A Life Well Spent
After a night of self destructive drinking a boy (Chris) discovers that his girlfriend (Anna) possesses the ability to remain immortal as long as she does not fall in love. As Chris' family life decays, he runs away from home with Anna to show her a life bereft of love is not one lived.
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As a general rule, characters shouldn’t be named in a logline.
Who is the protagonist, the guy or the gal? The focus seems to be on the guy, but, for my money, the girl has the more interesting predicament, would make a better candidate for the main character.
She could be fending off suitors for decades… centuries — and then finally encounters a guy whom she wants to fall in love in. She decides to take that one chance for true love — even it if kills her.
fwiw
1: A night of drinking doesn’t help the logline — “When he discovers his girlfriend will remain immortal as long as she doesn’t fall in love”
2: As Chris’ family life decays, he runs away from home with Anna to show her a life bereft of love is not one lived. == Too wordy “A hopeless romantic vows to show her a life without love is not worth living.”
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“When he discovers his girlfriend will remain immortal as long as she doesn’t fall in love, a hopeless romantic vows to show her a life without love’s not worth living.”
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Hope that helped, good luck with this!
PS: DPG makes a good point, it seems the woman could be the lead.
I’m still finding this confusing. If the boyfriend is the protagonist, and his goal is to “…show her a life without love is a life not worth living”, then I’m struggling to find a reason to root for him. It seems a very selfish goal… He wants her to fall in love with him and in doing so ensure her demise..? Is that really an act of love?
…As a comparison think of the relationship between Arwen and Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings… Arwen, the immortal elf, is the one who wants to sacrifice her immortality to be with Aragorn… But Aragorn, despite being completely besotted, is (initially at least) against it. Eventually he is swayed, but it’s Arwen who’s done the convincing… If it was the other way around we would have zero sympathy for Aragorn and we would be quietly hoping that the returned king would get skewered by a Nazgul on the Pellinor Fields.
The concept seems tricky… I’m not 100% on a way to fix it… But given you have an immortal character maybe you could draw on a fairytaleesque way to solve it… as in, what if her immortality was a curse that was put on her hundreds of years before… She wants to fall in love so she can finally die… She becomes ‘friends’ with a guy whom she trusts enough to confess her dilemma to, and he agrees to help her find a true love… And then of course, he ends up in love with her, and of course, she with him…? Just an idea, not YOUR film, but it’s probably the route I’d go down if it was my idea… Which it’s not…
Anyways, best of luck with it.
I’m clear about what the characters are trying to do. However I’m not clear on the motivations or the point of contention.
There is a log line formula that I just used (dug it out after forgetting about it):
Here it is:
A (protagonist) has (a descriptive problem) and must (achieve goal) to solve (problem).
Where the words are parenthetical, fill in with your character and plot points.
Maybe that helps.
I like the concept, but what I don’t understand is why the two main characters are still together if one doesn’t truly love the other?
as long as she doesn’t fall in love….with him or someone else?
clear that up and you have a clear log line in my opinion!