Romantic
savinh0Samurai
A perfectionist middle-aged business consultant gets in contact with his childhood sweetheart by an older letter which reminds him of their promise to marry with 35 years, but his flare up feelings are against his lonely structured lifestyle and she is already engaged and will marry soon.
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A logline should delineate one action, one objective goal the main character seeks to pursue. This logline seems to suggest 2 actions, 2 goals: getting the girl, and resume writing. Which one is the main goal that is to be the basis for the plot?
The main goal is getting the girl.
Maybe something like:
A perfectionist middle-aged business consultant gets in contact with his childhood sweetheart by an older letter which reminds him of their promise to marry with 35 years, but his flare up feelings are against his lonely lifestyle and she is already engaged and will marry soon.
I like where this is going, but like the above has mentioned needs some tidying up. Not sure if want a romcom from this, but that is kinda the impression I got, so another way of writing could be along the lines of: On the eve of her wedding, a bride-zilla is shocked when her childhood sweetheart arrives with a contract they signed 20 years ago saying they were to be married and can only be void if she can find him someone to marry before her own wedding.
Not perfect, but that is just the vibe I got from the original log line.
This logline could use a good dose of linguistic economy and grammar corrections but first I question the character motivations.
MC – business consultant
Goal – Get the girl
Antagonist – Girl’s fianc?
MC flaw – perfectionism
Inciting incident – finding a letter
If the only reason the MC suddenly wants the girl is this letter he found (from which his old emotions are flared up) then his love for her seams unbelievable and his motivation lacking.
Consider Gatsby dedicated his life from the moment he met Daisy to “getting the girl” every action he took was aimed at making him a suitable man for marriage and was part of his efforts to marry Daisy. This MC doesn’t seam to have as well established a motivation as Gatsby and his love for the girl comes across as more of a temporary emotion he is reminded of. As a result the stakes are not high enough to make his story interesting not as interesting as Jay Gatsby’s anyhow to inspire 4 film iterations after the novel was written.
If however you make him a romantic obsessed with the girl and make him devote his life to pursuing her (in a none creepy stalker way). Then the devastation from learning of her engagement to another man raises the stakes and his actions become compelling.
About the structure of the logline better to simplify the descriptions used for the MC being either a perfectionist or middle aged have little baring on him as a business man or a man in love. What is one characteristic you can use to describe him that would make it harder for him to achieve his goal?
Hope this helps.