Good for me
A bratty hollywood teenager finds out how good she has it when an accident forces her wandering spirit to live in a war torn African country.
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agyweiwaa:
Frankly, as written, the logline sounds like a sermon in the garb of story.
Although characters usually do need to learn an important lesson (subjective need) in the course of the story, that is not the focus of a logline. The logline focuses on a struggle for a concrete, specific, objective goal. The lesson to be learned is a bonus, a consequence of that struggle, an important ingredient to the story, but not to the logline.
Loglines are not about lessons to be learned. Rather, they summarize the struggle for an objective goal. So what is the specific, concrete, objective goal your protagonist must struggle to achieve?
And what are the stakes? That is, what is the risk of failure? What is the worst thing that can happen to her if she fails to achieve the goal?
Also having her “dragged around by a guardian angel” invokes an image of a passive, helpless protagonist. Protagonist’s should be active, not passive. So, while initially, the girl may be helpless, “dragged” into a situation against her will (Act 1), after that (Act 2, Act 3) she MUST empower herself, take the initiative in escaping from the situation. She must be the proactive agent of her own physical rescue and subjective redemption.
fwiw.
Hi guys, thanks for stopping by. Now the objective is for her to learn a lesson in gratitude, for her to know there are worst things in life than not having a particular celebrity at her sweet 16 birthday. What i’m looking at is for her to be dragged around by a guardian angel to live the lives of people she’s been rude to or had passed snide comments at. Possibly the best log line would be “A bratty hollywood teenager learns a lesson in gratitude when an accident forces her spirit to live the lives of the less fortunate” What do you think?
^ in terms of story structure, I agree with Richiev and dpg. Your protagonist is better served if they are ACTUALLY stranded there (although, be specific how this happens; her plane crashes while returning from the Miss Universe competition or something).
BUT (and this is as big a but as I could put out there) … DO NOT write a story about a white American teenager falling from the sky and saving a tribe of Africans. The subtext of that is more culturally dubious than casting Tom Cruise as The Last Samurai.
If your story is to be a more personal journey of enlightenment about the plight of the less fortunate, you need to also be clearer about her OBJECTIVE goal – not just to return home, but what specifically the character must do to make that a reality (for instance, in the plane scenario, maybe she has to learn how to fix the plane. Hey, it worked for Flight of the Phoenix, right?)
When a self-centered Beverly Hills exchange student gets stranded in a 3rd world country engulfed in civil war, she must rescue the entire village where she has been living from genocide.
I don’t think you need the spirit part, Just have a Bratty Hollywood teenager get stranded in a third world country.
Wandering spirit sounds to me like a ghost. So, the accident is fatal? If that’s the case and she’s dead, how is she supposed to “learn her lesson” in the end?