In the Italian Alps, a frightened American kid is pushed to learn how to ice climbing.
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The best way to ensure that audiences will get on board, as Nir has pointed out, is to make it about the struggle. There are a lot of films that focus on mankind’s struggle against unbelievable odds – Everest, 127 Hours, Touching the Void, Cast Away, Life of Pi, etc. etc. Usually, it’s not that important what the circumstances but the stakes have to be high – it’s about survival. The kid in your story can’t just choose to learn how to ice climb and find it difficult – he can quit at any time. Instead consider putting him in a situation where he has no choice because his life depends on it. A lot of the movies mentioned take experienced people as a means of highlighting the extremes – even the best of the best are struggling. So another option for you is to make him an experienced climber doing something that pushes him to his limit and beyond – maybe the protagonist is the veteran who has to go rescue the inexperienced guy like in Everest? Or he finds himself stuck somewhere like Touching the Void?
The other thing you could consider to help with marketing is include a location that even the average film-watcher has heard of. ?The Eiger, Everest, K2, etc, etc. By giving us a familiar name we immediately know the risks.
The most important thing for this kind of story though, in my opinion, is the stakes. He can’t have the option of turning back and his life has to be on the line. Get busy living or get busy dying!
Does he try? What happens when he fails? Who is pushing him and why?
The ice climbing is just a setting for a story. ?Dances with Wolves? and ?Avatar? are the same story told in different settings.
Intended so or not, this is a profound question…
All humans understand mythological constructs and archetypes on a subconscious level. Therefore, the subject matter is less important than the metaphors the story creates to mythology.
Short answer, yes, none climbing audience could be interested in climbing stories. Long answer, it depends if it can be marketed well enough at this point in time.
As Richiev mentioned above, a logline is a tool for plot analysis, not marketing. That means that from a logline on this site, we simply can’t tell if a story will be interesting for a broad audience.
{In the Italian Alps, a frightened American kid is pushed to learn how to ice climbing.}
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It’s hard to say if the story would be interesting to non-climbers because your logline (As written) is not yet a story: It is more of a situation.
1: A story needs a lead character… Frightened American Kid (So we have a lead character in your logline)
2: Then something happens, this is the inciting incident… We don’t at this point what that incident is; what causes the kids to go to the Alps in the first place. (This event is very important for a logline to have)
3: The inciting incident causes the lead character to have a goal… Again, we don’t know what’s the goal of your lead character. (A goal is a must for a logline, without a goal there is no story)
4: Then there is something or someone standing in the way of that goal… You say the kid is ‘pushed’ but fail to tell us who is pushing the kid… This would be the antagonist. (Story is conflict, telling us who is standing in the way of the kid’s goal is a must for the logline)
Anyway, once these elements are added to the logline, the logline will be far more likely to hook the reader.
Finally: A logline isn’t really about finding out if a reader is interested in the story. It’s about selling the story to the reader.
A logline condenses your story to its basic elements in a compelling way that forces the reader to sit up and take notice.
So when you write a logline, you should think like a salesman not like a survey taker. (And like anything it just takes practice)
Hope this helps.
…how to ice climb”. Couldn’t find a way to correct it