Drama
savinh0Samurai
After a dreamy adventurer returns to Greece, he faces his parents, who want to sell the beloved home of his grandparents, and only drain when he chooses their life as an obedient entrepreneur and desist from his own dreams to help as social worker people in need.
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Alas, the logline for the concept is more confusing than ever. It seems to be a shotgun approach with the buckshot of goals and issues scattering all over the place. And I have no idea what “only drain when he chooses their life…” means.
The various iterations seem to revolve around one central problem, a home that’s been in the family for generations, that the main character wants to keep, but his parents want to sell. So I suggest refocusing the logline on only that problem. Why do the parents want to sell? Why does he want to keep it? What is his plan to solve the problem, raise the money or whatever, to keep it in the family?
And, btw, rather than “beloved home of his grandparents” I suggest “beloved ancestral home” — suggesting it’s been in the family for many, many generations. It’s a place that has so much family history associated with it; the main character’s psychological roots in the property go deep.
Have to agree, I have no real idea of what is going on. “Dreamy” has no weight for me, it’s not really specific enough to be useful. Try and state what he wants, want he must do and what is stopping him.
The parents want to blackmail the son to choose their life as an entrepreneur, and therefore they threaten him by selling the beloved house. He wants to keep the house because of his childhood memories and the memories of his deceased grandparents.
What you’ve outlined only constitutes a setup for a plot. What is the plot that follows as a result of the conflicting goals? IOW: what is he going to do about their threat? What becomes his objective goal?
Something like that?
After a lethargic adventurer returns to Greece, he faces his parents who want to sell the beloved childhood house of his grandparents in one week to blackmail him to change his chaotic life, but he has to take action for the first time and sabotage the selling to save the building and his personal independence.
What about this version?
After a lethargic adventurer returns to Greece, he faces his parents who want to sell the beloved childhood house of his grandparents in one week to blackmail him to change his chaotic life, but he has to take action for the first time and sabotage the selling to save the building and his personal independence.
The revised version is still problematic in that it gives the main character two goals when a logline should only list one: 1] save the building; 2] retain his independent lifestyle.
Furthermore, the two goals are not causally linked; the fate of one is not bound to the fate of the other. His parents could sell the building — but the main character could still retain his personal independence.
Finally, it’s difficult to understand why he cares — or why the audience should care — about his childhood home. If the home was so important to him, why has he been traveling around the world? Why didn’t he just stay home?
After reading the comments and trying to understand your story, I think you are describing a Rites Of Passage story In this genre, the MC is faced with a “coming of age” choice between two paths.
In your story, the MC has to choose between settling down in his ancestral home or continuing to lead a carefree life of travel. For this genre, Blake Snyder lists the three essential ingredients: a life problem, the wrong way to attack the problem, and a solution that involves acceptance. So maybe something like:
After facing the potential loss of his ancestral home, a carefree traveler must choose between his easygoing lifestyle and his stodgy parents home.