I’ll write something longer on the short film, but I personally think shorts work best when focused on one incident that either is life changing or has significant impact in the characters’ lives. It should have a beginning, middle and end. So, this would work out to the normal world, the changing event, and the aftermath/resolution. In a short, you don’t have the time to cover the same arc of material you would in a longer piece, so it works best to have that one incident be something quite shocking with specific dramatic stakes.