An amateur actress at a haunted house attraction struggles with her decision to stay at the job she loves while trying to get over a guy who isn’t easy to get over..
Kim DonovanPenpusher
An amateur actress at a haunted house attraction struggles with her decision to stay at the job she loves while trying to get over a guy who isn’t easy to get over..
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I read through this loglne a couple times; you have given us the situation, even a goal of sorts, but haven’t told ?us what she must do about it. What is her plan of action to find true love?
Escaping through drugs is a reflection of a character flaw (which can be leveraged dramatically) but it is not an objective goal. ?At least it is not a positive?one.?In order to engage an audience’s interest and sympathy, a protagonist should be striving for a positive goal in spite of self-destructive tendencies.
?”Working through a life crisis”– what does that mean? ?How does that translate into a specific objective goal? ?A specific objective goal, which attaining, she believes (rightly or wrongly) ?will satisfy her subjective needs (for love, sobriety, etc.)?
Is “ladykiller” a term people still use? I like it, but I wonder if people might think you’re referring to a murderer as opposed to a player.
As DPG said, and even in the revised versions, the MC’s goal is not clear, to that matter nor is her inciting incident and as a result the plot vague.
You basically have a girl meets boy love story. Except for how they meet, and what she must do to get the guy, all the rest of the detail in the logline – haunted house, quarter-life crisis, her striving to whatever? are redundant and convolute the read.
After an amateur actress meets the guy of her dreams, she must land a gig in a local attraction in order to get close to him.
One way to reduce the verbosity would be to cut out all references to “quarter life crisis”; avoid psychobabble. ?Just describe the crisis, ?don’t tag it, the decisions she faces (which is, after all,what the generic definition of crisis is: a decision point in the plot).
You describe her as an actress. ?Well, isn’t that a clue as to what her objective goal ought to be? ? She wants to break into show business, right? ?Isn’t that her Biggest Dream? ?Ergo, the romance would be a complication that threatens to deflect her from her Biggest Dream.
The romance creates a dilemma where she has to choose between her objective goal, a ?career in show business, and her subjective need for love.?This is a tried-and-true, boilerplate dilemma in stories about people struggling to make it in show business. ?A hoary dilemma in stories about women trying to establish a professional career. ?What is new and different about the dilemma she faces in this story? ?How does working in the haunted house threaten her struggle to attain her Biggest Dream?
fwiw
okay guys, how about this version?
An amateur actress at a year-round haunted house attraction falls for the resident Lothario and struggles with her decision to stay at the job she loves while trying to get over him.
>>>struggles with her decision to stay at the job
To reiterate, a logline is a brief summary of a plot. ?And plots are not about deciding to decide; plots are about what characters do. ?Specifically, a logline describes the action that follows a decision the protagonist makes by the end of the Act 1.
Example:
In a dystopian future, a girl volunteers to take her sister’s place in the annual ?”reaping” of youths by a dictatorship for a gladiatorial fight to the death.
(The Hunger Games)
“The Hunger Games” is not about Katniss “struggling with her decision”. ?It’s about the struggle after she makes her decision.
Trimmed down, leaner and easier to read – ti’s much of an improvement.
Struggles great, but to what end?
Her decision will constitute a single scene in act one, what will be her main action in act two? What is her over arching goal in the A plot?