FANTASY, RELIGION, DRAMA, SUSPENSELY

Barbara, a 48-year-old architect, falls into a coma and experiences surreal experiences during the coma that change her life, choices, perspectives before life and bring her closer to God.

FAIR

FIRST PERSON

Authors Writing Style: FAIR

Characterization: GOOD

Commerciality: FAIR

Franchise Potential: FAIR

Pace: GOOD

Premise: GOOD

Structure: FAIR

Theme: FAIR

Not exactly. Barbara is the protagonist of the story, not an emotional role. Regarding genre, I don't think horror, thriller, and mystery match the narrative tone.

The fantastic universe created by the author's unconscious mind is quite fascinating. It opens a lot of visual possibilities for exciting scenes.

The book is a report about the coma, Barbara's mental adventures during that period, and the perspective of a science expert about each of these journeys. The narrative is limited to Barbara's health condition evolution, which advances to something positive until she wakes up, and her trips during the coma that ends up telling a fantastic story in a dreamlike universe. Besides, it looks like a report about the coma experience, which may not be so interesting for those looking for something more fictional.

THE STORY RELIES HEAVILY ON SPECIAL EFFECTS

The book is a report about the coma, Barbara's mental adventures during that period, and the perspective of a science expert about each of these journeys. The narrative is limited to Barbara's health condition evolution, which advances to something positive until she wakes up, and her trips during the coma that ends up telling a fantastic story in a dreamlike universe. Besides, it looks like a report about the coma experience, which may not be so interesting for those looking for something more fictional. What goes on in a person's mind while she/he is in a coma? Many people are curious about it, and listening to stories of those who experienced this event is an attraction in itself.

The narrative would need to define its intention better towards the audience to attract it indeed. As a book, it looks like a memoir on Barbara's part, with scientific reports analyzing the coma experience and a religious side that explores her reconnection to God. This book gives room to many interpretations and paths to be followed by the adaptation, possibly making it difficult to reach a large audience.

In case the narrative focuses on the fantastic realism created by Barbara's mind in a coma, the film could win technical awards due to the countless visual and artistic possibilities that these scenes would offer.

MEDIUM BUDGET

BREAKTHROUGH: A14-YEAR-OLD BOY SLIPS INTO A FROZEN LAKE AND FALLS INTO A COMA. HIS MOTHER, VERY RELIGIOUS, DOES NOT GIVE UP HOPE OF HAVING HER SON BACK. COMA (RUSSIAN MOVIE) A MAN GOES INTO A COMA AFTER SUFFERING AN ACCIDENT, ENDS UP IN A CHAOTIC, DYSTOPIAN WORLD CREATED BY HIS MEMORIES.

Howard's scientific analysis interspersed with Barbara's religious analysis makes it more original. The book offers two points of view on the protagonist's memories about her period of coma.

Although the book already begins with an extreme event, which is the entry of Barbara into a coma, and we see a little of her family's suffering, we do not have much pre-coma time to understand the dynamics of this family or to create great affections for Barbara. A few more day-by-day scenes could help us to follow this character more precisely. Certainly, she is a woman with internal conflicts that arise in these fantastic visions that she experiences during the coma, but her personality could be more remarkable. The family, despite constantly appearing as a background, also does not have unique or striking characteristics.

It is not a rare gem. The book could intensify Barbara's drama a little more in this inner world of self-knowledge and the search for evolution.

Film: Studio, Indie, Unscripted

WORK IN PROGRESS

While the story has many positive points, it has room for improvement (see possible paths below). If you can't change the story at this point, my suggestion is using your notes as a guide to highlight the best aspects of it when taking the next steps, either putting a pitch page together, a treatment, or a presentation.

The book presents different possibilities for adaptation. It could become a non-fictional product, a doc (in chapters or as a feature film) that thoroughly explores various perspectives on comatose patients. The doc could use Barbara as the basis for this study on the subconscious. The adaptation could still move to a more religious side, where Barbara experiences life after death events and comes in contact with angels and demons while her family prays for her recovery. The adaptation could also be taken on a more dramatic path, with a more modern narrative, with a surrealist scenario and struggles happening inside the mind of an unconscious patient. With Barbara as the protagonist and official narrator of her story, the film could take place mainly within the mind of Barbara during her coma, only to later reveal what was going on. The possibilities are innumerable because the book does not have a defined goal, a defined theme, or a dramatic narrative structure. It mixes fictional narrative (with a surrealist look) with religious and scientific reports and still presents a new beginning in life after the coma. The book could function more as a source material that would hugely feed the adaptation with facts and details. Although Barbara is telling her own story, we know very little about this family, about her own personality. We discover, through her subconscious - which is quite interesting - that Barbara has a problem of self-image and some internal conflicts that she carries. However, we could know more about this protagonist. There's another critical point that affects the narrative's structure. Right before entering the surrealist universe of Barbara's subconscious, we learn exactly what was physically happening to her body during medical procedures. We get to know which sounds of this hospital room ended up influencing part of her mental journeys. It makes the trips themselves lose their dramatic force. Part of what we see in those subconscious pictures directly connects with Barbara's outside universe, reducing the spiritual strength of the narrative and the drama of the story itself. The book is engaging, has relevant information, and explores a subject that is a source of curiosity for many, but the narrative needs a little more progress to be considered.