A Huberistic only child and self proclaimed daddy’s girl, sets out to find answers about her fathers suicide from the woman who stole her ex fiance. With nothing to lose but time and her sanity, she must do whatever it takes to save her family’s name and fathers barbershop from foreclosure.
lavender81Logliner
A Huberistic only child and self proclaimed daddy’s girl, sets out to find answers about her fathers suicide from the woman who stole her ex fiance. With nothing to lose but time and her sanity, she must do whatever it takes to save her family’s name and fathers barbershop from foreclosure.
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At 51 words, the logline is w-a-y too long.? If you haven’t already done so, please review the guidelines under “Start Here” at the top of the web page.
One specific issue the logline needs to remedy is the protagonist’s objective goal: there are too many; there should be only one.? I’m guessing the goal “spine” on which everything else hangs is the need to rescue the barbershop from impending foreclosure. So that’s her objective goal. Finding answers to her father’s suicide is need-to-know information to achieve her objective goal.? It’s dramatic fodder for the script, but not necessary to include in the logline.
Thank so much! I’m having a time with this longline thing haha would you suggest I take out the part about the suicide totally?
>>would you suggest I take out the part about the suicide totally?
Depends.? What’s your story hook — the most interesting part of the story, the most likely element to grab attention?? A barbershop in the verge of foreclosure? A father dying under mysterious circumstances.? (Was it suicide or….? )
What if the daughter finds out the answers to the suicide –? but loses the barbershop anyway?? Is that enough? (How solving the suicide will save the barbershop isn’t obvious to me, but I assume you’ve got that mapped out.)
What if she saves the barbershop — but never gets the answers to the suicide? Can she live with that?
What is really the most important thing she MUST accomplish, must find out or do?? Or else.
An only child sets out to discover the motive in her father’s suicide.
Is there much more to use? A barbershop forclosure seems tiny in comparison, no?
Suggestions??
A suicide is an emotional catastrophe for the surviving family.? I know because my father blew his brains out when I was 18.
But I don’t get any sense of the emotional catastrophe for the protagonist in the logline.? Rather, she’s describe as a daddy’s girl full of hubris — as if there have been no emotional wounds inflicted on her by the inciting incident (his suicide).
Further, my father’s suicide threw us out of our comfy middle class life. You can’t collect life insurance on a suicide so my mother had to declare bankruptcy.? She was thrown out of the house, reduced to poverty. And all of us kids had to make our own way in the world.
My point, lavender81, is that you have a lot of raw ore to work with, but I think you need to dig deeper into your premise to find it and incorporate it in the logline and script.
Like the logline should describe a daughter who is emotionally devastated about her father’s death.? And I suggest the stakes have to be bigger and more personal than just the loss of his barbershop.? She and everyone else in the family face financial ruin, the loss of their home, poverty because her mother (or his estate if she isn’t alive, take your pick) can’t collect on his life insurance.? And the prospect of poverty is compounded by the fact that her relatives are shunning her, offering no help beyond? pious words of consolation at the funeral.
As I said, I think your idea is sitting on top of a rich vein of drama.? You just need to dig deeper to find and refine it.
fwiw