After being held hostage on a first date for her suitor’s substantial drug debt, a teenage girl must rob her parents anonymously.
hannikkisLogliner
After being held hostage on a first date for her suitor’s substantial drug debt, a teenage girl must rob her parents anonymously.
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“After being held hostage on a first date for her suitor?s substantial drug debt, a teenage girl must rob her parents anonymously.”
Quite simply, why?
It is not her debt. If she is released from being a hostage, all she has to do is call the police, and then it’s someone else problem, namely the date’s.
There needs to be a reasonable action caused from the inciting incident.
Example:?When her rich parents refuse to pay a debt she inherits after her boyfriend’s death, a teenage girl must rob her parents so she can satisfy the gang collecting the money.?(~31 words)
The action is logical, her parents refuse to pay, so she has to steal the money or else the gang will come after her.
And how can she rob her parents?if she’s being held hostage?
Perhaps the date was a set up?
What if the date is the bad guy and he arranged for her parents to be under the watchful eye of a sniper, now he tells her that if she doesn’t rob them he will give the order to shoot. Naturally if she calls the cops or tells them he will also kill them, so now she must sneak into go back home, act all casual and steal a priceless something without them raising an eye brow.
You can drop the being held. Plus first date does hint less connection. It could be explained in the script not the logline.
“So to pay for her dates substantial drug debt a girl must rob her parents.”
Now how does she rob them and what comes from that, does she fail?
The latest draft of the logline lacks the causal connection between the inciting incident and goal. How will her robing the parents solve the problem of them being held at gun point?
Secondly the stakes are not clear, sure you’ve got organised crime in the logline, but what is the actual threat? To their lives? To their business? What MUST the girl prevent from happening?
I think your guts are correct about your attachment to the girl’s internal struggle, for me this comes across as her?character flaw – she needs to learn to be less naive.
How about something like this:
After a naive girl goes on a first date with, an unknown to her criminal, she must help his gang rob her house in order to prevent them killing her parents.
The problem that arises form this is that she must take their word for it. Essentially she trusts the criminals to not kill her parents after they rob the house – a naive action in its own right. This means that she hasn’t learned her lesson and her parents will likely still be killed. Of course she could turn on the criminals and contact the police or lock them in the cellar – after she completes her inner journey she would presumably now better than to trust the criminals again.
I.e:
After a naive girl goes on a first date with, an unknown to her criminal, he forces her to help his gang rob her family home in order to prevent them killing her parents but she manages to trap the gang in their wine cellar.
Not sure that is what you want to write, but it illustrates the point of her overcoming her flaw.