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A female prison guard in the future, where prisoners are rehabilitated with virtual reality, discovers a conspiracy that puts her loyalty into question.
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In the future when prisoners are rehabilitated with virtual reality, a [character flawed?] female guard discovers a [conspiracy to do what? Need something more specific] that puts her [what’s at stake? Only her loyalty, not her life?] in jeopardy.
Agree with the pointers above, but also – how does the idea of virtual reality rehabilitation for criminals tie in at all with the conspiracy that will test your protagonist’s loyalty? The ideas are too separate at the moment.
Maybe it would be a nice idea that the guard discovers in the end she was living in her own ‘virtual punishment’, and is rehabilitating herself in a fictional reality. That would tie both ideas together. Or was that already the plan?
Dpg makes some good points. Quite disagree with Koen, alas. (His idea sounds all too much like “I woke up and discovered it was all a dream” – uber cop out.) But, doing my own analysis from scratch:
Firstly, the logline should more clearly imply what genre this film is meant to be. As that makes a real difference to how the reader will appreciate the conspiracy. For instance, an implied political-message film will cast the conspiracy in a thematic light that would be very different to a straight out thriller. Hinting the genre also makes important tonal differences. For example, a political film could get away with setting up threats against the prison officer that are more subtle than simply against her life.
Secondly, the nature of the conspiracy could (and should) be better hinted at. For example, the prison officer may discover “a covert programme that singles out some inmates for advanced training” (or, more dramatically, “advanced combat training”).
Thirdly, an adjective or two about the prison officer when introducing her would be nice to make her more individual. Need not be a lot here. Saying “true-believing”, or “rules-following”, or “curious” (or even “bored”) would do.
In summary, making the genre clearer makes a big difference to how many levels of meaning the reader can/should read into the basic story. In addition, the reader should be teased better about the nature of the conspiracy.
Steven Fernandez (Judge)
I understand the points of Steven. However about my earlier suggestion: in my humble opinion there ‘s a difference between using a ‘dream’ as a deus ex machine, and using the rules and mechanics of the world you ‘ve set up.