10PTT: When Yesterday Was Tomorrow by Daryl Zer0

[Daryl Zer0]

Wow! My eyes are wide open because of what you've done Pitch. I don't think I will ever look at anything I write quite the same. You are a very good teacher. I'm going to have to do a little work and reconstruct my logline and get back to you on that.

What you did here reminded me of a critique a former adjunct professor of music at Yale gave to a student at a piano recital I went to a few years ago. She was playing a grade 10 level piece of piano music by Brahms. She obviously hadn't been playing it long (but still better than I ever could).

The former professor gets up and he starts describing how a handful, only a handful of notes SHOULD be played. He went on and on and on for what seemed like half an hour about these few notes. Then he got up and played those notes EXACTLY like he said. I couldn't believe he did it. It was amazing. He pulled a Yoda on her (and me) that day.

Thank you for opening my mind to the possibilities of the logline and writing in general too.

As far as the antagonist in my story goes, I know I haven't really personified one here. The only other people I have as potential antagonists, are a character named Cheryl and a Cop named Carol. Cheryl from the EPA BRIEFLY puts the kibosh on my protagonist's sister coming through the field to see her mom. And Carol the cop briefly hunts down Megan thinking she killed her husband. Megan was coming there to save him but was too late.

I tried to set up my antagonist as a changing one. At first the antag is if she doesn't come back through the field to her reality from the other reality, she's worried the manager from the laundromat will bust her ass for loitering; and/or the handsome guy coming out of the bathroom will bust her ass for stealing a sock (she takes as a trinket). I know this antag seems weak and I will examine to improve.

The second time she goes into this field into another reality, she learns her machine IS a time machine. She just thought it was a transporter before. If she doesn't come through when she does, her sister could come to her and they'd be trapped in that time forever. Antag this time being getting back to her own time before sister comes. A second antag that's not a specific person.

The third time Megan goes to the other reality her antag is really the side effects of going into another reality. She wants to over come them after her brain surgery to see her mom and the man loves again. Now she knows it's a time machine AND an alternate reality where her mom and former lover are still alive.

When Kate, her sister goes into the other reality to see her mom, the antag for Kate is Cheryl from the EPA. Cheryl hates Kate and says I'm shutting the project down because Megan didn't sign some forms for her. But really Cheryl's doing it to get even with Kate for embarassing her at the banquet. Niles quickly puts the kibosh on Cheryl's plan.

When Kate goes into the other reality, she takes on the status of co-protagonist with her sister Megan in order to complete the heart transplantation with Megan assisting. The antag here becomes their mom's medical issues, conquering her own (Kate's) emotions over being mad at her sister Megan, in order to save her mother in surgery.

I didn't want to do a more traditional way of making the antag one person if I could help it. I wanted the antag to change. But I'm going to work on the changing antagonists too. I may change to be one or a few people later for antagonists. Maybe the antagonists I have in my script aren't the usual suspects but I want to try to work at playing those types of antagonists up if I can.

Thanks again for everyone's help. I'm finding it invaluable.