by EverStride · Initiate · 60 pts
1,041 views
Categories: Fantasy
Already a member?
?Is helping? constitutes a stalled-in-the-water phrase. A protagonist should be proactive. His objective goal should be framed as something he proactively and urgently struggles toward, not stroll.
And in the ?logline the stakes should be implicitly obvious and the struggle urgent. In this case, what's to be lost ?or suffered if they don't reach their homeland? Is it a life or death issue for everyone involved? ?IOW: What do you want the audience to worry about?
The stakes establish the significance of the struggle ?for viewers. The dramatic job of the stakes is to engage the emotions of viewers in the struggle. To make them care, to want the protagonist to succeed.
>>do I have to have a focused enemy?
Yep. The dramatic job of the antagonist is to make the audience fear the protagonist will fail. ?Easier to do with a fearsome, loathsome flesh-and-blood body than a disembodied, non-visual sentiment. ?So you need a proxy figure, a visible, specific flesh and blood antagonist, embodying the general and prejudice and hostility.
(Movies are a visual medium. When I'm writing a logline, I imagine that movie technology hasn't advanced in 100 years, that I'm writing for a silent film. ?Dialogue cards are few and succinct. ?I have no choice; the story must be conveyed through visual elements: people, objects, locations, action. So the logline must describe only what can be visualized.)
>>>the ?entity? is just a very curious toy,
Why would a character exert all that effort, put his life at risk for ?curious toy?? He may not fully apprehend it's potency, but there has to be something about it that he MUST have, that provides sufficient incentive for him to put his life at risk for outcasts he doesn't even like or sympathize with.
fwiw
As payment for?helping a?group of small weasel-like creatures cross the?hostile continent to reach their homeland, a weathered ex soldier receives?a seemingly simple toy that turns out to be a?mysterious and?powerful entity he accidentally unleashes through his carelessness.??Now he must stop it at all costs before it destroys the Peace Accord signed after the last great Hell Break of 2999.
As DPG wrote a reluctant hero is often a better approach, explained well by Chris Vogler in The Writer's Journey, as it imbues the decision the MC makes with significance and adds weight to their burden. However, the hero's reluctance doesn't need to be specified in the logline - it's not directly related to the plot and almost a given that there will be some reluctance.
