White Calm
When a schizophrenic man is released from a futuristic mental institution, specializing in curing your inner ?demons?, learns that he is being hunted by an assassin, he must rely on his fragmented memories to survive.
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Hello, you need to characterize a little your main character (a “man” is too vague) and precise what is the inciting event (the event which put the story in motion). I assume the murder of the parents is backstory.
Thanks for the feedback. Made some changes. Let me know what you think.
it’s getting better, but there’s still no inciting event.
You added some elements of backstory (family cases of schizophrenia). This could be something we learn in the movie that will explain something in the movie like the man is maybe a schizo. I don’t think this qualifies as a characterization. Who is this man? How can you emathize with him? The world “man” is too vague. In a logline every world is precious, so instead of “man” you should at least use another word that says more. Often it’s his job. “A succesful loyer”, “a dirty cop”, but the rule is that it must be something that fit with the story, possibly add some irony (A loyer accused of murder, a schizo who plays the doctor). Think about your character and your story and write something precise and appropriate. Like Syd Field (screenwriting guro) says “if you don’t know who is this man, who does?”. you must know and tell us in a word + an adjective.
The word “mysterious” can’t be used in a logline, it’s vague and unspecific (and very much abused in bad loglines – I used it too but I won’t do it again).
When you will include the inciting event (for exemple why the man starts investigating right now?) and a compelling character I think you can have a viable logline.
Very good points by FFF. If your protagonist is investigating this organization because of the untimely deaths (that is, the deaths are the inciting incident) then you should reword your logline to make that clear. If not, like FFF said, your logline should include a reason why this person has decided to take action.
If your protagonist is not himself schizophrenic, then I’m not sure why his family history is relevant. If the conflict is going to be questioning whether he’s sane or not, you should address that directly. If he is himself schizophrenic, just describe him that way.
Everything said above.
Also the goal is hinted at but not specified is his goal to catch the killer? If so this needs to be specified in the logline.
Further to that the inciting incident needs to correlate to the goal in a logical line of connection. By that I mean because of the inciting incident the MC must achieve the goal therefore as suggested above the death of his family could be the inciting incident in this case.
Hope this helps.
Thanks everyone for the great feedback. There’s lots to the story that I’m trying to condense into one sentence. Still working on it. But what do you guys think of the updated logline?
Hey Sid,
When A(n) X (=”troubled by his past”=one word) man is released from a futuristic institution, specializing in curing your inner demons?, [ inciting incident = “learns that he is being hunted by an agent tasked to kill him”} , [something happens=he must take action]
In other words what you really have now is:
When a schizophrenic man just released from a futuristic mental institution learns that he is being hunted by an assassin, he must….
If later in the story people fucked with his mind and he ‘isn’t a schizo – that’s for the story to unfold…
Now that your logline is not on the front page, I would simply repost it in a few days.
What Nir Shelter says. To merely “survive” is not good enough. Every protagonist in every movie wants to survive. More than merely survive, the protagonist MUST need to do something, achieve some specific goal that will ensure his survival — and defeat the antagonist.
What must the man do in this story?
What he must do is find “the man” running the institute with the help of this assassin/agent. Now how exactly do I word something like that especially since this man is one of the biggest plot points and mystery of the film.
You’ve just identified the core of your story.
Forget backstory and setting in this instance I suggest revers engineering your concept from the goal.
Goal – Stop the man running the institute.
Now ask; why does the MC need to do this?
The answer should be as a result of a specific event that happened to the MC.
A few suggestions would be;
The man conducted an un ethical experiment on the MC he now needs revenge and wants to prevent this from happening to others.
The man killed the MC’s family or friends he now needs revenge and wants to prevent this from happening to others.
The man illegally lobotomised the MC’s family or friends he now needs revenge and wants to prevent this from happening to others.
There are many more options I’m sure so pick the best one and use that as the inciting incident.
Use that to start your logline then describe your character briefly and write in the goal.