A survivor in an apocalyptic world keeps experiencing visions when they encounter new people and places while travelling to “Haven”, where they believe they would find a place to belong.
SReyesPenpusher
A survivor in an apocalyptic world keeps experiencing visions when they encounter new people and places while travelling to “Haven”, where they believe they would find a place to belong.
Share
Another survivor in a post apocalyptic world story… If you do choose to go down this all too well trodden path, you’d need something else to set your story apart from the saturated genre. Check out ‘Cargo’ as an example.
>>> “believe they would find a place to belong”
Why is he looking for somewhere to belong? How is this going to work visually?
As Richiev pointed out, the inciting incident should set up the goal. The I.I. is the event that throws off the balance in the protagonist’s life. His goal is to correct this imbalance. If the I.I. is him having visions – then the goal is to stop (or maybe understand) them. Have you seen Explorers (1985)? In that film, a young Ethan Hawke has dreams that show him how to build a space ship. The dreams are leading him to a goal. He doesn’t necessarily understand why he’s building it but he’s taking positive action to correcting the balance. The visions in your story need to be telling this survivor (he needs a characteristic I think) something that he must do. Visions of the child he thought he’d lost. Visions of an energy source that will change the world. There has to be a reason why the visions would stop (thus correcting the balance) when he gets to Haven. A lot of adventure films have a McGuffin. Check out the book “Save the Cat” by Blake Snyder and read the chapter on the Golden Fleece genre.
I hope this helps in some way.
1: If the visions set the story in motion, then they should lead to a goal that matches.
2: If the goal is to find a “Haven” then you need to add what prompted them to leave ‘at this time’ and search for it.
Here is an example that incorporates both at once:
———
Inspired by visions of a mysterious paradise, the leader of a wandering tribe leads his clan across the post-apocalyptic?wasteland in order to find the lost Utopia.”
As mrliteral said.
And “a survivor” is singular. “They” is plural.? A grammatical mismatch.? Who is the story about?? A single character or several?
Who’s they? Visions of what? How is having visions a story? What do visions have to do with meeting people? Where are they leaving that Haven sounds better? Why don’t they belong where they are?
A logline should be protagonist, antagonist, conflict, stakes. You have to make those four things clear. Without them, you won’t have a compelling story.