When a naive psychiatrist is seduced by his female patient, she develops an obsession with him, stalking him and threatening to report him for sexual misconduct, risking his reputation, his career, his marriage… And his life.
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Let’s start with the sentence structure: You open the sentence with the psychiatrist as the subject, then go on to talk about the stalker patient. It should be “After being seduced by her naive psychiatrist,…”
After that, I don’t find a “hook” or anything of note that separates this story from the hundreds of other patient/doctor stalker stories. You have to “up the ante” for the doctor with some additional conflict- he’s married to the governor’s daughter, or he’s famous for having beat a similar accusation in the past, or his only defense to his innocence is that he’s gay, but so deep in the closet, he’s not willing to come out, etc.
Just some ideas…
Hi,
Thanks so much for the feedback. To be honest I wasn’t aware there were hundreds of stories like this. Obviously there’s things like Fatal Attraction but … good to know now if it’s just a massive cliche. Thanks for the feedback on sentence structure too – I guess I saw it as one slip by him unleashing this uncontrollable force that wrecks his life. But again, I hear what you’re saying about it not being original enough. Thanks again.
When a naive psychiatrist is seduced by his female patient, she develops an obsession with him, stalking him and threatening to report him for sexual misconduct, risking his reputation, his career, his marriage? And his life.
Our main character is set up as a weak character: “naive”. To counterbalance this, we need at least one powerful positive.
The logline is written entirely from the antagonist’s POV. Turn it around so we see it from the MC’s POV. That will in turn expose that we have not only a ‘naive’ main character, he’s also passive…
(PS: Because you put the title in the space for the logline, it exposes its weakness. Pick something else.)
Thanks Karl, that’s helpful. Just to clarify, when you say ‘pick something else’, do you mean pick a different story? Or a different title? And if the main character was the patient, would that change anything? Because then she would be motivated, with a strong desire, etc?