Category: Mastery Journal

Premise: Fear creates doubt.

Protagonist’s Inner Journey: Jennifer goes from fearful to excited

Protagonist’s Goals: Jennifer wants to learn to swim

Antagonist’s Goal: Troy wants  to impress everyone

Antagonist’s Opportunity for change: Troy has the opportunity to go from unsympathetic to helpful

Jennifer Overview:

Jennifer is The Mediator type in the Enneagram personality test. She is instinctual by nature due to helping raise her younger siblings. Her father pushed her into athletics from an early age, so she always values and feels the most comfortable as part of a team. To that end, she avoids disappointing others, especially those close to her. She hardly does anything for herself.

Strengths: Although this is a weakness, it is also one of her strengths. She is able to help end conflicts between others. She is able to sense how others “tick” and get them on the same page without being part of the conflict itself.  She is also very dedicated to her athletic pursuits. She was a star player in soccer, basketball, and softball. She is very observant of behaviors which allows her to avoid most conflicts. Her observation skills gives her instinctual skills to know how to communicate with others on a personal level, despite avoiding conflict.

Weaknesses: Jennifer has a hard time saying no to others. Even when she doesn’t want to help. She feels guilty about not helping others and when she gives in, she becomes angry at herself. She has a hard time saying no to her parents, especially her father. She is also adverse to conflicts, preferring to stay in her lane. She handles conflict poorly and won’t stand up for herself. She won’t participate in arguments, but will voice her opinions individually if she feels strongly about the subject.

Fears: Jennifer almost drown in a pool when her father fell asleep. She has been scared of drowning ever since and avoids the pool, beach, even water parks. This fear is irrational to her dad, who keeps pressuring her to conquer her fears as she has missed family events.

Occupation: Jennifer works as a guidance counselor where she gets to help others. She also coaches middle school girls soccer and basketball. She is well received at work and has won Support staff of the year, twice.Some of the middle school children use her to get out of class, but generally they respect and lover her. She has put students before herself for their protection.

Family: Jennifer is loved by her siblings and parents. Her siblings go to her for support, but want her to stand up for herself against their dad. Her dad is dying from lung cancer after being a marathon runner his whole life. He loves her and only pushed her because he didn’t know he would have sons. Her brothers did not go into sports which has cause them and their older sister to become rebellious. Their dad sees Jennifer as the most respectful one and she ends up keeping both sides from falling too far in their arguments. Her mother loves her and Jennifer picked up most of her mothers traits growing up.

Love: Jennifer has had a bad dating record, abusive boyfriends, lazy boyfriends, and has decided to take a break. She knew most of them would be bad, but hoped she could changed them because her dad changed from a womanizer to family man when her younger sister was born.  She is attracted to all races and doesn’t believe in dating just her race. She does want her lover to be a catholic.

Closing: Jennifer is struggling with her fathers cancer, trying to to stand up for herself, and not looking for love until she deals with both issues.

I hope you are all doing Terrific today!

Well, I’m a little late posting this, but I started my third course in my graduate program a week ago. Character Creation and Development is centered on creating characters that are engaging and drive the story.  One of the goals at the end of the course is to have a short film screenplay. The Full Sail film department is having an open submission, so our professor would like us to submit our screenplay.

The strategy used to build characters is focused on-premise. In other mediums, the premise is similar to the theme. However, in this course, we will be diving deeper to prove the premise is correct and the driving force behind what and why the protagonist and antagonist do what they do.

We read several articles on writing premises. We also watched a sci-fi short film to give us a better idea of what to focus on when writing our own, no matter the genre. It is important to note that a short film is different from a feature film. We have to focus on the story, no subplots, no additional characters, only a few locations. The screenplay will only be 8 pages in length.

Another goal of this course is workshopping. We will be reading each others premises and scripts over the next few weeks. This is to get us to feel as if we are in the writing room of television studios, film, etc.  I see value in this, as it gives us the chance to become better editors and learn how to work with other writers.

Our assignment was to create a character dossier on a protagonist and antagonist from one of three premises we created during the week. I decided on a phone conversation between a couple who see time differently. After critiques, my premise and character motivations have changed.

I’m very excited about this course and can’t wait to finish my first film screenplay. Thank you for following me on this adventure.

Be Terrific!