Breaking GREAT

Lame pun, I know, I know.

ANYWAY, I was breaking a spec. story today. Was terrified of it. But last night, while I was falling asleep, I got this idea.

Every character on the show uses some kind of crutch. I wrote down their crutches on a little post-it without even turning on the nightstand light. But VOILA! I had the kernel of my story idea.

So today, I wrote a bunch of notes (a couple notebook pages, then a few computer pages). Mostly, those notes were all the things I WISH would happen on the show. Like, so-and-so should totally interact for once, because they have tons to do with one another but they're never in the same scene. Or, so-and-so should totally do this thing he ALWAYS does, but in front of a particular character, because that particular character would have an interesting/insightful take on it. Or, I wish so-and-so would catch so-and-so being lame, because she has her up on a freaking pedestal! Stuff like that.

Then, I wrote out an outline, that looked like this:

ACT 1 (5)
1. X and Y have a big fight. X gets hurt.
2. A helps B
3. C and D (and A)
4. L and M (couple? happy?)
5. J and Q (happy, not for long)

For all the acts. There were lots of blank spaces, and everything was pretty vague. Also, the "scenes" in a particular act are in no particular order. Because I'm a newbie, I also labeled the acts things like "Act 2 (Sh*t hits the fan)" or "Act 4 (BIG PLAN!)"

To fill in the blanks and to get more specific, I made a new document called "Character Arcs" and listed all the characters that'll be in this episode. Under each character, there is a line for each of the six acts of his/her story. (I'm still working on this).

I'm going to flesh out the character arcs, re-entwine them, and pump up the act outs.

And I'll have a solid outline! And it'll have everything in it that I WISH WISH WISH were on the actual show, because I think those things would be really interesting/good T.V./funny.

Hope this helps anyone else struggling through their rough drafts for the T.V. fellowship app. season :)