Trapped
A sensitive murderer character of a novel faces agonizing dilemma when a mysterious reader wreaks havoc in the fictional world, forcing him to kill his friends as an exchange for letting him enter reality and start a new life.
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If you can rearrange this logline so that it begins with a “When…”, it might be a little less confusing.
‘When a mysterious reader forces him to kill his friends in exchange for letting him enter reality, a sensitive murderer character of a novel faces agonizing dilemma.’
And find a goal for the murderer character, while perhaps knocking out a few unnecessary words to bring it back by about half…
What is a ‘sensitive murderer’? Obviously you’re trying to tell us something about the central character, create a contradiction or a flaw, but I’m not sure what it is you’re saying there…
Your main problem, I think, is that your main character is passive. The mysterious reader is the one driving the plot – at least as described in the logline – pushing the murderer around and ‘forcing’ him to kill his friends (‘forcing’ how?) Why is it important to the murderer to get into the real world? What steps could he take to make that happen?
The relationship between a character and an abusive reader is a really interesting idea, but there’s an issue with the amount of power they have over each other. The hero and the villain have to have the power to really hurt each other for a story to work – but here, the murderer has no power over the reader, and in the end, the only thing the reader can really do is threaten to walk away. How can you increase the stakes?
The idea is really interesting but it think debbiemoon has given some great feedback. It does seem a little like the murderer is going to be told what to do and the reader has nothing to lose at all so there needs to be something that is making the reader continue doing what he’s doing. Is the murderer some how keeping him there? Why does the murderer want to step into reality? Is it that whatever the reader thinks or reads the murderer has to do? Why does the reader force the murderer to kill his friends?
The log line raises too many questions and not ones that intrigue the idea, ones the give a slight flaw in the story. The idea sounds complex so the log line really needs a lot of work in finding the central goal for both and focusing on that, whilst giving us the complex story. Lucius’ version beginning with a ‘when’ could be the way forward.
Also was confused by the sensitive murderer?! Didn’t really make sense as why is he sensitive but kills people?!
Good luck with it though.
Thanks all!
Pretty much ditto what everyone else said, but I really think this is a rad sounding premise. I think it also has a lot of potential in terms of questioning free will, since a fictional character only has as much will as the author allows and going to the real world would grant free reign. If that’s what you’re going for, I’d say phrase it to reflect that and show what the character wants out of being in the real world.