Exercise: Revisit your Draft Outline

Exercise: Revisit Your Draft Outline

Having spent some time away from my original draft and research, I have now returned with fresh eyes, keen to perfect my outline for submission for Assignment Two.  Having looked at my outline again as a whole, I am not sure it quite captures some of the complexities of the story.  I will therefore attempt to ‘unpack’ the story and subtext and compare them with the thoughts of Aristotle, Freytag, Polti and McKee.  My tutor also suggested that I should write a ‘C.V.’ for each character to enable to me to gain a further insight into how to draw them into the story.  The C.V.s of the leading characters can be found below: 

Sally Wenton

Born in Cornwall, Sally was home-schooled by her parents and received very little access to people outside her family of three.   Although extremely nurturing and caring, Sally’s parents very extremely overprotective and their Catholic values lead them to believe the world is full of sin and that their daughter should be kept away from temptation.   Passionately taught music by her mother, Sally eventually gained her exams and left to study at the University of Surrey.  Having very little access to youth culture, Sally initially found the stark change of physical and social environment very challenging, but eventually settled into a quiet and studious group on campus.  Sally thrived away from her parents and had her first opportunities to experiment with alcohol, sex and drugs.  However, Sally’s reserved and old-fashioned nature always prevented her from ‘going too far’.  Sally’s independence from her parents gave her a sense of freedom and opportunity and returning home for the long holidays filled her with dread. 

Blaine Peters

Born in Cornwall, Blaine lived with his parents and attended the local schools.  Blaine’s family life was very difficult when his mother left, causing his father to turn to alcohol.  Left as the sole carer of his brother at the age of 11, and often subject drunken abuse, Blaine began to seek help for his father and after family therapy, Blaine’s father quit alcohol and bought a small dairy farm as a ‘second chance’

A low achiever in his class at secondary school, Blaine left school at 16 with two GCSEs and worked with on his father’s dairy farm.  Despite his low achievement at school, Blaine is actually very intelligent, takes great interest in politics and has a great passion for popular music, mixing a range of songs and DJ-ing at local nightclubs.

Tara Michaels

Born in Denmark, mother of two Tara was born into an Army family, following her father to various places around the world in his role as a high-ranking officer in the Forsvaret.  Tara was a very intelligent child and took a keen interest in science, often teaching herself many complex theories.  Exposed to many horrific sights as a child, Tara had become accustomed to war and had ‘hardened’ in order to accustom herself to her surroundings, always emerging herself in education.  At the age of 17, Tara joined the Royal Danish Navy working in the Logistics Support Unit and worked her way up to a position of Commanding Officer on foreign aid missions.  On a mission to Cambodia, Tara witnessed a series of brutal murders which had unlocked many memories of her childhood, causing her to have a breakdown aged 25.  Whilst rehabilitating in London, Tara met her future husband, Dr Alan Michaels.  Later they had two children, Clasis and Benvist and lived in a large house in suburbs of London. 

Peter Ellison

Born in London, to Lord and Lady Ellison, Peter was raised by a series of ‘staff’ rarely seeing his parents, except for the occasion obligatory sightings at parties and functions.  As a child, Peter proved to be a savant, and had mastered four languages, learnt to play seven orchestral instrument to an expert level and memorised over 100 medical and scientific journals by his 8^th birthday.  Following a private education at the UK’s top schools and universities, Peter graduated with a Master in Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and was inundated with many lucrative job offers by the world top scientific organisations.  Peter began his own experimental sciences company, AdZishna Corporation, and began experimenting, in conjunction with military forces, the potential non-violent alternatives to weaponry, namely the experimentation in audio re-animation, causing all humans to be effectively frozen, but unharmed, upon hearing a given frequency progression.  At this time, studies into population growth across the world revealed some alarming realities about the future of mankind, sending Ellison into a downward spiral of depression.   Peter developed theories of mass genocide to ‘save the world’, causing the UN and the science community to distance themselves from him, deeming him a madman. 

Closing down all traces of AdZishna Corporation, Peter secretly kept his Audio-Reanimation research department open and developed an ‘off the grid’ space in which to continue his work.    Effectively disappearing from public eyes for 20 years, Peter reinvented his identity and took the name Geoffrey Soillen, beginning a career in the Conservative Party, working his way up the ranks until he was eventually elected as the Prime Minister in 2014.

Writing these brief descriptions of my main characters' pasts have really enabled me to further understand their personality, and therefore to reflect them within my story.  There are a number of stark contrasts within my characters, which I hope will provide a nice dramatic balance throughout the piece. 

Having gained this new information about my characters, I wanted to now explore the real basics of the overall theme, main story and underlying story.

The Overall Theme – Uniformity

I wanted the overall theme of this story to reflect the lack of individually in Pop Culture.  To highlight this I chose to narrow this down a little into the area of ‘pop’ music, especially focusing on the current ‘pop icons’ manufactured by large studios.  Of course, these studios are often run by the older generations, thus giving them the overall power to dictate what the younger generations trends and in turn, overall moral beliefs.  

For dramatic effect, my story goes to the extreme possibilities of this situation, but simplistically I want this piece to highlight “the power that pop music has over the influence of social and moral beliefs and the dangers of a society with no individuality.”

The Main Story

The main character of this story provides a stark contrast to the overall theme, being a young woman who is not influenced by popular culture due to her upbringing.  Her own individuality highlights those who do not let others influence their own opinions and beliefs. However, many characters that provide the contrast of uniformity largely outweigh her.

In its simplest terms the main story is:

Sally’s parents commit suicide and she discovers that people are being brainwashed by music, so she joins a resistance group who are searching for the truth.  Sally meets a young man called Blaine, for whom she develops feelings, which are eventually shared by Blaine.  After following a number of leads the resistance uncover the Prime Minister as the cause of the infection in a effort to control the population. Following a violent outburst within the resistance, Sally kills Blaine and, as the only remaining ‘resistor’, plans to assassinate the Prime Minister.  However, at the last second she realises that she has been infected throughout.

The Underlying Story

Peter Ellison is a former well-respected scientist who developed the Audio Re-Animation programme in the late 70’s in an effort to control the country's population growth.  Disregarded by the UN as ‘too dangerous’, Ellison’s career was left in pieces and he became a recluse, continuing his work into audio-reanimation.  Years later, using the powerful connections of his father, Lord Ellison, Peter reinvents his identity, and under the name Geoffrey Soillen, Ellison is elected as Prime Minister.  Having developed a way to use music to control people and cause fatal symptoms in some, Ellison begins manufacturing ‘PopBots’, who, masked as Pop stars, begin spreading the message of Ellison’s work.  Those who hear the tones of the re-animation software automatically become ‘infected’ and a brainwashing programme begins in the brain.  Within the older generation this causes fatalities, and the younger generation effectively become subservient.