A confident police chief in the Texas Hill Country finds a diary and discovers his entire life has been based on lies and deception, but the battle to dig through the past and unravel the truth becomes dangerous and could cost him his job, his family, and his sanity.
RuthiePenpusher
A confident police chief in the Texas Hill Country finds a diary and discovers his entire life has been based on lies and deception, but the battle to dig through the past and unravel the truth becomes dangerous and could cost him his job, his family, and his sanity.
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Hey Ruthie.
I think this is really strong. It’s active, tension is there.?Your logline is?nice and compact. But it’s also a bit language dense.?Two words to think about removing/revising….
1) ‘Confident’: Years of story that’s come before you tells us that a Police Chief in Texas Hill Country is a?confident person. The only time I’d modify it is if he wasn’t confident, i.e., a reluctant chief who inherits his role.
1) ‘dangerous’ seems to be an unnecessary word that complicates because you then tell us exactly what you mean by dangerous: ‘could cost him his job, his family and his sanity.’ ?If true, you can add tension with something like ?….’ and possibly his life.’
UPDATE:
A police chief in the Texas Hill Country unearths a diary and discovers his entire life has been based on lies and deception, but the struggle to dredge through the past and unravel the truth could cost him his job, his family, and his sanity.
simpler, faster
This logline doesn’t describe conflict, and it doesn’t describe a specific goal. After finding this diary, what specifically does he want to do? What does he specifically want to find or accomplish. In other words, at the climax, what will he do, or fail to do?
“Confident” is not worth mentioning about the MC. I recommend illustrating some sort of flaw that the audience can identify with. That works better. Since he is devastated by the lies, you should ?somehow mention that he is very honest, somehow.
The whole “find a diary thing” is too small to mention in the logline.
After discovering his career is based on a lie, an upstanding police chief must uncover the deception that now threatens his life and the lives of his family.
MarkS,
The purpose of a logline is to?sell a script to a moviemaker, not to a movie watcher. Getting them interested? Great. They probably read a lot of interesting loglines. Getting them to want to read your script means you need to convey the plot of the script concisely. The logline should only describe visual actions, the goal of the protagonist. It should raise interest, and shouldn’t be so vague that there are a host of questions that need to be asked to understand what the plot is.
For example, how does he discover his life is based on lies? What does that mean? Lies pertaining to what? Who lied? Why? What do they want? Is it his job? Did his family not tell him he’s adopted? Did his wife marry him because of an ulterior motive? What are the lies, and why do they matter? ?This may seem like nitpicking, or something that will be answered in the script, but by the time a producer has asked themselves these questions they’ll probably move on. ?It’s a simple thing to be specific about.
So that leaves, “but the battle to dig through the past and unravel the truth becomes dangerous and could cost him his job, his family, and his sanity.” That itself is 25 ?words that could be cut by specifically describing what the character’s objective, specific goal, that has a clearly defined ending point.
For example, using some of the elements from this logline but making up my own story:?After discovering that?he is the son of a criminal mastermind, an adopted police chief goes rogue to search for his mother whom he thought was dead. (26)
28 words versus 49. Comparing them:
What lies did the protagonist believe? He didn’t know his real mother was a criminal.
What does he seek to do? Find her.
The climax of the story? He either finds her or he doesn’t. Succeed or fail. Unless he changes his goal during the story. But either way, the logline defines a clear endpoint for this goal. The original post describes the goal as “unravel the truth”. That could imply a number of different things.
A logline should capture attention, it should hook the reader with something unique and interesting, and at the same time it should clearly convey what the story is about. All in as few words as possible.
What lie?
Yeah, what’s the lie, the deception?
There are any number of films about people discovering secrets buried in the past. ?Or accepted truths and facts that turn out to be lies and deceptions. So that is hardly a story hook, a unique feature. ?The hook of the story would seem to be the nature of the deep, dark secret.
Well, what is it?’
What makes this story so special, so different from all the other stories about skeletons in the family closet, ghosts from the past coming back to haunt the present?
Ruthie,
It doesn’t look like you’ve implemented any of the advise you’ve gotten. I suggest you review the comments given to this concept and studdy the ‘Formula’ tab on the top bar before your next draft.