Serial Killer Sister
When a Newly recruited police officer discovers that his younger sister is a serial killer, he does everything to keep anyone from finding out.
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First, the technical: change “Newly recruited” to “newly-recruited” and kill “that” since it’s not really necessary and you want to omit needless words. Regarding “he does everything to keep anyone from finding out”, I’m not sure about it. It’s clunky and lacks kick. “Keep anyone from finding out” seems unnecessarily long when you could say something like “keep her secret”. Also, he literally can’t do “everything”; maybe something like “everything in his power” or “all he can” instead? These phrases are all hewing a little close to cliche, but you get the idea. One more thing – and I encourage you to treat this as an experiment because it might not work – is there a brief, snappy way to draw our attention to the inner conflict he must be feeling? He’s a cop, after all, and she hasn’t just whacked somebody; she’s a card-carrying sicko. So that’d be very tough for him and the logline might – might – benefit from touching on that, provided you can keep it brief and not ruin the flow.
Anyway, good solid premise with plenty of opportunities for conflict. Good luck with it.
This happens to be the major storyline for season seven of Dexter, just with the roles reversed.
I think it makes for an interesting with some conflict. But I know nothing about the characters other than he’s a new recruit and she’s younger. Give the officer a trait, the obvious would be that he’s idealistic and believes in the law in black and white. Hence some internal conflict when it comes to saving his sister.
Also, there needs to be some direction. Something that will happen, some endpoint or goal. Otherwise the story has no direction. He’s just going to protect her? Then what?
Sorry forgot – Judge Paul Clarke.
One of the issues I see right off the bat is the genre. Without knowing what the “everything” implies, one can’t tell if it’s a drama, a crime drama, a comedy, or a dark comedy (yes, you can make a serial killer-themed story funny). To me, the whole logline is a bit clunky and lacks depth. It’s missing an antagonist, an obstacle and the stakes, but have an excellent starting point with the word “When”:
“When a top police recruit discovers his sister is the killer terrorizing his city, he struggles to maintain his acclaimed reputation while sabotaging the detective bent on killing the killer.” (30 words)
Geno Scala (sharkeatingman)- judge
Two serious protagonist-related problems here from the start. Firstly, it is debatable whether a young – and presumably idealistic – policeman would be so willing to cover for his clearly unrepetent sister without any attempt to try to stop her behaviour. More profoundly, even if you could contrive your way around that, there is little prospect that your film’s audience will feel much empathy for a protagonist who has no moral conflict in abetting an unrepetent killer (she being his kid sister hardly manages as a satisfactory extenuation). In fact, he acts with greater immorality than she does, because she could be labelled as being ‘sick’, while he does not have even that excuse to hide behind.
The only way this brother-sister set up could be commercial is if the logline makes clear that the sister is being coerced to do bad and the brother is taking it upon himself to not only protect her but to hunt down the genius sociopath who is pulling her strings.
Otherwise the story concept is too fundamentally flawed to be able to be sold by any logline.
Steven Fernandez (Judge)