Now that I've had time to reflect on it, I want to explain why the car scene with the mom and daughter got me upset.
It's the suspension of disbelief that is required for the scene.
Skipping past the Interracial Mom and and Daughter (there's reason that exists)
Skipping past the 20 year old looking little girl.(I've already covered that laziness)
It's the situation.
The girl walks out into traffic, the light is red. Asshole whips around the corner and starts speeding toward the intersection. Ok, so far we're good. Here's where the problem starts.
Girl has enough time to scream out for her mom.
Mom has enough time to hear this and run out into the middle of the lane to grab her, only to stand there and wait to get hit as well.
You have enough time to run and push them out of the way after the Mom is already out in the street.
Even if everything happened all at once, that's still about 45 seconds of time given how it's all spaced out.
That the mom doesn't just yank the kid back, that she gets all the way to the daughter and stops dead. That you have time to reach them but push them INTO TRAFFIC instead of pulling them back.
And say the driver does notice the situation and were to swerve to avoid them, you just pushed them back into his way.
"Well the mom was in shock and couldn't move after getting to her daughter."
Wrong, her first instinct would have been to pull her out of the way, push her out of the way, not run up to her and stand there. Shock is also not a defense because she would have been in shock and not even gotten to the daughter.
In general the scene is just...unimaginative.
Let's just pretend that it didn't take so long and was a split second situation
Let's pretend the mother would have just frozen in the intersection with her
The MC still needs to get hurt in the situation. But pushing them means he got in the way of the car and would have died in the process just as they would have.
The only way it makes any sense is for him to run up, grab their arms, pivot on his foot and throw them to the curb while getting sideswiped by the car.
I think you need someone on your team who can look at the situations you try to put people in and go "Well that doesn't really make any sense, here's how it would actually play out." Because you seem to keep coming up with great scene ideas, that you then half ass.
I can give you a list:
