Hundreds of years into the future, when war erupts between a terrorist organization and all the countries of the world, a naive, talented, orphan, unknowingly made to kill, is dragged into the war and forced to confront the harsh realities of war by piloting a deadly machine to bring peace to the world while protecting the ones who are important to him.
ThemostepicguruPenpusher
Hundreds of years into the future, when war erupts between a terrorist organization and all the countries of the world, a naive, talented, orphan, unknowingly made to kill, is dragged into the war and forced to confront the harsh realities of war by piloting a deadly machine to bring peace to the world while protecting the ones who are important to him.
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Agreed with Dkpough1 and DPG, this is too long and wordy for a logline.
Think economy and plot, how can you describe the minimum story critical plot points with the least number of words.
Secondly adding to the above comments, the twist of the terrorist turning out to be freedom fighters or the “good guys” can work in the story but not the logline. Best not to make the plot or motivations of any character or group vague in a logline in the hopes of hinting at a twist.
Most terrorists think they are freedom fighters so no need to describe them as such either in future drafts of the logline.
As the logline is constructed, the protagonist is portrayed as a passive character. ?He has no objective goal of his own; his goal is dictated by others. The story is driven by decisions being made about him by anonymous others. ?He’s “made to kill”, “dragged into a war”, “forced to confront”.
Bummer. ?I feel sorry for the kid. ?But that’s?the wrong emotional currency to invest in his story.
The kid can start out as a sacrificial pawn in somebody else’s chess game. ?But a plot should kick in such that he takes charge of his life, his fate, ?becomes a free will agent, promotes himself from a pawn to a king.
?Which I know is illegal in chess but that’s heroes do — break the arbitrary rules in a game rigged against them.
First, too long. Aim for under 30 words.
Only include descriptions of the MC if they are important to the logline, which in this case I suppose ‘naive’ could, but ‘talented’ is vague.
Could you perhaps change the inciting incident to simply, “When a new world war starts”?
Is “made to kill” really necessary? If he’s forced into war, then most likely he’s going to have to face “the realities of war”, which is vague as well, but would include having to kill someone. And how does he not know that he’s killed someone?
I have an example using elements from your logline, but it isn’t your story because I’ve changed a few things.
When a new world war starts, a young orphan is drafted as a pilot assigned to a special mission to eliminate the terrorist group that started the war.
This example is 28 words long. It has an inciting incident(war starting), the MC clearly defined, as you did as well, a clear goal(eliminate terrorist group). However, the MC himself has no real goal or emotional drive in this logline, but in your version you say that he does it to protect his loved ones, while I modified it to him being drafted. Also, absent from my version are real stakes(which you say in your by mentioning his loved ones, and the fact that they could be killed.)
I just wanted to give you an example of a simple logline, but make sure to include the MC’s personal stakes as well, and don’t put too much exposition in to it.