Confined to her apt complex during a CDC quarentine Briona must find a way for her father and her lovers not to kill each other.
DJhasMSLogliner
Confined to her apt complex during a CDC quarentine Briona must find a way for her father and her lovers not to kill each other.
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Dj,
Clarify this for me. Is Briana quarantined and confined in her apt along with her family members? If so, and there is a legitimate reason for this, such as a danger, shouldn’t the MC be more worried about solving that issue vs fighting with her family?
Always try to have the MC rally against the Inciting incident, rather than them going after something else.
What Foxtrot25 said. ? There seems to be a casual disconnect or a missing cause-and-effect link between the inciting incident (the quarantine) and ?the resulting action (her father and lovers trying to kill each other). ?The quarantine gives us no explanation as to why the others want to kill each other as a result of the woman being quarantined.
Consult the guidelines under “Formula” at the top of the web page for how to formulate an industry acceptable logline.
REV;
The worst flu outbreak in years is spreading like wildfire, prompting citizens all over the world to be quarentined, and leaving a young girl to keep the peace between her father and her polyamorous lovers inside their apt complex prison.
DJhasMS,
Please restrict your posts, relating to the same concept, to a single thread. This way you can track the progression of the logline and take up less space on the front page.
As for the logline, you seem to keep misunderstanding the advice given to you. A logline MUST define an inciting incident:
“…The worst flu outbreak in years is spreading like wildfire, prompting citizens all over the world to be quarantined,” – this is not an inciting incident it is a situation. Your job, as a writer, is to clearly describe the events in your story so that they comply with an action-reaction dynamic that’s motivated by causality.? Therefore, the above would need to be rewritten in such a way that it describes a specific event that had a clear impact on the MC’s life, which motivated her to take action as a result.
For instance: After her mother is killed by a pandemic a depressed chemist must…
Secondly, your MC description is vital for building the aforementioned connection, “…young girl…” means nothing in a logline as it is perfectly generic and entirely vague. You need to define the character by her flaw (which she must overcome in order to be a better version of herself) and her position in life/society.
Lastly, without a goal, you have no plot and the primary function of a logline is to describe a plot, as without one you have no story. The MC in your story must have a goal to pursue “…keep the peace…” is not a single achievement that will visibly communicate to the audience that her story has ended. Instead, it’s a status quo that could go on for as long as the characters may live for. A story is best defined within a finite amount of time starting at the inciting incident and ending with the goal.
Before posting your next draft, best you study all the GOOD advice you’ve gotten so far and perhaps read through the ‘Formula’ tab up top for more details about logline conventions.
I am not sure I get this story.
What does the lead character actually want? Why are we rooting for the lead character to succeed?
The story has 2 distinct dramatic problems:
There’s a flu epidemic raging.
A father wants to kill his daughter’s lovers.
Either one could set up a story line for a movie plot. ?But trying to combine them into one movie seems to over complicate the story line. ?It feels contrived. ?Complication for the sake of complication without a clear causal relationship between the two dramatic problems.
Further, the logline seems to confuse a complicating incident for an inciting incident.
There is no obvious cause-and-effect relationship between epidemic/quarantine and the father’s murderous intent. ?Because the father would want to kill her lovers even if there was no epidemic, right? ?Because isn’t the cause of his anger is his discovery of her sex life which offends his morality (I presume)?
?The epidemic is a complication, but it is ?not a cause. ?So, it’s not the inciting incident. ?
What is the real inciting incident that triggers her father’s murderous rage? ?Whatever it is, that is what should lead off the logline.
?