An unimaginative accountant who hates musicals is transported to an alternate universe where everybody sing and dance. He struggles to return to his own universe before he succumbs to the compulsion of joining in.

Interesting, but no... and a little yes.

I like the idea that it's an alternate universe which looks like our own, but where everybody sing and dance. I'm also playing around with the notion that all musicals, both stage and movies, are like a window into this other universe. And then for maximum conflict send a person through that would absolutely hate it in that universe.

He will happen on showstoppers in progress, avoid places where he notices people happen to be singing in, and then of course people will burst into song around him and he will feel awkward and cringe a lot... at first.

But in a good story the protagonist needs to transform over the course of the story, at least according to what I've learned. So eventuallly he will grow to like it and even join in.

But there is a yes to your idea, as well. You gave me an idea for the third act!

By the time he changes and bursts into song himself he has, without knowing it, been sent back to his/our own universe and when he starts to sing and dance at the accounting firm everybody thinks he has gone crazy. I think I may even have the entire third act ? not just this, but I know roughly how it all works out.

Thanks dpg

What if the twist is that suddenly, one day, he wakes up and discovers that he and he ALONE is afflicted with song-and-dance disease? The only way he can communicate anything to anyone in his quotidian life is through song and dance?

He thinks in song and dance. He dreams in song and dance. His audit reports and emails are rhymed and riddled with fanciful metaphors instead of just hard numbers and just-the-facts-ma'am-just-the-facts prose. Et cetera.

I see your point, about the date seeming a bit too manipulative by sending the accountant to the alternate universe.

I'm considering other ways he might be transported to the other universe, than the date doing it.

I do have more of the bigger picture, but I haven't locked anything down... not much anyway. I might try to do a beat sheet for it soon, though.