Logline for serialized action-adventure series.
HallucigeniaPenpusher
A team of intrepid explorers develop the first faster than light drive to take humanity to the stars. The only thing in their way is humanity itself.
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Okay…so what happens? How is humanity an obstacle in this story? What are the personal stakes for one or all of these intrepid folks?
Loglines should be one sentence, and faster-than-light should be hyphenated in this context.
Would the explorers really be the ones to develop the technology? Are they engineers and scientists in their spare time? This may seem like a minor thing to pick on but a logline with questionable logic means people are questioning aspects of the story rather than being intrigued by them. Also remember how terrible Fant4stic is, with those who build the thing deciding to be the ones who use it.
While this does successfully establish the genre, it doesn’t provide much in the way of the four main things it needs: protagonist, antagonist, conflict, stakes. One method of crafting a quality logline is to write a big long rambling run-on sentence summarizing all the necessary detail, then trim it down and juggle the phrasing until it’s packed with information but clear and succinct.
I think I’ve written a tagline instead of a logline.
Because this is a serialized adventure, not a single two-hour story, you do have a little leeway when it comes to the logline word count.
As for the logline itself, you might ask yourself, what is the main season one storyline for the show/Serial? If that plot could be turned into a logline you might go with that.
Also, it would help if there was a main character who had a specific goal.
Yes, I’m rebuilding the logline based primarily on season one. What’s the protocol here? Do I resubmit the logline as a new entry or stick it in here? In any case, the current version is below. I’ve crafted shorter, but this one seems pretty good (if a bit longer):
Inventor Ernst Winter and his intrepid team of adventurers struggle to perfect a faster-than-light spaceship to reach the stars, but every greedy corporation and corrupt government in the solar system will kill to possess the technology for themselves.
Hey, this second attempt is better!
You don’t have to use actual names unless the person if famous. So you could say “An (adjective) inventor and his intrepid team struggle to…”
The “adjective” would be something to describe the lead character’s personality.
I can visualize the plot from this re-write.
Awesome. Thanks! This site is great. It’s really difficult to see your story from the outside after you’ve had you head buried in it, Further tweaking:
An extraordinary inventor and his intrepid team of adventurers struggle to perfect a faster-than-light spaceship to reach the stars, clashing with every greedy corporation and corrupt government in the solar system who will kill to possess the technology for themselves.
“The only thing in their way is humanity itself.”
This line is confusing.
1: If you mean by humanity that the populous is attempting to stop the development of the faster than light drive (thus standing in their way) Then you should put a face to humanity, a single person who is dead set on stopping the explorers traveling to the stars.
2: If you mean by humanity; that the crew’s petty squabbles and infighting (Their humanity) hinder the mission. Then you should just say that instead. “…But the mission is threatened by their own squabbles and prejudices.”
What’s are the stakes? Why MUST they figure out how to break the light speed barrier NOW? What is lost (materially not just ego gratification) if they fail? What’s lost if they succeed but their technology is stolen?
And if everyone else wants to steal the technology, why does that represent an obstacle to achieving a break through? Why wouldn’t everybody else want the inventor to succeed so they could just rip it the technology — get their hands on it fast and cheap, not have to the the hard work of figuring it out for themselves?
P.S. Let me clarify what I mean by stakes. Take the movie “The Martian”. It starts out as a story of planetary exploration. Other than intellectual curiosity, nothing else is at stake. IOW: the initial situation is of no dramatic value; the story is certainly not worth spending $100 million to tell with big name stars and CGI.
Then a violent sandstorm sends the initial situation south. It suddenly become a matter of survival. The stakes are a matter of life and death..
What are the life and death stakes in this story?
I agree, that the second attempt is better, but maybe it would be worth expanding on the reasons for the governments and corporations wanting this technology. Are they trying to reach the stars because they have discovered some valuable minerals that are not available on earth and can make billions of dollars for these corporations and governments?