Write Your Character's Morning Routine
Wk 1: Add Your Story’s Secret Sauce Writing Challenge Starts Today! What does your character do behind closed doors? How low will they go?
Week 1 Challenge: Add Your Story's Secret Sauce
As we learned in our two pre-writing challenges, Adding Your Story’s Secret Sauce stems from your Premise and Secret Sauce Recipe, where conviction is the main ingredient in both.
Now boil all that down to "Secret Sauce Moments," where your character is "Being" not doing, as we explore another extension of adding secret sauce through storytelling devices.
For the next four weeks, we’ll explore the writing tricks to Adding Your Story’s Secret Sauce using these persuasive writing techniques:
WK 1 - April 2: Character Morning Routine Montage
WK 2 - April 9: Animal-Inspired Bookend
WK 3 - April 16: Family Dinner
WK 4 - April 23: Dance Duel
These writing devices will infuse your story with accelerated flavor and conviction so that audiences will fall in love with your story’s premise, character, and conflict.
The Writing Challenges Works to Create Depth. I’ve taken the challenges myself and experienced the creative story growth and connections that can happen.
I hope you will, too.
Week 1’s Prompt: Character Morning Routine Montage
This week, our prompt is to write your main character’s morning routine montage and lace it with your secret sauce ingredients.
In this post:
Week 1 Challenge: Write a Character Routine Morning Montage
Benefits of adding your Secret Sauce to an opening scene and the Risks Involved
Masterwork: Opening scene of HARPER (1966) starring Paul Newman
FREE Download: Whip Up Your Story’s Premise Template
FREE Download: Your Story’s Secret Sauce Recipe Template
Week 1 Challenge: Character’s Morning Montage
DIRECTIONS: Write a 200-word Character Morning Routine Montage as an opening scene that reveals what your protagonist does “behind closed doors.” Include your Premise and Secret Sauce ingredients. Post your TITLE, COMPS, and 200-word narrative character morning routine montage in the comments.
MASTERWORK: Using Paul Newman's opening scene in the film HARPER as an example guide to writing your character montage (see info below), describe what your character does behind closed doors when they wake up. Show your character’s actions and behaviors to connect us to the story’s emotional arc, theme, and genre. How low does Lee Harper go when no one is looking?
This is your chance to create a strong character introduction in your story’s opening using a character’s visual cues, actions, behaviors, and set design that can serve as persuasive metaphors for your character's journey.
HOW: Write your opening montage using descriptive action lines in paragraph form, like in a screenplay (see HARPER screenplay excerpts below). You can also write a narrative paragraph focusing on actions and reactions.
YOU: Invoke your writer's conviction using your spirit animal in the kitchen, be brave, and post your TITLE, COMPS, and 200-word narrative character morning routine montage in the comments.
ME: I will post my writing challenge in the comments. Please come back to this post after you receive this email. To engage with our writers, I will provide feedback, post compliments, and answer questions.
After you receive each challenge, check back and click on the COMMENTS below to see my personal writing challenge post for inspiration and guidance or to leave a comment/question.
Benefits of Adding Secret Sauce to an Opening Scene Through Character
The benefits of adding secret sauce to your story, such as a character's morning routine montage, "set the stage" for your story by connecting your main character to their story arc and the story’s genre, theme, tone, and setting.
At the gamble of slowing the pacing, adding the extra layer of secret sauce and precious time spent showing us your character—alone in the dark struggling to grapple with their vulnerabilities—is the best way to the audience's hearts.
A STORY’S SECRET SAUCE = AUDIENCE’S HEARTS
Risks of slowing down to win the audience’s hearts
Illuminate LIPSTICK WRITING. This is actually a benefit because adding secret sauce techniques helps pinpoint important character and story details that have been glossed over due to plot-focused writing.
It's a benefit to gain the audience's love for the main character, causing them to unconditionally root for them, especially if they're the underdog.
