Following a near-death experience, a down to earth cop discovers a secret society of astral travelers are manipulating major events in the physical world and works to prevent an imminent attack he suspects they are planning.
Francis_BibeauLogliner
Following a near-death experience, a down to earth cop discovers a secret society of astral travelers are manipulating major events in the physical world and works to prevent an imminent attack he suspects they are planning.
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“Following a near-death experience, a down to earth cop discovers a secret society of astral travelers are manipulating major events in the physical world and works to prevent an imminent attack he suspects they are planning.”
How does a near-death experience relate to him discover this society? Does he himself become an astral projector and run into this group? If not, then how would he fight against them? Does this group cause his near-death experience? If so, describe it more specifically.
Agreed with above,
You are mentioning a serious experience, and that’s great that it is noteworthy for the MC, and it may very well be super important to the plot, but as written for this logline, how does it relate?
The economics of logline writing stress less words = more effect. You can save your first 5 immediately. I also don’t like “down to Earth” to describe the MC. Think of something better for this.
How about hinting at what this secret group is after? How is the MC tied into them?
Good luck.
Tony.
I find that most SciFi, especially action oriented ones, lack a compelling, interesting antagonist. The writer gets so lost in trying to explore this world they’ve created that they just throw in a mustache-twirling bad guy or gal for the protagonist to defeat.
Like Foxtrot mentioned, what is the antagonist’s goal? What is motivating them? How do they challenge the protagonist? Is there a main antagonist, a Darth Vader to this group, someone who leads or whoever is the most compelling? Perhaps it’s someone the protagonist knows.
Something I do is to make a logline from the perspective of the antagonist. Or at least I write down their goal and think through the motivation. The audience doesn’t need to agree with what the antagonist(or protagonist for that matter) is doing, but they should understand?why.
Here’s an example using some elements from your concept but making up my own story:?After discovering a secret society of astral projecting terrorists, a humble cop trapped in the astral plane must learn to affect the physical world so he can prevent their next attack. (31)
I tried to include my suggestions. I hope this helps.
Really interesting. Thanks for the comments. I also just want to say that English is not my first language so it’s not always easy for me to translate an idea or a structure from another idiom. But still, there is no way I’m going to make it if don’t write this in English.
Anyhow, the way I see this that the main protagonist is a cop, maybe suffering from PTSD or something along those lines. He is not a very credible character to start with. He has a car accident that left him with the ability to induce out-of-body experiences. Of course, no one believes him.
During one of those astral projections trips, he discovers this mysterious society of astral travelers who secretly rule the world by altering and manipulating the physical dimension. He finds out they are about to cause a huge catastrophe in our dimension for their own interest. And this catastrophe has to affect the main character in some way so that he really feels the urge to act (let’s say his daughter or someone from his familiy could die).
So our cop tries to alert his colleagues, and again, no one believes him. So he really is fighting against this secret society but also against his own people who think he is just a lunatic. What is he going to do? Will he be able to prevent the imminent attack?
So with that said, I’ll get back to work and come up with a better logline.
Thank you, guys!
It sounds like the inciting incident is his discovery of the secret society, not the car accident. As a result of discovering the secret society and their plan he has to stop them. Best to redraft the logline with that in mind – cause and effect.