UNTITLED SHORT
shaanklePenpusher
An apathetic psychiatrist wakes up with the ability to sense and absorb psychological distress, so when he detects a patient?s toxic marriage, he is compelled to help her escape her abusive husband without revealing his secret.
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I like the idea of someone being able to foresee events before they happen and struggling to convince the victim of the upcoming danger.
I agree with previous comments.
Agreed with the above comments the concept has a few potentially fundamental logic problems in the logline already, these relate to the character and his motivations.
I wold also suggest that his super natural power is highly subjective and has little visual appeal because it occurs mostly inside the characters minds. Also his power is a heightened function of most psychiatrists weather they achieve it via medication or other treatment. Essentially the logline is suggesting an inciting incident of the MC waking up one day being better at his job.
I don’t find this as much of an inciting event as it should be and I don’t see how this event directly motivates him to achieve his goal of helping the woman. He would have tried to help the woman regardless getting this power.
Is there a visually clear event that happens to the MC which directly forces him to save the woman?
If so best to use that as the inciting incident.
Hope this helps.
I realize the apathy is meant to create some irony, but mainly it conflicts with the notion of the shrink being compelled to help a patient. Wouldn’t he already know she’s suffering before he gets his powers? If he didn’t care before, why does he care now? If he were forced into helping her as a means of helping himself, and in the process becomes less apathetic, that would make a lot more sense and give his character an arc.
Also, I don’t think simply waking up with this ability is enough of an inciting incident. Something has to cause it. Suspension of disbelief means we can accept any kind of strange explanation, but there has to be that explanation. Sometimes an explicit reason isn’t necessary, like in Groundhog Day, but there’s still an emotional cause. If that emotional cause comes across in the script, that’s great, but there’s no room in a logline to get into it. So just say he develops the ability and leave it at that. We don’t need to know how from the logline, but if you say there’s no reason we have to question it.
But why can he not reveal his secret? Wouldn’t he get more patients? Be able to charge a higher fee? What’s special about this patient? Wouldn’t he be helping her anyway?