A once-promising boxer turns to highline crime to save his cancer-stricken mother. But when an Aryan Brotherhood kingpin threatens the mother of his unborn child, he must confront the demons of his past – even if it means paying the ultimate price.
DavidILogliner
A once-promising boxer turns to highline crime to save his cancer-stricken mother. But when an Aryan Brotherhood kingpin threatens the mother of his unborn child, he must confront the demons of his past – even if it means paying the ultimate price.
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Agreed with Richiev and DPG.
Also, the structure of the logline should emulate the structure of the story. Currently, it starts with “…A once-promising boxer turns to highline crime…”, but this happens well into the story, not at the very beginning of it. Point is, describe the events in the logline in the same order they play out in the story, i.e: After a kingpin threatens his wife, a once promising boxer must…
What Richiev said.
What’s the real inciting incident? ?And what is the cause-and-effect relationship to the objective goal?
And what IS the objective goal, anyway? “Confront demons of his past’ is vague, needs a translation into a specific choice of action to attain a specific goal.
If a straight line is the shortest distance between two points… you have given us an S curve of a logline 🙂
I believe the first step to improving this logline is to have the goal match the inciting incident.
In your story you have two inciting incidents: The first is his mother getting cancer, which leads to his life of crime, the second is when the mother of is unborn child is threatened by the Aryan brotherhood kingpin.
Neither one of these inciting incidents actually correlate to his goal or action of ‘confront the demons of his past’… No he must confront the kingpin! No matter how ?much inward thought he gives his past, it won’t protect the mother of his child or cure his mother of cancer. He must take action not contemplate the meaning of life.
1: I would stay with the ‘Kingpin” inciting incident and drop the cancer angle in the logline, since there is no payoff for it.
2: Then I would drop the whole, ‘he must confront the demons of his past’, and tell us what he must do to save the mother of his child.
3: Finally I would drop the line ‘even if it means paying the ultimate price‘- since it adds nothing to the logline)
Hope that helped, good luck with this!