A man and a woman are sitting across from each other at a small table in a dimly lit restaurant.

PREMISES:

• Alfred is a conman with a bad temper, is 55 and is looking for love. He’s met his first ever con-woman, Elise during a heist in the Coliseum, and while there she asks him out. They both are so annoyed that the bar they chose to have a date is so dimly lit with candles that they decide to set the bar on fire and rob the barman. After this, they will embark on a night of heists, evading arrest, fun, and a nice romance.
• Alfred has agreed to go on a blind date. Little does he know that on this blind date is the woman in charge of capturing him for his world-renowned heists. Awkwardness ensues when they both start to fall in love.
• Alfred has taken his wife out for a romantic dinner. It turns out his wife is a figment of his imagination. His whole world is a figment of his imagination. Alfred wakes up half way through the narrative with his arms bound in a straight jacket, and screams for help. He’s all alone.

Alfred Corner was and is a world-class jewel and art thief, who had never been caught. Only his name was renowned. He’s lived 55 years, and he doesn’t want to stop there. He’d lived life to the full the second he finished his high school. He’d pulled off heists in all corners of the world; he had so many riches, yet he didn’t have a woman to love. Whilst in Rome about to pull off a heist to top all of his others, he decides to go on a blind date. He realizes this might be his final chance to fall in love if his heist goes poorly. He sits down in a pub and sees the woman from across the room.

She and him meet, and immediately begin to hit it off. They both love travelling, they both are tenacious and they both have an interest in mystery/suspense movies. They start to hit it off, and agree to meet again. However, both of them refuse to give each other their names. After exchanging phone numbers and fake names, (something which entertained both of them) they part ways and agree to meet again tomorrow.

Alfred postpones his heist one more day. They enjoy dinner one more time. They are coming closer and closer and Alfred is beginning to question whether he has finally found love. The woman, who called herself Eve, must feel the same way. She opens up and tells him something he wishes he never heard. Eve explains that her name is Elise Morton. At the sound of her name, Alfred stands up and says he has to leave, but arranges to meet again tomorrow. Who is this Elise Morton? She happens to be the woman who is the head detective in charge of catching a world renowned and infamous thief. And that thief’s name is Alfred Corner. This makes things a little bit more complicated.

REFLECTION:

• The exercise was quite useful in thinking outside of the box and thinking of different ways in which to construct the story around specific traits of the characters.
• I found it worked out fine in fitting characters into each different genre, Alfred stayed the same initially but in each genre (action for the first premise, rom-com/action for the second and drama for the third) he’d develop differently and that was a bit of a challenge in thinking of a premise where
• I found it fairly okay to have 3 different (2 were kind of similar) premises as each one allowed for the character to fit slightly differently within the genre they were placed in. For instance, the more action based one allowed for the characters to fit very comfortably, as the whole story would include them being con artists/thieves. My second one was more of an action/comedy and finally the last one was more of a drama which would have Alfred questioning identity etc. In each genre the characters were initially similar but they’d change in different ways over the course of the narrative.
• Yeah I think this exercise was quite valuable as with the changing genres it creates different situations for the my character Alfred. I feel like it also allowed for me to think outside the box and to try to get a feel of how a character would react to different situations that each genre would call for.