During the 1950?s in segregated Louisiana, a working-class African American mother and wife struggles with unforeseen births, deaths and racial issues while pursuing an unconventional career.
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During the 1950?s in segregated Louisiana, a working-class African American mother and wife struggles with unforeseen births, deaths and racial issues while pursuing an unconventional career.
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“During the 1950?s in segregated Louisiana, a working-class African American mother and wife struggles with unforeseen births, deaths and racial issues while pursuing an unconventional career.” (26 words)
Protagonist: “?a working-class African American mother and wife” —> This could be trimmed some. Since the premise is based on the protagonist facing racism, I’d say it’s okay to include that, but “mother and wife” could just be turned into ‘woman’ or some other single-word identifier(such as, saying her profession—> ‘a black nurse’).
Antagonist: The logline hints at antagonistic elements(racism) but since there is no goal stated in the logline, there is no clear character/force which is implied to directly oppose the protagonist.
Goal: As I mentioned above, there is no objective goal described in the logline. What does she specifically want to accomplish? The logline is categorized as ‘Romance’. Who’s the love interest? The logline mentions “pursuing an unconventional career” —> Is that her objective? To get hired for a job?
Inciting incident: No clear event is described in the logline. The inciting incident should share a casual relationship with the goal. It should be the single event which forces the protagonist to become a part of the conflict.
Here is a previous answer of mine which discusses inciting incidents more: https://loglines.org/answer/re-when-a-pirate-a-princess-and-an-outlander-discover-that-their-crystal-necklaces-have-magical-powers-the-three-women-go-on-an-adventure-that-leads-to-saving-the-world-from-darkness-3/
I suggest reading the formula tab at the top of the page, reading other members’ loglines, and the reviews members leave for loglines in order to help better understand a logline’s elements.
As usual, I agree with Dkpough1.
I’m a little confused as to how a birth is unforeseen. I appreciate that there are occasions where it happens but in the majority of cases a woman would probably be aware of it.
When choosing a genre, in my opinion, it must be obvious where the humour, terror, romance, drama etc is coming from in a logline. I would very much expect a logline in the “romance” genre to hint at a love interest at the very least. If the romantic element of this story is merely a subplot perhaps consider putting this in drama instead.
I won’t repeat what Dkpough has said about the inciting incident and the goal as he is spot on. However, I will say that, to me, dealing with births, deaths and racism is simply life for a black woman in 1950s Louisiana – “an African American woman struggles with life while pursuing an unconventional career.” That’s how I read this if it’s simplified a bit. It’s incredibly vague across the board. Is her career unconventional because she’s black? Because she’s a woman? Because she’s an alligator wrestler? Specificity is the key to making sure that the reader understands what the story is about.
My advice is tell us what her profession is when you describe her (a black nurse), switch the genre to a drama, and give us a clear inciting incident and the corresponding goal.
Hope this helps.
As a rule, the word ‘struggles’ is bad for a logline. The word ‘must’ should replace it.
When her daughter unexpectedly gets pregnant, an African?American?in 1950’s America must… (Then tell us what she must do)
What specifically does the mother need to achieve? A struggle is good and all but a logline needs to focus the reader’s attention at one specific goal.
There’s also no need to specify that she struggles with racial issues, that is very clear from the setting and period. Leveraging common knowledge, of this type, in a logline gives power to the premise as the reader puts the pieces together in their mind’s eye without having the obvious spelled out.