A faithless young girl is recruited into a war of witches and must believe in herself and magic enough to use a legendary wand to end the conflict.
JJ HartlyPenpusher
A faithless young girl is recruited into a war of witches and must believe in herself and magic enough to use a legendary wand to end the conflict.
Share
Both versions seem to boil down to his plot line:
A faithless girl must learn how to use a legendary wand to end a war of witches.
But what is faithless supposed to mean — other than it seems to ?there to fulfill the requirement that the protagonist have a character flaw?
And how young (or old) ?is young?? Is she a pre-teen?? Or a teen?? I suggest the age descriptor be?more specific.
And what are the stakes, the mortal jeopardy she is placing herself in?? IOW:? if she fails to end the war, what’s the downside, the consequences for not just the witches, but for her?
In any event, it seems to be a combo genre, a coming of age story as well as a scifi story.
Be wary of so called loglines found in abundance online, from IMDB to fan sites they will often contain misleading and poorly structured versions. For example the loglines above for Star Wars – A New Hope lack an inciting incident, a cause and effect relationship between the actions and plot objectives and both have two goals.
The main character descriptions should directly relate to their inner journey and obstacle. I think the question was raised about this because faithless doesn’t imply a flaw that requires a hero’s journey to overcome. Your elaboration, that she must believe in herself, doesn’t relate to her having faith or not having faith, rather explains that she is plagued with self doubt. Perhaps best to change her flaw to self doubt instead of faithless.
The bigger question, in my mind, is why must she do what she does? In other words, what is the inciting incident that motivates her to go on this difficult journey? And to what end? What is her specific goal?
After Luke’s uncle and aunt were killed by the galactic empire, he went on an adventure to defeat Vader. What is the equivalent in your story?
First of all, I sense there is a germ of an potentially interesting story here.
But I think the concept and the logline need polishing.? For instance, as Nir Shelter said,???what’s the inciting incident that sets her off on her quest for the wand?
And what are the stakes?? So she doesn’t find or master the power of the wand.? So the war of the witches doesn’t end.? So what?? What’s the jeopardy for her?? What does she stand to lose if she fails?? What skin does she have in the game — in this war of the witches?? (Skywalker’s skin in the game was the loss of the only family he knew– the desire to avenge their unjust deaths.)
And?it’s ?still unclear to me ?what “faithless” means in the context of this?logline.?? Particularly, how does being faithless trigger her desire, her need?to accept the recruitment?
Thanks for the clarification.? However, I did not detect one necessary plot element in your synopsis: a singular antagonist.
The magic wand seems to constitute the “McGuffin”, which per Hitchcock, is the object in a film story?everyone covet, everyone wants to get their hands on.?? If that is so, then? the story would benefit from?the ?young girl should?having a??rival, an opponent??who covets the wand?to use for?evil rather than good.???Say a wicked crone.? Such as:
A timid young girl recruited to end a war of witches must find and master a legendary wand for good before it falls into the clutches of a wicked crone intent on using it for evil.
(36 words)
The?existence of ?a rival?amps up ?dramatic tension because:? 1]?it raises the stakes: the crone will use it to make things worse, not better.? 2]It plants an implied ticking clock: the young girl must acquire the wand??before the crone does.
Yeah, I know.? Not a word about her learning to trust herself, trust the magic of the wand, yada-yada.? Why?? Because?that’s the standard issue inner story, the boilerplate ?subjective need, entailed in the classic paradigm of the Hero’s Journey.? But a logline is about the outer story, the quest for the objective goal and who opposes the protagonist.
fwiw.
Good points raised above.
In answer to your question a logline isn’t suppose to explain all the plot points of the inner journey, as DPG mentioned it’s the outer journey plot that it’s suppose to tell. It’s through the character and obstacle descriptions that the inner journey is inferred, and it’s through the cause and effect relationship between the inciting incident and goal that the motivations and stakes are made clear.
For example:
The inciting incident of the galactic empire burning Luke’s uncle and aunt motivated him to seek revenge against the man in charge. It’s also connected via a cause and effect relationship to his outer journey goal – stopping the empire’s Death Star.? However, a peek under the surface and we can see that the hero needs to learn to let go of anger on account of being vengeful – his inner journey goal.
If we keep looking we see that the empire is dangerous and well equipped (killed and burned a whole settlement in? a few hours), so now we also get a sense of the magnitude of the hero’s obstacle.
But wait there’s more!!!
As this is a galactic empire the reader now knows the stakes at hand – freedom across the whole galaxy.
So much was inferred with so few words, point is that with a well structured logline a strong concept will answer all the required questions.