A Shakespearian actor becomes unable to tell reality from a play. When his character Mercutio dies he wanders through what he believes is the afterlife distressing his family and friends. Title : A grave man
NbzLogliner
A Shakespearian actor becomes unable to tell reality from a play. When his character Mercutio dies he wanders through what he believes is the afterlife distressing his family and friends. Title : A grave man
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Nbz.
You’ve posted several loglines already and seem to be getting very similar comments on all of them. I strongly suggest you study the comments you’ve already gotten to see how you can improve.
A logline is a tool used to describe a plot, the vital components of a plot are; a character, an inciting incident, stakes and a goal most of which are missing in this post.
Your main character is an actor, good, but what does he want, why and what does he stand to lose?
The convention in modern drama is that the protagonist needs to be proactive. ?That is, although he initially may suffer from the slings and arrows of outrageous and capricious fortune, there comes a point in the story (usually at the end of Act 1), where he makes a decision, commits to an objective goal, something he wants badly. ?And the rest of the plot is his struggle to get what he wants.
So given the actor’s predicament, what does he want? ?Why is he even playing the role of Mercutio in the 1st play, given that the character is doomed to be killed at the midpoint?
What is your dramatic want in having him wander through the play after he’s been killed? ?What’s your point? ? ?What do you want?to say with this story?
Maybe an example will help. Chances are you’re familiar with Star Wars: A New Hope.
Looking at that film we can see that the
Inciting incident: Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed,
which causes him to set his
Goal: To help fight the tyranny of?the Empire
and he does this by…
Action: Learning to use the Force and then joining the Rebellion.
Now, looking at yours.
“A Shakespearian actor becomes unable to tell reality from a play. When his character Mercutio dies he wanders through what he believes is the afterlife distressing his family and friends. ”
What you describe here is basically only the inciting incident. An actor who is unable to tell reality from fiction thinks he dies because his character dies.
Now, since he thinks he’s dead, what does he want to do? Normally the answer would be something like, ‘escape from his false world’ but he wholly believes that he’s in the afterlife. What does he wish to do in the afterlife(or what does he think Mercutio wishes to do?) And how does he achieve this?
You may want to consider creating distance from this character, by using one of the friends or family members to be the one with the objective goal to help him. ?Or figure out something the actor must do.
Actually, this idea faintly reminds me of Edge of Tomorrow, or Groundhog Day, I suppose. In ‘Edge of Tomorrow’, Tom Cruise’s character is stuck in a war with aliens, reliving the same day over and over because of some time travel power. Your story is a bit more difficult because he seems to still be interacting physically with the real world, but he’s mentally inside the afterlife.
Good points made by DPG and Dkpough1.
Aaron Sorkin says that he doesn’t know his characters before he figures out their intentions and obstacles. Point is, you can choose an interesting time period, subject matter or theme, but without knowing what a character wants and what’s stopping them from getting it you don’t have a story.
In answer to your question, the best advice I can give is work it in reverse. If you have a character but don’t know what actions they will take or stakes they will face, reverse engineer them from the end. This will force you to think in a goal orientated way.
In the case of your logline you have an actor, what do actors want more than anything? I would say praise. He could want to win a Tony, score the lead in the next big Broadway hit or finally get approval from his parents. That said, his ‘want’ could be unrelated to his profession, he could want to preserve the natural beauty of the East African coastline and have to fight pirates to do so, or travel to Estonia to see his long lost brother before he dies of cancer, etc…
If you can’t think of an external to himself objective need for your character, you could research other films made about theater actors to see what goals those characters had.
A Shakespearean actor becomes unable to tell reality from a play…
The event that causes him to become unable to tell reality from a play sounds like it would be the inciting incident. You might want to add that to the loglilne. (As long as you can do it without adding too many words)
“Do you have any tips on how to do this? Like a rule or something that could be useful to keep in mind?”
I’m probably just doubling up on what Nir and others have said, but:
Specifically define the OBJECTIVE goal of the Hero… Every other story element flows from this. If there is no goal there is no point.
Once you have that (VERY SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE) goal, take a look at a potential character flaw that would run in contrast to this (irony)..
Your concept has potential (particularly in terms of comedy…) — just figure out what this character WANTS given they believe themselves to now be dead.
best of luck:)