"Assume a virtue, if you have it not."
William Shakespeare

Extending Your Short Story

This is basically a technique used (by me at least) for planning a screenplay. You set it up going A, B, C, Beginning, Middle, and End.

A - BEGINNING

• He just finished celebrating his anniversary - with his wife and friends - of five years since he solved the case of a huge mob leader, and had him executed.
• He got the call, he leaves the next day.
• Jaque needs to go to Italy to meet with some people.

B - MIDDLE

• He leaves his home.
• He gets to Italy and starts researching the people whose names he was given.
• He assumes - since all of the real men are dead - that the people he's meeting with are newcomers to the mob business and they had just taken on the old mob leader's names.
• He sleeps and dreams a very strange dream, (insert character description here).*
• He wakes up, startled, looks at the clock and realizes he's late.

* Earlier in the class we had written character descriptions, introducing a character and some kind of movement, so this was a note of reference for me.

C - END

• He arrives at the building of the meet, a firewood warehouse.
• He enters and find no one there.
• "You're late," someone says, "I slept late," he replies and looks around. "Don't worry, we're all here." And he gets cold.