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jcoffman27Penpusher
After awakening from a ten-year coma, a wise-cracking gay wheelchair-bound French assassin discovers his arch-nemesis, the psychotic Jameson Juicer, murdered his family, to seek revenge he must sneak into the 13 story-Juicer-compound filled with hundreds of cut-throats, and absolutely no handicap accessibility.
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A wheelchair-bound assassin must avenge the death of his family.
That’s the core concept? distilled down from 42 words (which is too long) to 10 (high concept length).? And the story hook is that he’s a paraplegic assassin.? Except I’m not sure whether he became wheelchair-bound as a casualty of being an assassin? Or? that he had a successful career as assassin in spite of being a paraplegic? Please clarify.
(And there is no need to mention proper names in a logline. )
At 42 words this is a little long. There’s a lot of unnecessary words so I think it could be easily trimmed. I think a sneaky bit of a adding “-” might have been occurring too.
Protagonist – 5 of these words are dedicated to describing the protagonist. Whilst it is an interesting description, I feel that some of the attributes you’ve used are not necessary in the purposes of a logline. His nationality, sexuality, and his ability to crack wise are somewhat irrelevant to the plot. If he were American, straight, and boring the plot remains the same. Revenge! The only thing that is relevant is his mobility (more on this later) and that he’s an assassin. Neither of these suggest an internal arc but you could argue that this is suggested by the revenge plot.
Antagonist – We don’t need a name. It adds nothing but two words and a bit of alliteration. Why psychotic? Why did he murder the protagonist’s family? As it stands, it seems like it’s just to set up the plot. Maybe set up it up so the accident that put the hero in the coma killed his family, and that was all orchestrated by the bad guy because the protagonist assassinated Juicer’s partner – business or otherwise. There has to be something deeper than “because plot”.
Goal – revenge. Yep fine. Understandable. The above point applies though. Why did the bad guy do this in the first place?
Do we need to know it’s 13 stories? Definitely don’t need to know it’s the Juicer compound. Just “high-rise HQ” or something.
“filled with hundreds of cut-throats” – why? Why are they all there? Again, it can’t be because plot. If it’s HQ, it’s believable that it’s full of bad guys, but full of cut-throats? And hundreds? Not saying it’s not, but the reader has to understand why the protagonist MUST do this here.
“Absolutely no handicap accessibility” – this is the bit where I think the whole thing fell down. I get that you want it to be a challenge BUT why would a disabled assassin try and take out this guy somewhere where he can’t even get through the front door, and knowingly has to face off against 100s of bad guys. It’s completely illogical. I love the idea of a wheel-chair bound assassin, but dramatically and comedically, there’s only a few times you can use it before the audience gets tired of it. John McClane is barefoot and it’s played for drama once and for comedy… maybe twice? If your protagonist simply can’t get in the building to start with, then the plot doesn’t even start. I honestly think, tell us he’s wheelchair bound – great – but make it so the building is accessible. In fact, don’t even mention it. I don’t think you need to. A reader will imagine the difficulty of being wheelchair bound in this scenario. It reminded me of the Family Guy episode where the wheelchair bound neighbour, Joe, isn’t allowed into the beer factory because there’s no ramp. That’s the end of Joe’s story in that episode. One joke. The reader has to understand why this is the only place this showdown can happen. Otherwise why wouldn’t the protagonist just wait for him to come out then kill him?
Definitely stick with it, but make everything work for the plot. The only way this guy is going to survive is BECAUSE he’s in a wheelchair! Don’t just make that a punchline. Make it logical, relatable, and realistic (as realistic as possibly anyway for this kinda thing). Excited to see where this goes 🙂
Not sure if serious or not. Might be an interesting comedy but needs work. Sometimes absurdity can be great and if that’s what you’re going for you may be on the right track. A bit too wordy still