After a car crash leaves him unable to walk and dying of thirst, an inventor and his physically-disabled cousin must traverse the harsh Australian desert using only her electric wheelchair.
Paul ClarkeSamurai
After a car crash leaves him unable to walk and dying of thirst, an inventor and his physically-disabled cousin must traverse the harsh Australian desert using only her electric wheelchair.
Share
This is a good start, I like what I’ve read so far… But then I am a big fan of the movie ‘Walkabout’ so I’m probably a bit biased towards movies about people being stranded in the outback.
I guess the only thing I would ad would be. Is there anyway you could up the ante. such as, they have to be back by a certain time. A ticking time clock or a specific goal they must achieve driving them forward.
If not, that’s alright. I do think there is room for a great story here.
Hope that helps, good luck with this!
Agreed about the wheel chair, it is an original addition to the survival tale.
Most survival plots are about a perfectly fit person who deteriorates over time in their exposure to the elements and lack of resources, only through their tenacity do they figure out ways to survive the harsh conditions.
In this instance you introduced an element that starts the survival off with a handy-cap, this means the obstacle is even greater to overcome.
One thing though, in most successful survival plots there is a personal element that motivates the main character to defy the odds and survive.? It was the girlfriend in Cast Away, revenge for his son in The Revenant and visions of his child to be in 127 Hours, what personal element can you add to this as a motivation for the main character?
Also I believe if the inventor him self was wheel chair bound and he had to survive on his own the stakes would be even greater. Having one able body between them means he could walk ahead and get help, but on his own he has to invent in-order to survive or else.
Secondly the placement of “…dying of thirst…” is confusing, as the car accident didn’t make them die of thirst rather the conditions did, perhaps change it to:
After a car crash in the Australian outback a disabled inventor must engineer the worlds most efficient solar panel in-order to trek back to civilization before he dies of thirst using nothing but his electric wheel chair.
What’s the time frame for the story? ?That is, how much time elapses between the inciting incident and the denouement of the ordeal?
The reason I ask is that ?realistically a battery for a wheelchair last could only last for ?several hours ?when operating in rugged conditions where mobile efficiency would be significantly impacted. ?Ditto even more if transporting two bodies. ?Another complication, and a good one .
I think the re drafts of the logline work well.
Perhaps, as DPG suggested, add in a time frame and mention how far out from the nearest town they crashed.
For example:
After his legs are crushed in an accident, 3 days out from the nearest town, an inventor and his physically-disabled cousin must use her electric wheelchair to escape the harsh Australian desert before dying of thirst.
Don’t worry about length at this point.
30 words is ideal but not a must, if the story needs a few more words to come across in the logline, then let it be so unless of course a company or contest specify a 25 word limit.
Other wise I’d endeavor to say you’re still writing the script, if so this is a structuring tool for you in which case there is no word count limit.