A soldier returns home desiring to become a professional poker player, believing it’s a safer vocation than army combat, so she thought, until winning a large poker pot from a serial killer. Now she is back in a battle to save lives including her own.
SteveLogliner
A soldier returns home desiring to become a professional poker player, believing it’s a safer vocation than army combat, so she thought, until winning a large poker pot from a serial killer. Now she is back in a battle to save lives including her own.
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google says a serial killer murders with no apparent motive and (typically) follows a characteristic, predictable behaviour pattern
what’s his “predictable behaviour pattern” or is he a psychopath instead?
also “reckoning poker to be a safer vocation” isn’t enough,
add protag’s history with it
how do you plan to make him likeable after establishing him as fickle (although, it could be done)
I like the “back in battle” premise (are you thinking about a reluctant hero)
good luck
The logline is too long and convoluted, here is a reduced version:
After winning a large poker pot from a serial killer, a veteran must fight to save her life.
It’s rather lean on plot – she wins, he chases, they fight, she beats him (or not) and lives happily ever after.
What else does she do?
What other threats are there except to her life? How much money was in the pot? If it’s less than 50k just drop the money and let him have it, if more, is it really worth dying for? Was it an illigal game? Can she not just call the cops and report that a crazy guy/gal is after her?
What’s the point of making her a war vet?? Because that implies she got the combat chops to prevail against the serial killer.? This diminishes suspense as to the outcome because the antagonist is going up against her character strengths.? When he should be exploiting her character weaknesses.
A plot is supposed to be a conspiracy against the protagonist.? But from the git-go, this one seems to be a setup, a conspiracy against the antagonist.? The odds are not in his favor.? It seems to me he’s being played as a woeful foil more than a worthy foe.
And why does the antagonist have to be a serial killer?? If he must be a serial killer, then he must be one in the context of the poker games.? To wit, poker games are his stalking ground, where? he selects his victims. And this has to be established for the audience in the first Act in order to kick start the suspense.? Something like, over the years, all the winners of the particular poker contest have mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again.
This could be her fate. So why would someone who wants to pursue a “safer vocation” ante up for a game that could get her killed?? Why is she playing poker anyway?
Wouldn’t it make more sense? if her combat experience has turned her into a risk junkie, someone who craves another fix — the adrenaline pump, the dopamine high, the serotonin release — that comes from dodging another bullet, evading another land mine,figuratively and literally?
Or if she was a? wounded ex-warrior.? She lost a leg in a landmine, or was? reduced to a paraplegic.? And/or is suffering from PTSD.
Whatever.? It seems to me that for this story to work there needs to be at least an implied psychological symmetry between the pathology in the antagonist and the character flaw in the protagonist. And I just don’t see it.
fwiw