After a celebrity impersonator learns that both his wife and mistress are pregnant, he struggles with keeping the pregnancies secret. But after admitting to living an adulterous lifestyle, he winds up as a vagrant without hope of ever rebuilding his life.
PstoneLogliner
After a celebrity impersonator learns that both his wife and mistress are pregnant, he struggles with keeping the pregnancies secret. But after admitting to living an adulterous lifestyle, he winds up as a vagrant without hope of ever rebuilding his life.
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some questions that come to mind are:
1.
Why is your protagonist “a celebrity impersonator”?
What does that have to do with his admitting to adultery?
2.
Is “his learning that both his wife and mistress are pregnant” your Inciting Incident?
What does that INCITE if he still keeps it a secret and later admits to adultery?
3.
Why keep his wife’s pregnancy a secret? (She’s his wife after all)
4.
In the last section,
“….after admitting to living an adulterous lifestyle, he winds up as a vagrant without hope of ever rebuilding his life….”
It’s an event.
It tells us nothing about his GOAL
& without GOAL there’s no CONFLICT
Pstone:
Even if he met his mistress being an impersonator, it doesn’t go into the logline unless it contributes to event-character-goal dynamics. Which it doesn’t, so I’m substituting it for an adulterer for now…
also,
You said “his learning they are pregnant” isn’t the INCITING EVENT……..that the event happened before.
WHAT EXACTLY IS IT since it is a MANDATORY part of the logline
If you want me to trim your version, here you go:
“After impregnating both his wife and mistress, an adulterer must keep it a secret or risk winding up a vagrant”
It’s obvious that this action “keeping their pregnancies a secret” cannot sustain a feature length plot (as pointed out by Jessie…thanks J)
Also it’s a selfish goal–to keep a secret, to save his a** from being on the line
I strongly suggest you to HAVE A BETTER GOAL
Because this premise of living two lives, is worth investing your time into…
Agree with variable’s points.? Particularly that covering up the pregnancies doesn’t work as an objective goal because it’s negative.? Objectives goals are positive, proactive. (At least positive from the protagonist’s point of view.? It could play out that it’s the wrong goal, but at the time he makes it — at the turn of Act1 — he believes it’s positive in terms of his self-interest.)
>>>he winds up as a vagrant without hope of ever rebuilding his life.
Is this denouement, how he ends up?? If so it’s a spoiler, and a logline should never contain a spoiler, how the story ends.? If it’s not where does it belong in the plot?? Is it a midpoint reversal?