VERSION A:
“Consumed by fear of his impending mortality, a 31-year-old man race against time to break an ancient curse that kills all males in his lineage by age 32.” VERSION B:
“A 31-year-old man races against time to break an ancient curse that kills all males in his lineage by age 32.”
Sylia GrayLogliner
VERSION A: “Consumed by fear of his impending mortality, a 31-year-old man race against time to break an ancient curse that kills all males in his lineage by age 32.” VERSION B: “A 31-year-old man races against time to break an ancient curse that kills all males in his lineage by age 32.”
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Is there a step in the middle that you could add to the logline.
Does he have to acquire?an ancient spellbook?
Locate a reclusive Shaman
Learn the secret mystical dance of HokieyPokey
Also, you don’t really have an inciting incident.
I mean personally, if my family was cursed and everyone died at 32. I would have started searching for the cure at 18 years old.
Why does he wait so long to try to lift the curse? Your lead is cutting it kind of close.
In other words, what sets your?lead character in motion to find a way to lift the curse will be your inciting incident and should be in the logline.
Agree with Richiev. For this to work he potentially needs to have only just found out about the curse. This way the inciting incident (discovering the curse) and the goal (breaking the curse) are perfectly in keeping with each other. Who’s cursed the family? That’s fairly significant in my opinion as that gives us our antagonist. Alternatively, ?maybe the protagonist has been hunting, Indiana Jones style, for the last 12 years and on his 31st birthday makes a discovery that no one else has? We just need the key moment that flips his life upside down.
Is there a characteristic you can give us that gives us more information about this character? What’s his arc?
You’re missing an inciting event and the specifics of the goal. What single event made him have to take action now? How, specifically, will he break the curse?
What if he’s one half of a pair of twins and he his brother or sister die at the end of act 1? Now he has the duration of the film to break the curse or else. A quick Google search says it is medically possible for twins to be born an hour or so apart.
Or, to throw another option out there.
In Korea, your birthday is considered the date of conception, not birth.
What if his brother moved to Korea and dies, then upon further investigation the MC discovers the curse.
Now the hero has nine months to break it.
I like version B. If you knew you are dying fear is an obvious outcome. Add in an emotion if you can use it to subvert the audience expectations. For example ?turned on by death ..?
“A man must break an ancient curse within a year if he and his lineage want to live beyond the age 32.”