After a deadly contagion takes his wife & daughter, a special forces operative must infiltrate the very military base he was once stationed to find the cure & exact his revenge.
Deanna MurrayLogliner
After a deadly contagion takes his wife & daughter, a special forces operative must infiltrate the very military base he was once stationed to find the cure & exact his revenge.
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I’m sorry all …. I tried to edit the last one — but it wouldn’t allow me … Anyway, I appreciate all the feedback and am doing my best to adjust & get things right!
What do you conceive to be ?the inciting incident? ?What he witnesses? ?Or the outbreak of the epidemic?
Would it make more sense to do something like this:
A disillusioned special forces operative abandons his military career only to be forced into action again when a deadly outbreak reeks of government conspiracy & threatens his family.
You should only have one inciting incident which kicks off the story. Witnessing the experiments which cause him to abandon his career seems to be the backstory. Your second attempt is much better but it describe his goal. There must be a specific event that will indicate to the audience if the hero has reached his goal, or failed. Best of luck.
Like, ?Nina said, there should be only one inciting incident. ?Whatever it is, it triggers the choice and action toward one concrete, objective goal.
Concrete and objective mean, as Nina indicated, a specific scene, a visualized event that clearly indicates to the audience whether or not the protagonist has succeed — or failed. ?For example, if an athlete has an objective goal of winning Olympic gold, the obligatory visual for her succeeding is that she breaks the tape, crosses the finish line 1st in the Olympic games. ?Ideally, a logline should invoke in a reader’s mind a probable visual for what attaining (or failing to attain) the objective goal looks like.
Consider this: a logline is a brief description of a specific chain of events, in which each event MUST logically connect via clear causality to the next.
In your logline you wrote: “…recognizes the deadly effects of a rapidly-spreading contagion…”. This is not one specific event, it could be several that occur over an arbitrary period of time. However, if you were to write; After his daughter dies from a deadly contagion, you would have described a specific event. This event also means he recognises the deadly effects , more to the point, seeing as it’s his child he is undoubtedly motivated to take action.
In your logline you also wrote: “…forced into action…”, but what action specifically? All main characters take action, as such a general description such as this is too vague for the plot to be clear in your logline. You need to specify in detail what he will do as a result of being motivated to take action, not describe that he takes action in general. For example, you could write that he must infiltrate a secret laboratory and shut it down, or smuggle a sample of the contagion to a doctor who will come up with a cure. Whatever it is he specifically does, it needs to be described in the logline.
Lastly, you describe two goals: “…find the cure & expose a government conspiracy…” Which one of these is his primary concern? You must specify (as previously mentioned in other comments to you) one clear, visual, objective goal in a logline. For example; he must find a cure to save his wife, his daughter or himself.
On a side note, I don’t believe that exposing a government conspiracy in today’s world, would be as impactful on society at large as finding a cure.? I think saving lives would be more effective as a goal for him, so his goal of finding a cure is possibly more compeling.
let’s see if I got it right this time ….