The grandfather also has a distant relationship with his granddaughter. He is married but the grandmother is a secondary character in the plot. His daughter works a lot, and his husband too, so the granddaughter is usually taking after school lessons or under the supervision of a care-taker. Granddaughter is around 7/8 years old.
I hope it can be well understand as English is not my native language and the complexity of the logline makes it a bit hard to translate.
Any comments are highly appreciated 🙂
I quite like this story for its unambitious nature, though I must admit this is a hard sell given that the stakes aren’t very high since not many readers are going to be anxious whether or not a rural school stays open. Nevertheless, I’ve tried to simplify your logline all whilst adding my own take on the characters.
“A distant grandfather must get his ill-parented granddaughter to attend the village school to prevent its closure at the reluctance of her workaholic mother.”
I removed “rural” and “urbanite” from the character descriptions since I feel the word “distant,” in conjunction with “the village school,” convey the physical distance between the characters. The secondary function of the word “distant” serves as implication that the relationship between the grandfather and his daughter and helps add to the tension between these two characters.
Ending the logline with “workaholic parents.” could work too, given it informs the reader that the granddaughter does indeed have a father figure, (mention of her mother sounds more personal). My edit makes it sound like there is no father figure, which you have stated is not the case, so take this with a grain of salt.
Thanks so much for your comments! Expresions like”ill-parented” or “workaholic” are the ones I always miss when translating a logline.
As you said the stake are not too high in the logline, for me the closure of the school will mean the remaining families with school age kids will have to move to other places and the small village will lose an important part of its population and its lifestyle.
Taking your comments I proposed a new version of the logline, it will be:
A grandfather must get his urbanite ill-parented granddaughter to attend the rural school to prevent its closure that will breakdown the village lifestyle.
I left the daugther outside the logline but the reason why the main carachter “goes to the adventure” is better expose and the danger is clearer. I agree with you that rural vs. urbanite plus distant relation and village means the same in the logline, but in choosing one of the two I feel rural vs. urbanite adds a plus of “flavour” to the logline as it sets up a part of the conflict to come.
I’m confused as to why the school will be closed or not closed