After reading a page from a spell book an incorrigible boy discovers a cursed princess trapped in a tree in his backyard. He must break the spell and save his father from his new girlfriend, the Witch.

B8C

What is the connection between the bulldozing of the park and the princess trapped in the tree?

*The logline doesn’t say the tree is in the park to be bulldozed.
*The logline doesn’t say the Princess will die when the park is bulldozed.

The logline doesn’t establish a clear causal link for the fates of the park, tree, and Princess.

>>>I?m having a little trouble trying to incorporate that the hero is the only one that can see her…

So the question lingers: how does it fall upon the boy to rescue the Princess — can’t everyone else see what he sees?

The logline assumes that people will easily and correctly make the necessary causal links. Maybe they will. And maybe they won’t. I, for one, don’t. The logline invokes an alternate reality with rules I don’t understand. So I am unable to suspend disbelief.

Others mileage may vary.

fwiw

Hmm.

A protagonist can have a minor goal that is a necessary stepping stone [find the headpiece to the staff of Ra] to the major goal [recover the Ark of the Covenant]. But it is a taboo in modern screenwriting for the protagonist to have more than one major objective goal of equal import and not causally linked.

In the revised logline it’s not clear to me what is the minor goal and what is the major goal. As written the boy seems to have two major objective goals: save the Princess; rescue his father. I presume the sequence is that the boy must rescue the princess from the curse [minor goal] in order save his father from the witch [major goal]. Or is it vica-versa?

Nor is it clear to me from the logline what the relationship is between the curse and the witch. I’m assuming it’s the witch who put the curse on the princess. But the logline doesn’t say that.

And, again, I have to make an assumption, that his ability to see her has something to do with reading a spell in a book. But I have no idea what the rule is in this alternate reality that enables the boy to see the princess by merely reading a book.

(And the general rule of thumb for sci-fi and fantasy genres is that a writer should only have ONE completely unrealistic/unscientific rule or gimmick introduced into an otherwise normal world. Any more than that will only confuse the audience. See “John Carter”: Disney took a US$ 150 million write off on that gawdawful mess.)

So I have to ask: what is the protagonist’s ONE major objective goal?

And what’s at stake? That is, what is the MOST IMPORTANT thing the boy stands to lose if he fails?