After the death of a longtime friend, a man’s forgotten imagination is rekindled by his daughter.
alxndrlanePenpusher
After the death of a longtime friend, a man’s forgotten imagination is rekindled by his daughter.
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I would focus on the daughter as the MC and how her struggle for her own father is the hook. Such as…
A daughter struggles to help her father after the death of his lifelong friend cripples his creativity.
It’s unclear to me what the father’s dramatic problem is.??What does “forgotten imagination” mean? ?That he’s lost his mojo to write? ?Paint? ?Sculpt? Compose music? Do stand up comedy? ?What is his mode of creative expression?
Also it seems to make him a dependent actor rather than an autonomous agent of his own dramatic destiny.
And if, as Foxtrot25 suggests, roles are reversed ?I am dubious that it solves what I perceive as a fundamental relationship problem; to wit, ?a disjunctive split between the owner of the problem and the owner of the responsibility for the solution.
The logline gives ownership of the problem to the father, and ownership of the task and responsibility for the solution to the daughter. ?In the other words, the character arc has been subdivided between 2 characters.
The general rule of the thumb is that whoever owns the character arc is the designated protagonist. So who owns the character arc? ?The father or the daughter??(And if the designated protagonist is supposed to be the daughter — what’s her character arc as distinct from his?)
Of course, a supporting character can provide comfort and encouragement. ?But in drama, the job of the character arc for the protagonist can’t be subcontracted out to a supporting character. ?The protagonist is ultimately responsible for effecting his own character arc — not dependent on someone else doing the job for him.
Ergo, later or sooner, the father has to man-up and take responsibility for his own character arc.
For clarity, is the daughter, the lead characters daughter, or is it the daughter of the friend, because it can be read both ways?
The inciting incident seems vague, how can a person forget his own imagination and how can a friend dying cause that?
Other wise, the stakes are not clear, what’s the worst that can happen should he not get his imagination back?
Perhaps you should add a stakes character or stakes event: i.e the memory and imagination must be restored by a certain date in order to win a competition or help a person close to them?
After reading the short, I affirm that this needs to proceed with the daughter front and center. I believe she should be the main character who helps her father get over his friends tragic death. See the return notes that I sent you.
While the short was well written and certainly a heart warming tale, too much of it is on the imagination side, when the opportunity to have his daughter, who only appears in the 2nd half of the script, can be used to draw out this man’s grief after he finds out that his childhood friend, the one who he plays fake astronaut with, ?actually does become a real astronaut, yet dies on a space mission.
“A daughter helps her father to recreate his childhood moments and come to terms with his best friend’s tragic death.”