A young woman from a conservative family background drops out of Harvard University and rises to fame as a performer in the porn industry.

Better, but as it stands your revision describes a story — but not a plot. What’s the difference?

The distinguished English novelist E.M. Forster succinctly stated the difference in his “Aspects of the Novel”: “We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. ‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief‘ is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, bu the sense of causality overshadows it.”

So a plot is not just action, it’s action taken for a reason. And a logline should describe a plot. So the action in your logline needs a reason, to wit, an inciting incident. Why does she drop out of Harvard? Why does she become a porn actress? Choosing a career like that can’t be a casual decision; it ought to be a causal one. What is the reason? What problem or circumstance motivates her to make such a drastic change in her life?

Following her meteoric rise as a porn star, an Ivy League dropout returns home for her brother?s funeral and tries to reconcile with her estranged, conservative family.

Because I think “porn star” is a more attention grabbing phrase than “adult film industry” and the prime imperative of a logline is to grab attention.

But I am of 2 minds about the concept as presented. I think it is an easy sell as a stage play as it promises plenty of tense dialogue with other characters. The stage will be lit up with emotional fireworks.

But as a movie? Well, as a movie, the more interesting aspect of her story is what the logline relegates to mostly backstory and, ergo, won’t be on screen: how and why she decided to dropout and become a porn actress, the arc of her meteoric rise.

In a movie, the confrontation with her family would be but one sequence out of many in her story, and one likely to occur in the backend of the 2nd act after sequences showing change of life course events and decisions (Act 1) and after sequences showing her struggle to make it in the porn industry (which would constitute at least the 1st 1/2 of Act 2).

fwiw.