Sick
CraigDGriffithsUberwriter
A terminally ill girl stops taking her medication to end her suffering, only to feel better discovering she is a victim of her mother’s munchausen by proxy
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Now that a?formerly sick high school star?athlete realizes?it was her own?morbidly obese mother who’s been ?poisoning her for attention, she must do everything she can to protect her baby sister.
CraigDGriffiths:
I think this has the makings for a compelling psychological drama. ?Alas, it is also presents challenges to summarizing in a logline. ?How I might formulate a logline depends on what is conceived to be the inciting incident.
One option is that after suffering for years with a painful, mysterious illness (setup), the doctor tells the girl it’s hopeless, she will never recover, probably die an early death (Inciting Incident). Her End of Act 1 Decision is to put herself out of her misery, stop taking the medication, die sooner rather than later. ? Early Act 2: ?and then contrary to her expectation, she gets better, ?completely recovers.
Another option is to open with an Inciting Incident where ?she refuses to take her medication because she’s tired of suffering, wants to put herself out of her misery. ?Through the rest of Act 1 she wavers as arguments and tests of will ensue, but her End of Act One Decision is to adamantly refuse to take medication; no one can make her change her mind. ?Early Act 2: ?contrary to her expectation, she gets better, completely recovers.
Either way, I would not have her quit because she suspects she’s being deliberately poisoned. ?That should be the mid or late Act 2 Big Reveal , ?the shocking truth she discovers after she’s in complete remission.
What do you conceive as being the inciting incident?
I think best to describe her realisation that her mother is poisoning her as the inciting incident, and escaping the mother as her goal.
After she realises her mother is poisoning her as a desperate act of Munchausen?syndrome, she must stop taking the meds in order to get strong enough to escape.
If escaping is the goal it should be added to the logline.
This is the story. How does someone that has been completely reliant on a person to survive, escape that person.
I always listen to SN (among other pods) during my commute and did find this story interesting, but agreed that it wasn’t much more than a lifetime movie… Until I read this. Your story reads more?Misery?than?Lifetime?but are you still planning on including the boyfriend?
Is this the story, or is the story what happens after this event?
Yep heard SN and thought “I see a story”.
Girl around 12-15 has been sick she decide to end it. ?She starts getting better. She is excited and tells mum. Mum freaks out. Force we her to start the meds again. ?She gets sick again. ?She begins to realise whenever she gets sick, everyone rallies around and mum is better.
Sha has too, stop meds and not get caught, fake being sick to avoid mums intervention, get well and plan an escape.
like the suggested start.
I don’t know if you listen to the Scriptnotes podcast but it sounds like one of the stories they covered in “how would this be a movie” on this weeks episodes, so be careful about rights issues if it’s based off of an article and you plan on developing it.
As for the logline, this is an interesting in to the story. But the word “girl” makes her seem younger than she would be to understand so I would change that to “teen”. Also, for the sake of flow, I would start with “When she stops taking her medication to stop her suffering, a terminally-ill teen…”
Hope this helps.