After the death of her father, a timorous young woman struggles to put forth the effort to attend the college of her dreams due to her fathers wish for her to join the military while being threatened by the expiration date of her scholarship.
myagetscaredPenpusher
After the death of her father, a timorous young woman struggles to put forth the effort to attend the college of her dreams due to her fathers wish for her to join the military while being threatened by the expiration date of her scholarship.
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There’s a lot of words here where I don’t feel like there needs to be. To me it seems like, once you actually remove all the unnecessary flowery words, it’s just a young woman struggling to make her mind up as to whether to join the military or go to college. As goals go, this isn’t particularly visual and, when you really think about it, it could be over in just a few seconds. The goal needs to be visual – film is a visual medium and the audience needs to see her goal, not simply watch an actor acting like they’ve made a decision.?All of the conflict for this story happens inside the character’s head.
The inciting incident is the moment that upsets the balance in a character’s life that they then seek to correct (the goal). The inciting incident here is the death of her father – we need to know how this relates to her goal. There needs to be more coherence like the discovery of a letter written to her expressing her father’s wishes or something.
If this is a feature length, then there definitely needs to be more going on to fill 90mins+.
Why is going to college so important for her? What happens if she doesn’t go? What was her relationship with her father like? Why is his wishes for her so important to her?
You need to give us more story with less words – ideally no more than 35.
This might not work as a story for screen – the bulk of the story involves inner processes; “… I really want it to be about the consequences of her decision which is to go to college and the guilt she feels…”. You should consider writing this as a novel, simply as you can directly describe the inner guilt she feels without needing to visualize it.
“After the death of her father, a timorous young woman struggles to put forth the effort to attend the college of her dreams due to her fathers wish for her to join the military while being threatened by the expiration date of her scholarship.” (44 words)
I agree with the assessments of Nir Shelter and mikepedley85 in that right now you’re only focusing on the internal aspects of the character. Many films feature characters with inner conflict, but what a logline should convey to the reader is the external(or at least visual – meaning you could certainly make a film take place inside a character’s head as long as it represented visually, like “Inside Out”(2015)) conflict.
Like Nir Shelter, I find??? I really want it to be about the consequences of her decision which is to go to college and the guilt she feels??. to be a problematic approach. But the problem I see with the logline is that doesn’t describe a clear goal, it also doesn’t offer an endpoint for the story.
In addition to what I’ve said before, the logline makes me say: “So what?”
“…struggles to put forth the effort…” Does not convey a visual action. Films, and by extension loglines, are about visual events and actions taking place. Not only that, why does her father’s wish matter? It’s her life. She’s the one who has to live it, she has to make decisions for herself. The film “Ladybird” (2017) deals with a similar matter. The main character has a certain dream school but her mother-the one paying for it-can’t afford it so she wants her daughter to go to a less expensive school. This differs because the main character is restricted by the financial situation, which gives her parents more input than if she were paying for her own schooling. In other words, this setups a situation for conflict.
I disagree with Nir Shelter that turning this into a novel would fix the issue. I think the real issue is that there isn’t an effective, compelling conflict created by the situation your logline describes.
I suggest thinking over your concept and coming up with a clear goal that creates conflict. Some things to think about for a revision:
Hook – what about this story will make someone want to read the script?
Inciting incident – How does this event affect the protagonist, and force them to commit to a goal?
Goal – What?must the protagonist accomplish? Use words that describe visual scenarios. (Example: Luke Skywalker must help the Rebellion destroy the Death Star)
Protagonist – what drives this character? How exactly does the inciting incident affect them and why?
Antagonist – Why does this character oppose the main character? What is their goal? (An exercise I use is to write a logline from the perspective my story’s antagonist).? I’ve included some video links which talk about character in film.
I recommend watching “Ladybird”, “Edge of Seventeen” and other coming-of-age films and examining them to see how they set up conflict, what that conflict is, and why it matters to the characters, and how the filmmakers make it matter to the audience.