Outline of first ten pages

Pages 1-2: setup of lake scene; teacher and student are struggling; they argue; flashback starts of when they first met

Pages 3-4: setup in testing hall; students arrive, including the student, followed by the teacher's; the student sits in the front row working on a crossword puzzle; the teacher sees her, narrows her eyes and whispers to colleagues; teacher watches student the whole time and the student is the first to finish

Pages 5-6: setup in hallway; teacher finds student waiting for oral exam and asks to talk to her; she tells her she can't take the program though she's already paid for it; student demands answers, teacher gets angry and, when student doesn't back down, tells her everything will be okay and that she'll be in her class

Pages 7-8: setup in office; plaque shows teacher is director; she goes into computer system and changes student's last name, finds her test results, looks at them which shows she belongs in a lower level class, then rips apart the paper before throwing it away; she adds the student to her class which is a higher level class, with a smirk on her face

Pages 9-10: setup in classroom; student corrects teacher; they argue; other students defend teacher; student shows in book what the information says; teacher insults student; student leaves and slams the door; teacher smirks and continues lesson

Outline of Act One

 Act One will start with a snippet of the final confrontation with the teacher and the student, then shift to how the teacher came to be how she is. This will happen in the first 30 minutes of the movie.

Character descriptions

There are two main characters: the teacher and the student  

Teacher: Because of her mild Down's syndrome, she has drooping eyes and is under five feet tall. She has always been very self-conscious but has learned through books how to get what she wants which works on everything except men who aren't attracted to her because of her little girl's body. She is married to a man who has a long-standing mistress and molests her daughters; she knows and doesn't care because she is all about image. She has always shaved her eyebrows off, dyed her hair blonde and worn contacts to look young. Also, she has more clothes than her children. Though men regularly rejected her before she got married, no one has ever challenged her, and she needs to be in control at all times. She works as a language and phonetics instructor at an elite international school. Her attempts to break the student who is the antithesis to all she is sets her off on the wrong course.  

Student: Because of a recent bout with cancer, she had to shave her hair which has barely started to grow back when the semester starts. She is also fat from a lack of physical exercise in recent months, so she wears baggy clothes. Despite that hardship, she is not lacking in self-confidence, is not afraid to assert herself and has a habit of correcting others or asking questions. An orphan, she has a small trust fund that makes work optional for her, but also she has developed a resiliency being on her own. When she becomes the teacher's object of contempt, she resorts to desperate measures to put an end to it.

Dramatic question

Will the foreign student survive the actions of the teacher?

Log line

A teacher meets an unconventional student whom she instantly hates and whose life she decides to ruin, with tragic consequences.

Feature Film Idea

Some of the people who do evil things are ordinary. They can be like psychotics: To all outward appearances, they appear happy, good and successful. However, they don't kill people; they just seek to destroy them to meet their own ends. Welcome to the subject of my drama: The actions that lead to an evil woman's plot to destroy a foreign newcomer and their consequences.