A wealthy businessman who leads a double life manages to accept his homosexuality only after discovering that his son is struggling with the same conflict.
Alan SmitheePenpusher
A wealthy businessman who leads a double life manages to accept his homosexuality only after discovering that his son is struggling with the same conflict.
Share
You need to let us know what the conflict is. You should put the lead character in a situation where there would be people who would not accept his homosexuality. There would be stakes.
————————-
“When he discovers his son is gay, but afraid to reveal his secret, a conservative Rabbi who has hidden his homosexuality, vows to reveal his secret to the synagogue but worries his congregation will reject him.”
————————-
In this, there is conflict because the lead might be fired for revealing he is gay, also in this we don’t know how the story ends. What happens when he reveals he is gay to the Synagogue? It is left a mystery to be revealed by reading the entire script.
Hope this helps.
Or perhaps he is a former teen heartthrob who has millions of adoring female fans but has kept the secret of being gay solidly in the closet out of fear of losing his fans.
You are telling us the third act, you are giving away the ending.
In a logline you have a character, something happens that breaks up the norm, this causes conflict, and something or someone stands in the way of the lead accomplishing their goal; but you don’t give away the resolution.
In your logline you let us know there is a happy ending. The lead character who struggled with being gay accepts it in the end.
My question, from reading the logline, is when/where is this set? Is it a period piece, set in a time when homosexuality was less accepted than it is today, or is it set in a a place where it is still frowned upon?
I think these things are important to know, because, my initial response is ‘why do they struggle to accept their sexualities?’
1987, San Francisco Area in full AIDS period
In that case, the situation makes perfect sense, but I do think that information needs to be included in the logline, as the context is important.
A wealthy businessman who leads a double life manages to accept his homosexuality only after discovering that his son is struggling with the same conflict.
Protag: wealthy businessman
Antag: businessman’s ‘shame’ of who he is
Conflict: his ‘struggle with who’ he is
Grows: unsuccessfully fighting his demons until halfway story he finds out that he is not alone in this. By excepting what makes his son tick, he must accept what makes him tick.
Inciting incident: It is in the middle of your logline and personally I think that is fine. If you put it upfront it would somehow translate to: “after a homosexual discovers his son also leads a double life,…”
The word “only” has two purposes:
(1) Showing that it takes a lot for the protag to try to really start growing.
(2) Making clear that there isn’t really an inciting – him discovering that his son is gay – incident at the start of your story, but (I would say) halfway.
But if you cut that word, I would still get both those points.
“manages to” is not needed either. Sure “manages to” stand for “the time” his struggle takes. But we as humans know that a struggle always takes time. Then again, if you do not use it, our feeling of “why do we want to see this movie if we already know he’s going to succeed to find ‘inner peace” is going to be too strong, reading the logline. So in this logline construction, I would keep it in.
Also, get rid of the inactive “ing” forms.
Furthermore, you would say ending with “his son struggles with the same conflict”, you just buried the lead. But in this case, exactly this works. Because only by recognizing they are somehow the “same”, they can fight their demons and accept who they are.
A wealthy businessman who leads a double life manages to accept his homosexuality only after discovering that his son is struggling with the same conflict.
could become:
A wealthy businessman who leads a double life manages to accept his homosexuality after he discovers his son struggles with the same conflict.