preventing her brother from joining the local crew gets complicated when the gang leader falls in love with her

This is an interesting logline.

Here is how I read it:? A teenage girl’s struggle to keep her kid brother in school and out of a street gang gets complicated when the gang leader falls in love with her.

I inserted “in school” because keeping him out of the gang does not fully qualify as an objective goal.? Why?? Because it only tells us what she doesn’t want.? An objective goal needs to be defined in terms of what she does want.? And I presume that is what the girl wants to do is keep her kid brother in school so he can graduate.

The gang leader falling in love with her seems to be the inciting? incident, the event that creates her dramatic problem.? But here’s the complication to her complication:? if I am reading the logline right, her objective goal predates the inciting incident.? It’s her purpose from the moment the story starts, right?

But the standard formula for dramatic action states that the objective goal should be determined after the inciting incident.? The objective goal should arise because of the inciting incident.? But here, it arises before and in spite of the inciting incident.

Let me tease out the issue by referring to another movie, “Working Girl” (1988).? As the movie opens,? the protagonist, Tess McGill, a lowly secretary, already has an objective? goal.? She wants to break through the glass ceiling, get promoted into management.? This is her meta goal.?

But it is not her dramatic goal.

What’s the difference?

A meta goal is a long term goal that the protagonist has before the movie begins and that may not be achieved until after the movie ends.? The dramatic goal is the immediate goal that the protagonist must achieve within the time frame of the film.? ?The dramatic goal arises in response to a specific problem created by the inciting incident.? If the protagonist does not solve that? short term problem,? doesn’t achieve her dramatic goal, then she won’t achieve her long term meta goal.

So, the movie opens in middle of Tess’s ongoing struggle for her meta goal.

But then her new boss steals the idea that would enable her to achieve her meta goal.? This creates the dramatic problem, and the dramatic goal that occupies rest of the movie:? Tess must find a way to “steal back” and get the credit for her idea.

Now then, if I understand this logline correctly, then the story begins with the protagonist already pursuing an meta goal , to keep her brother in school, out trouble .? Then the gang leader falls in love with her.? This creates a dramatic problem.? And, I think, an interesting one. Now what the logline needs is a dramatic goal to solve that specific dramatic problem.

So in light of that complication, what becomes the protagonist’s objective dramatic goal?? What must she do about the gang leader falling in love with her?

fwiw