s like an actor having an established approach and then going into a new school to study. The new school teaches them about “moments” and the actor says, “Oh! A moment is like a beat. Got it.” Or the new school teaches them about “urgency” and the actor says, “Oh! Urgency is like picking up the pace. Got it.” So it’s been cool to hear some things in a different way that still translates and makes sense to me. Keep reading below 🙂
See you all next week. Week 4 will tackle story arcs, beginnings, middles, and ends, and story plot. And at some point, I’ll talk about office hours with our advisor.
Chasing The George 