Sarah, a nurse, also works as a postmate delivery person during the evenings to make ends meet. She chances upon a friend at her last delivery for the night, earlier than usual. She accepts their invitation. Time: 12:30am. She receives an email reminding her that she is on call the next morning by 6am. As she rushes home, she receives a postmate notification reminding her to finish her quota to get the “bonus”. She is tempted as the delivery address is near to her home, she accepts. She reaches the delivery address. On the way, her bike’s battery dies and she has to lug it back all the way. As she finally delivers the package, she notices the time on her phone, 2am. On her way home, down a dark road, she sees a big person’s silhouette walking toward her, scared, she turns into a street and starts peddling the bike. She looks back to check if she’s in the clear but suddenly crashes into a police car. Knocked out, on the ground, eventually she wakes up, with a band aid on her forehead, on a bed in the hospital she works at. Time: 5:45am. She is greeted by a fellow nurse as she gets out of the hospital bed.
almostfilmmakerPenpusher
The night before her on call shift, Sarah, a nurse working a second job, finds herself in the midst of late night deliveries. As she tries to walk her way back home, after the last delivery of the night, her night leads her all the way to work.
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Let me put it this way.
A pro-tagonist is pro-active.
In your logline and mini-synopsis, things happen to the lead character.
What must the lead character do?
How do these events cause the protagonist to have a goal?
What is standing in the way of the goal?
A story is not a series of unfortunate events.
A story is a lead character with a goal, and something stands in the way of that goal.
You are describing scenes, not the plot. What is the lead character’s goal? What is standing in her way?
I agree with Richiev’s points. Additionally, it might be good to encapsulate what her character flaw/ arc is. E.g. Simba must overcome his immaturity, Shrek must get over his desire to be a loner, Oskar Schindler must move beyond his lust for money.
I want to actually encourage you! I feel like you might be on to something, but I think right now you have what is the seed of an idea.
To me, the logline reads something like “After a mysterious late-night accident, a nurse wakes up in the hospital…” and then you fill in the rest. It sounds like from what you’ve written so far (because keep in mind that I haven’t read your script) that the inciting incident or call to adventure, is this accident. In other words, that’s the event that sets the rest of her story in motion. But now you have to figure out what the actual story is.
As far as that goes, Richiev and Vexmeister gave some really good feedback as far as what you need to explore to really flesh out your story.
What does she want and who or what is standing in her way of getting it? And then just when you think she’s about to reach her goal…BOOM, another obstacle gets introduced that she has to overcome.
It’s a good idea also to explore what is at stake? What does she have to gain if she achieves her goal or what are the consequences of failure? Make them big – so much so that failure is not an option for her.
Also, here’s some questions to get your mind racing with ideas: is this a movie like the Bourne Identity where Sarah has amnesia and she has no idea where she is? Is this like a horror film where she’s taken to a hospital where the staff conduct experiments on the patients? Does she have to care for a patient but suddenly forgets to do her job and can’t let the other staff find out because she doesn’t want to risk being fired because she needs the money (hence the second job), and you know, maybe she’s had a drug addiction problem that the staff is aware of and so she was already on thin ice?
These are just some random questions that hopefully will help prompt your imagination. (You don’t have to use them if you don’t want to, but hopefully it will get you on the right track.)
I hope that helps! 🙂