After being raped by her uncle when she was younger, a pastor’s daughter plots and carries out different ways of destroying her uncles family with coincidental mishaps causing their deaths over the years.
davidnoblesLogliner
After being raped by her uncle when she was younger, a pastor’s daughter plots and carries out different ways of destroying her uncles family with coincidental mishaps causing their deaths over the years.
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First, a lot of the logline is just fat that could easily be trimmed without changing the idea. ?The logline shouldn’t give a lot of detail, just should capture the overall concept of the idea. So, my trimmed suggestion would be: After her uncle rapes her, a woman(In the logline you state the rape as happening in the past so I’m just guessing she’s a woman and not a girl at this point) slowly breaks apart his family by making them feel cursed through multiple unlikely deaths.
On to the idea, while rape is very traumatizing and might lead someone to revenge, why would this woman risk jail to kill people? I suppose what I’m saying is that while the rape is an inciting incident, it doesn’t have the clear connection to MC’s resulting actions. This story seems extremely personal, so try to incorporate that more into the logline. Since you state that the rape happened in the past, how has this affected her? Did her religious family reject the idea?(I’m familiar with this time of thing because of multiple articles I’ve read on the topic). Did she become depressed? Why is she doing this now, rather than acting sooner? Why does she choose this particular form of revenge when it was only her uncle who raped her and not his family?
I have an example that has some changed aspects from your own logline:
After her daughter is raped, a single mother?decides?to hatch the perfect murder plot to get rid of the uncle who also raped her while she was a child.
A little odd, but it gets my point across.
This version has a clear inciting incident(little girl is raped) and a personal connection(the uncle who also raped the MC while she was younger.) A plan(To murder him) And stakes(She can’t go to jail because she needs to take care of her daughter.)
While the premise has potential, it needs clear stakes and reasoning.
The protagonist is a tough sell. ?She’s not a sympathetic character because her revenge is disproportionate and indiscriminate in relation to what she suffered. She kills innocent people who had nothing to do with her uncle’s crime.
After being raped by her uncle when she was younger
There is no immediacy. Why now?
Either don’t tell us about the rape and use it as a big reveal.
or
just say, “After being raped by her uncle.” and drop the “When she was younger”
Hope that helps
Agreed with the above comments, the inciting incident appears to happen off screen and in the past – this will diminish its impact on the MC in the story.
In addition to all the notes above the goal needs specification. We get that she wants revenge but how and it what way? How many people need to die before her revenge is exacted? All the rapist’s close family or just half?
The rhetorical nature of my questions is trying to get across that the goals stated are not fulfilling their function in the plot. Best to specify a single target of her revenge, one that will be causally connected to the inciting incident, in other words the rapist.