A sassy young city girl struggles to heal a rift between her mother and estranged grandfather by collecting seaglass for his latest art project.
steveclearyPenpusher
A sassy young city girl struggles to heal a rift between her mother and estranged grandfather by collecting seaglass for his latest art project.
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Since the rift has probably been going on a while, Why now? Why does the lead character take action at this point in time? What has changed?
The why doesn?t matter as much to me. The how is missing.
How does collecting this work. Perhaps an emotional hint can drive the why.
Desperate for a male influence in her life a teen collects sea glass for her grandfather?s art hoping to mend her mum?s relationship with him.
After loosing her own father a teen tries to bring her Mum and her estranged grandfather together by collecting sea glass for his art project.
After moving into his house a teen tries to mend the relationship between her Mum and her grandfather by collecting sea glass for his art.
I am always distracted by things like sassy and city girl. I throw words towards wants and needs.
The inciting incident of needing to move back to the grandfather’s house is not directly related to the girl’s goal of getting them back together. If her goal was to improve their financial situation then the inciting incident would work as it has a cause and effect relationship, but if you want her goal to be an improved relationship between mother and grandfather the inciting incident needs to relate/cause the rift in the first place.
Secondly, it’s not clear how exactly collecting glass (romantic a notion as it is) will help, what else does she do to fix their relationship?
Deconstructed:
Inciting Incident: Hard economic times force a reluctant single mother and her daughter to move from the big city and back in with her estranged father in a quiet, upscale beachtown. BUT could also be grandfather offers her to help him collect seaglass as a means to fight off boredom in her new environs.
Specific Protagonist: A young, bewildered city girl, caught in the middle of a rift between her mother and grandfather, in a strange new environment.
What does she want? To keep the peace and? mend a rift between her mother and grandfather. BUT she’s resentful herself since she was torn away from her friends and has to make new ones. She also wants to fight the boredom of being alone in a strange new place.
How does she go about getting it??By collecting seaglass for his ambitious art project — I THINK THIS IS WHERE MY BREAKDOWN IS. Helping the grandfather with an art project really doesn’t bring any value to the mother.
What stands in her way? Her mother doesn’t want her to get too close to her grandfather, for her own reasons and resentments toward him.
What’s at stake???The mother and grandfather won’t reconcile and the mother will go on being bitter and resentful. Plus, the girl won’t adapt to her new environment.
Thanks for taking a look everyone :^}
Now to see if I can make the right choices and boil this all down into 25 words…
stevecleary:
I think you have the kernel for a very interesting human relationship story.? Sea glass is a great dramatic prop.
However, I’m not entirely sold on the psychological dynamics.
Since you categorize it as a “coming of age” story, I’m guessing the protagonist is in her early teens.? Even if she is in her late teens, the task? the story assigns her is, imho,? way beyond the psychological capacity of a teenage mind. That she would want to maintain a cease fire between her mother and grandfather — yes, that’s believable.? Because that’s what kids consciously and unconsciously do.? That is how they cope in dysfunctional families.
But coping with a problem is not the same as solving it? Maintaining a cease fire is not the same as effecting a reconciliation.? A reconciliation takes wisdom, insight, and understanding — skills that develop with age, that accumulate over time by trial and error,? I think such skills are far beyond the ken of teenage minds, even precocious ones, because their lives are so, well, unlived at that point. Their minds haven’t “banked” much experience. And because (as we now know from advancements in neuroscience) their cognitive development is still a work in progress. The prudential executive functions of the neocortex don’t fully come on line? until the mid-20’s.
That said, it is quite realistic that the girl would use the sea glass as a way to reach out to him.? Not because she wants to end the family feud; she doesn’t know how and doesn’t even know fully why they are estranged to begin with.? Rather because she takes an interest in his hobby and develops a liking for the old geezer in spite of his eccentricities and in spite of her mother’s hostility and resentment.? From her bonding with him develops the alchemy that leads to an eventual reconciliation between the generations on either side of her.
IOW:? the reconciliation? emerges as the unintentional consequence of her initial intentional objective goal.? (And loglines are about conscious, intentional goals, not about unconscious, unintentional denouements.)
Finally, I would like to suggest you might want to dig deeper into the possibilities of a mutually dependent doublebind relationship between her mother and her grandfather.? The mother needs him for economic survival (dammit!) — his pension, for a rent-free place to stay.? He needs her for his physical survival (dammit!); he’s too infirm to live alone and just lost his driver’s license after a car accident that was his fault.? Et cetera.? They? hate each other — and they need each other.
Whatever, best wishes with your story.
fwiw
>>>Really low stakes, I know :^)
I beg to differ.? If you look closely, I think you’ll see that in most movies, the protagonist can only achieve her objective goal by first building a new relationship based on mutual love and respect with a love interest or ally.? Or repair an old one that was destroyed by misunderstanding and selfishness.
Within the context of her family,? her situation, building an emotional bridge to her grandfather is everything.? After all, she doesn’t have a father around, right?? And she’s not getting along with her mother, right?? The grandfather is her only hope of finding a grownup who will provide her with the kind of adult love and attention she desperately needs (whether she realizes it or not).