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jfoolPenpusher
After peeing on a stick, an aging party girl who has it all: the fiance, the house, the job .. and the crippling anxiety ? must decide if she?s ?old enough? to have her baby.
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I like the idea of a woman faced with an inciting incident that forces her to must finally start acting her age.? However, I would like one more clarification.? When you say she’s “aging” — approximately what age do you have in mind?? Mid 30’s, on the cusp of 40… or?? I think that needs to be made a little more specific because it seems to be a important story element.
Does the preference of the guy who got her pregnant figure into the plot calculus?? Or is he just an accidental stud relegated to the sidelines?? Does the plot triangulate among 3 characters or is it a dyad of just 2?
And does she want to have a baby (but feels incompetent)?
Possible Title: Adulting
Interesting idea. I think it is missing an element, so I am going to add something not in your logline in order to try it out for size… Maybe you will like it, if not ignore it.
“When the stick turns blue, an aging party girl who’s always refused to settle down;? the house, the job, the husband, the who shebang, must now figure out how to grow up, whether she likes it or not.”
If you go with this idea, the lead character has “Never” grown-up, even though she has gotten older.?
When a character discovers she’s pregnant, a ticking clock goes into effect.? She has X amount of time to go forward and work out the immediate problems it creates or have an abortion. So I suggest the logline reflect that ticking clock, the sense of urgency.? The protagonist does not have the luxury of time to bond with her mother, overcome her doubts, commit to carrying the baby to term and raising it.
(In Juno, after considering and then rejecting abortion, at the end of Act 1 the teenage protagonist decides to go full term, put her infant up for an adoption and she’s decided who the adopting family will be.)
However, bonding with her mom seems to be her subjective need.? But loglines are about objective goals, not subjective needs.? An objective goal is what a character intentionally wants.? A subjective need is not intentionally the focus of a protagonist’s struggle because the last thing a person wants to admit is that she has a subjective problem? and that she must change.? Must change in order to achieve her objective goal.? It seems to me that if the mother-to-be had a bad relationship before her mother before her pregnancy, then the pregnancy would initially? exacerbate that relationship.
I am more inclined toward yqwertz’s suggestion that her objective issue concerns the radical changes to her lifestyle becoming a mother will entail.? Because that is where you place the emphasis in describing her character (“party girl who has it all: the fiance, the house, the job”).? So having “it all” no longer should play prominently her dramatic struggle.
Further it is my observation, that if parents-to-be had bad relationships with their own parents, then their? primary concern is not to bond with their lousy parents, but to vow not to be like their parents, to be the good parents their own were not.
Also what does “bonding” look like.? Film is a visual medium.? Therefore the objective goal has to be an object or event that can be visualized, seen on the screen.? What will the “bonding”? event look like?? What will the camera show to the audience that says they’ve finally bonded?
?
Since you posted this under comedy, I don’t think it is a good idea for the logline to suggest abortion might be an option. I don’t see how we can laugh at a woman confronted with that choice.
Consider centering the objective goal on the woman overcoming her anxiety. Something like:
When an aging party girl learns she is pregnant shortly before her wedding, she is gripped by a crippling anxiety and must overcome her fear of losing her current lifestyle before she can move on.
If you want to focus on the question of whether she keeps her baby or not, then you probably want to write a drama, not a comedy.
Peeing on a stick isn’t the inciting incident, it’s the discovery that she’s pregnant. You could still write this in a comedic way – “After her pee covered stick reveals that she’s pregnant”
You use 17 words to describe the protagonist. It’s common to use only 2 or 3 because the rest of the word count should be used to discuss her objective goal and how she’s going to try and achieve that. Which leads me to the goal. Making a decision is not an objective goal. Imagine watching someone making a decision. Could take 5 mins, could take 5 years, but all the action is happening inside the character’s head. Unless you’re going to visually illustrate her decision making process (which should probably come across in the logline) there needs to be something happening that is visually interesting for the audience. Using an objective goal that represents her internal struggle is where you need to take this.
I’m also guessing this pregnancy is unplanned. I think that’s an important point to clarify.
I can’t help but think if she’s got the fianc?, job, house, etc… her life seems pretty settled. If you want this to be a HUGE thing in her life surely she needs to be someone who is so far away from not only wanting it but also practically being ready for it. Imagine she’s been with a guy for 2 years on and off, she’s a part time waitress and changes jobs a lot, she’s constantly borrowing money, and she finds out she’s pregnant. Maybe her parents are catholic too…? So now, she has external conflicts, practical limitations, but still enough stability to make an abortion not such an obvious or easy choice. The decision to keep the child happens at the end of Act I, then the rest of the film is about her preparing, physically and mentally, to be a mother.
This is just my take on it so feel free to disregard if it’s not remotely the story you want to tell.
Hope this helps.