In the aftermath of a school shooting, a victim’s non-athletic father who has given up on life finds meaning in coaching his dead son’s basketball team to the championships.
Michael FineLogliner
In the aftermath of a school shooting, a victim’s non-athletic father who has given up on life finds meaning in coaching his dead son’s basketball team to the championships.
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The logline gives away the 3rd Act, something a logline should never do. You say it’s a weak team — but not to worry, folks. The logline reveals — in fact, guarantees — he’s going to take the team to a winning regular season, and then to victory in the regional playoffs and then upward and onward to championship game.
There’s no suspense in the logline about the arc of the plot.
>>By winning they see life can go on.
By losing they can also see that life will go on. That, IMHO, is a more important life lesson: resilience, grit.
I hear what you’re saying about the third act reveal, but I disagree about the end of winning the championship. I see winning a championship as underdogs a great metaphor for overcoming everything if you work as a community, the exact lesson communities learn after a mass tragedy. In addition, each character on the team will start their arc as broken in some way from the shooting and through winning the tournament regain their dignity and past selves.
I get a sense of the story that will take place and can see where it’s headed but I think the logline can be more succinct, especially when describing the father. Perhaps, changing the event to include a connection to the main character could help (e.g. After his son dies in a school shooting, an aimless, non-athletic father finds meaning in coaching his son’s basketball team to the championships.)
It’s an interesting character struggle that father faces in this story. How close and involved was he with his son before he died? Why does he think coaching basketball is a way to memorialise his son and overcome his grief? Why is he allowed to coach the basketball team if he is not athletic? Not saying that you need to answer these questions in the logline but the answering them for yourself may help to pick more specific words to describe the character and story in a logline.
This is excellent! Thanks for helping me improve on the logline.
The idea is that he had a close relationship with his son before he died but after the shooting his life has gone to hell. His son was the star of the team and loved basketball, but his coach was killed in the shooting and the season is in peril of being cancelled. The team is weak but the father owes it to the son to lead his team to the championships. The team which isn’t very good is a metaphor for everyone’s broken spirits after the shooting. By winning they see life can go on.
Glad I could help. One thing I took from dpg’s answer above is that ultimately winning or losing doesn’t change the fact that life will go on. What will change their lives is if they can come together by sharing their grief and healing the community.
The notion that the school shooting’s are usually caused by someone within the community who has become isolated and radicalised play’s on the minds of the community and can lead to conflict and infighting. I’m not saying that is what happens in your story but it is an important point to consider as structurally there is no clear shadow or villain character, they are fighting against each other and the basketball team is the metaphor for the community unifying and fighting for a common goal.
Winning and losing matters but not as much as the community unifying in the wake of the tragedy. And while winning might expedite that unification, in this case it’s not a make or break condition in my opinion.
Also, on the father and the players in the basketball team, it could be interesting how they deal with the tragedy as the stereotype is men tend to be insular in the grief. As a part of their arcs they could be using basketball to distract from their grief but learn that they need to face the problem head on and acknowledge their grief before they can truly unify and fulfill their potential as a team.
Again, it’s hard to get all this into a logline but hopefully, it helps to clarify the concept for you.
I like that point about using basketball to distract them, but they really have to learn to deal with their loss…. it’s a good midpoint…. I’ll consider that for the Internal Goal part of the story….