Creating Movie-Worthy Turning Points!

Writing A ‘Seasoned Romance’ With My Writing Group

Two More Writing Group Members

Introducing Michelle and Fran, both in their seventies. Michelle has been running this writing group for years and has written several books. Fran is our newest member and is developing her writing style.

Staying On Track

We combine the three acts of a seasoned romance with the five key turning points of all successful movie scripts. For more details, check out the post First Meeting With The Writing Group.

After we had completed writing up Act I, where the two main characters Claire and Laurence are introduced (Part 1), and we had the Inciting Incident, which placed our MC Claire in a new situation and environment (Part 2), we needed to sit down and brainstorm/plot an overview of Acts II and III and the key turning points as some of us were getting confused.

Three Key Scenes

Additionally, within this framework, there are three key scenes:

• The Inciting Incident

• The iconic romantic scene/moment

• The scene where everything falls apart

Our Inciting Incident is the heart attack and subsequent death of Claire’s father, and her return to her hometown of Kalminora. While in this new situation, we have Turning Point #2, where there is a Change of Plan, which will take us through to Act II.

Keeping The Two Main Characters Together

At the story’s beginning, Claire lives in Perth, and Laurence lives in Kalminora, so we had to devise a reason for keeping Claire in Kalminora after the funeral so that the love story could develop.

To keep Claire and Laurence together, and hence bring about the Change of Plan turning point #2, Claire is going to have an accident when she and her best friend Trish go out into the desert to look for a missing person, a member of Claire’s staff, whose body may be lying at the bottom of a mineshaft!

The Australian Desert

Given that we are thinking about a movie script scenario, we want to write up the scene where Claire and Trish go out into the desert so that the setting itself becomes a character.

To do this, we have to:

• Show how the desert environment impacts Claire and Trish by:

  • The limits it places on them.

  • How it challenges Claire and Trish.

• Revealing the significance of the changes that have occurred to the environment over time.

• Creating moments where Claire and Trish have to respond directly to their environment.

• Shows how the setting mirrors or contrasts with Claire and Trish’s emotional states.

• Includes unusual aspects that lend further character to the location, a former mining site.

I didn’t come up with the notion of transforming a setting into a character by myself. I got this brilliant concept from Connie Briscoe in her fabulous post Capturing a Sense of Place in her Substack newsletter, Behind the Chapters.

Point of No Return

After Claire and Laurence spend time together and renew their previous relationship while Claire recovers from knee surgery, Claire has a change of heart. She no longer wants her high-flying career, but wants a loving relationship like her best friend Trish has with her husband Pete. This change leads to Turning Point #3, Point of No Return. Claire is now ‘all in’ on her relationship with Laurence.

The Iconic Moment

Previously, we decided that this would happen out in the desert. Now, the passionate kiss will happen in one of Australia’s most romantic places, the city of Broom. This stunning setting will also become a character in our story.

In the second part of Act II, Claire makes an even bigger sacrifice by deciding not to take up the prestigious Churchill Fellowship that she has won. Had she done so, this would have guaranteed her next promotion.

But then, Turning Point #4, the Major Setback.

It All Goes To Shit!

And just when it is all going so well—Boom! The first forty-five pages of Act III chronicle how it all goes terribly wrong.

All I will say is that the green-eyed monster raises its ugly head, leading to Turning Point #5, the Climax!

And that’s as far as we’ve got. We haven’t yet discussed The Aftermath, when Claire and Laurence finally come together and live happily ever after!

Pulling It All Together

We’ve got a process happening right now, and it goes like this:

• Two of our group get together and write a scene after discussions at a previous meeting. We’ve found that writing in pairs works well.

• The scene then goes to Denise, a professional writer and brilliant researcher. Denise works her magic, transforming ‘tells’ into ‘shows’, picking up on inconsistencies, adding and removing text, before sending the scene on to me.

• I correct all the grammatical errors, may add more text, and write up the final draft so all the scenes have one voice.

At one of our previous meetings, I read the first four chapters to the group, and we all agreed it sounded good. We will invite readers of these posts to be our Beta Readers once we’ve finished the final draft (after endless readings and re-writes!), to see if the story resonates with you.

We’d love to know what you found the most interesting or helpful in this post.