Have you ever tried telling someone you saw a ghost?
Have you ever had a really strange experience and failed dismally in trying to communicate it to other people?
Have you ever given up on trying to explain something that you already know people will never believe?
Well, this story is ALL about that 🙂
>>>must endure being tormented
For the purpose of a mainstream plot and logline, it’s not enough for ?a character to passively, helplessly endure suffering. ?The plot and logline needs to be framed such that the character suffers while actively pursuing a specific objective goal. ?The dramatic job description of a protagonist is to be proactive.
>>>when his mother doesn?t believe him.
What difference would it make in the arc of the conflict? ?She’s only mortal, too.
>>Have you ever given up on trying to explain something that you already know people will never believe?
What difference does it make in this story if they did believe?
The tormented girl’s objective goal is surely more than to persuade others of the existence of the dwarf. ?Getting others to believe is merely a means toward a more important goal. What is that goal? A logline should describe a specific ?objective goal.
Agreed wth DPG.
Also, what specificaly is the MC trying to achieve? To endure? What does endure mean? For how long? When will it end? Or is all the MC wants, is to convince the mother? But then, what happens once she is convinced?
Thanks again guys.
Im working on a new logline now. The core idea is the same. Its always been the same. Ive just been trying to find the right vehicle for it. Ive come up with so many story ideas from just this one idea. The sad thing is I havent been able to make any of them work to my satisfaction. The logline in this post is the basic idea.
The questions that I added to try and clarify the pitch are also a part of the main idea. Ive given up on it so many times but I always end up coming back to it. And then, I go off into a different world trying to make the same core idea function there. And most of the times it doesnt because the main action, the pro-action, isnt there because the action is SUFFERING and how suffering has the power to change a man, transform a man, into something that will never be the same again.
Thats why my stories always fall flat. Because theyre almost always about a guy who does nothing but suffer until, in the end, a complete surrender leads to the final epiphany …
And nobody really wants that, or that just doesnt work in the movies. I dont know.
Anyway, just wanted to say that Ill keep on trying and that I like it here.
Putting a character on the dramatic rack and torturing him until he comes to an epiphany works if the suffering targets a subjective problem, a flaw, the character needs to realize and overcome.
Like the teenage protagonist in “Ordinary People” who has the urge to commit suicide over guilt from the drowning of his older brother There is a clear cause and effect in the setup of the plot. ?Eventually the film climaxes in an epiphany that releases him from the guilt, enables him to resume living an ordinary life.
But when I look at this logline, I see no cause and effect relationship between the teen and the suffering, no dramatic reason why the dwarf torments him. ?The suffering seems arbitrary, capricious, suffering for the sake of mere sadism. ?What dramatic flaw is the dwarf targeting? ?Why is God (since you’ve implicated religion in the story) allowing the dwarf to torture him as he allowed Satan to torture Job?
God allowed Satan to torment Job. Yes. As God allowed the evil dwarf like creature to torment my protagonist.
Job was a good man. He had no flaw. Or did he? I don’t think he did.
Neither does my protagonist. He’s just a normal teen, who after an accident starts being tormented by “the devil” … and nobody believes him. Nobody helps him. He just … endures it until finally he can’t take it anymore and surrenders to it. And by surrendering himself to it, he discovers what I think Job discovered … a way to communicate, to converse with whatever it is that we call God.
That is why the “flawless” Job was made to suffer. By human standards he was without flaw. But in the eyes of God there was still one thing he had to learn, and at the end of his story he learns it, he finally knows without a doubt in his mind that The Kingdom of God is in this world but men do not see it.
Job saw it. And my protagonist sees it.
How do I write a logline for a protagonist whose only real flaw is that he had an accident that changed his perception of reality?
Thanks for your reply dpg. You’re forcing me to think differently. I get stuck in my thinking quite often.
Billy14:
IMHO:
The theodicy of the Book Job was a hard sell when it was originally written way ?back when — which is why a ?”happy ending” chapter was tacked on. ?Otherwise, the book would not have made the cut, been included in the official canon. ?(I write this as someone who has spent no small measure of time pondering the dialectics of the book.)
It’s an even harder sell today in the era of feel good, ?I’m OK, You’re OK, prosperity religion. ?And your theodic theme is not made easier to sell by afflicting an innocent teen with the contrivnace of a malevolent dwarf-like creature. ?Especially when there are so many real life options (incurable diseases, inherited disablities, natural disasters, accidents) with which to unjustly, unfairly torment the kid.
I just don’t see the ?market for the concept. ?I could be wrong and if you can prove me so, more power to you. ?And I will be the 1st one in the ticket line to see the movie.
IMHO