Although showing a character grappling alone may remind you of Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat" story beat— a highly effective writing strategy that has the protagonist perform a likable or relatable action early on to endear them to the audience—it's not that.
Adding secret sauce as a morning routine montage is a persuasive story technique that can connect the main character to all the other story ingredients—especially the character's archetype, building audience empathy. It’s a benefit.
Connecting the secret sauce to the main character's archetype ensures that you will execute the full emotional impact your character can make on your audience.
So, the one major risk of adding secret sauce “be” moments is slowing down your story's pacing and narrative drive.
Secret Sauce is a Writer’s Confidence to Slow Down
Even though there are certain risks involved in taking the time to add secret sauce to your story, the PERSUASIVE STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES presented in our 4-Week Writing Challenge are the writer's way of confidently slowing down the story's pacing to give a keyhole peek into the main character's emotions, relationships, or private life for full-on audience engagement.
Secret Sauce Risks Are Worth the Time: A character’s morning routine montage illustrates a "be" moment, not a "do" moment, and taking the time to let your character “be” will help your audience emotionally connect with your story.
View the Opening of HARPER
In this week’s writing challenge, we look at the film HARPER (1966), written by William Goldman and starring Paul Newman. In the opening scene, this film’s secret sauce is illustrated through Newman’s character, Lee Harper, who is a Private Investigator.
MASTERWORK: Study the opening scene of HARPER (1966), starring Paul Newman—and the screenplay written by William Goldberg.
Access HARPER’s plot summary on Wikipedia HERE.
You can stream HARPER on Tubi.
Download the full HARPER screenplay as a PDF.
What Happens in HARPER?
Newman’s character is introduced to us behind closed doors. This gives us a chance to see inside the private life of a PI, which is the film’s secret sauce. The scene connects the main character's arc of the story to the film's genre and theme, all in a character montage, which runs 2:41.
The special ingredient in the opening scene is how Newman and Goldman make us relate and root for the character’s sub-human efforts to play the game of staying alive.
Two minutes and 41 seconds is a long time to spend on adding secret sauce because it adds to the movie’s budget.
But this scene is crafted to make us ask questions about the main character:
Is Lee Harper broke?
Why isn’t Lee Harper married?
Does Lee Harper abuse alcohol?
Does Lee Harper follow the rules?
Who does Lee Harper respect?
Goldberg's scene adds secret sauce to the story by EXPOSING the main character "behaving" behind closed doors for over two minutes.
Will Harper reuse yesterday’s used coffee grounds from the garbage?
Just how low will Lee Harper go?
Spoiler alert! Lee Harper goes as low as he has to to get the job done.
After this opening scene, the story is a forward-moving train that doesn’t stop because of its story genres (mystery and PI). Using time at the start of this film is the perfect place to add the story’s secret sauce through character.
HARPER Character Morning Montage Writing Example
Download My Narrative Morning Montage of HARPER (280-word count)
Excerpt from the HARPER screenplay, shots 10-13
Excerpt from the HARPER screenplay, shots 14-16
Check back in the comments for my writing challenge post: a mermaid’s morning routine montage. I will respond once you’ve posted in the comments.
Pre-writing Exercise_Whip Up Your Story’s Premise
Download the Premise Template and use it to craft a character full of conviction and a story full of conflict.
Pre-writing Exercise_Add Your Story’s Secret Sauce Recipe
Download the Secret Sauce Recipe Template to craft your special ingredients to create a unique story with unforgettable characters that audiences love.
What to do next? Rise to our Writing Challenge and show us (or me) your character’s morning routine montage infused with your premise and secret sauce! If you’d like to email it to me, hit reply!
Download my personally completed writing challenge exercise below. This one writing challenge exercise has been prolific. It has been a springboard to create a bookend and symbolic connection for the opening and closing of the story, an inspiration for a short story contest on climate change, and a song!
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I look forward to reading your stories and connecting in 2024!
Happy writing,
Kelly E. Keough