A single mother wakes up one morning having forgotten the past 16 years and the circumstances of her husband’s disappearance. While she tries to find him, a vengeful cop implicates her for a murder.
wholeintheskiesPenpusher
A single mother wakes up one morning having forgotten the past 16 years and the circumstances of her husband’s disappearance. While she tries to find him, a vengeful cop implicates her for a murder.
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The latest draft of the logline is a bit more streamlined in terms of events, but still lacks a compelling motivation and clear goal.
The fact she can’t remember the father’s identity is really no biggie. What’s the worst that will happen should she fail to find the father? Equally what’s the best that would happen if she does find the father? What does she stand to gain? Not much…
What will she do once she finds the father? What is the purpose of her search outside of identifying him?
Her stakes are low and goal unclear.
Lastly “…a vengeful cop…” is a vague description of a bad guy – vengeful about what? The whole murder investigation feels like a ‘tacked on’ plot point and unrelated to the story. Either make her struggling to prove her innocence in the murder investigation the A plot or drop it altogether.
?I’m well aware of amnesia induced by physical trauma, but for someone to wake up one morning and for no apparent reason forget a specific interval of her life, 16 and only 16 years – well, can that actually happen? ?It would certainly be a rare event, but is it a medically plausible one?
Modern audiences — and movie critics — are more sophisticated about these matters ?or can be become so by merely googling. ?So the initial amnesia has got to hold up under scrutiny as medically plausible. ?Just saying.
As Nir Shelter said, the logline is missing an inciting incident, the event in the 1st Act that triggers her search.
Also, I’m confused by the effects of the amnesia. ?Because of it, she doesn’t recognize her son, but she does remember she had a husband? ?To simplify, shorten and clarify, perhaps it would be better to not mention the son in the logline as he doesn’t seem to contribute anything directly to the basic plot. ?And that’s all the logline is about, the basic elements of the plot.
However, the logline is missing one element, ?a character who (I presume) is her antagonist. ?There?isn’t a murder investigation — that’s too general, abstract — there’s a detective conducting a murder investigation.
The age of the MC can be dropped as it has no bearing on the plot.
Her refusal to recognise her son is not relevant to the A plot, as it may be a B plot it can also be dropped from the logline.
The logline is too long, aim at 25-30 words.
The logline is still missing an inciting incident – why MUST she find the father of her son? What happened that made it a MUST do or die goal for her?
If she’s unaware of the murder investigation that means it will not be seen from her dramatic point of view. This implies that there is another character that will take center stage part way through the story, this will necessitate a big shift of dramatic point of view from the MC – the woman, to another one. Such a big shift normally doesn’t work 95% of films that? try this fail. I strongly suggest you re consider her story is her esca[ing the cops or proving her innocents the main story if so re structure the logline around it, if not cut it and focus on the mother, son and father relationships. Point is, focus the story around one primary plot, and subsequently draft a logline to reflect this – you need not mention the additional subplots in the logline.
FYI, it facilitates responding if the thread of reviews is kept under one posting. ?You can edit an original logline. ?Unfortunately it’s not intuitively obvious how. ? Hover your pointer in the lower right hand corner below the bottom border for the logline, below the words “Classics” and “Users” per the illustration.
[img]https://loglines.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/LoglineIT-edit.png[/img]
Now then, as to the logline, I ran it through my own template of questions and here is what I came up with:?????????
The hook for me in this story is a woman is accused of a murdering a man she has no memory of because she suffers from amnesia.? I’m guessing that’s what the set up is leading to but it needs to be stated more clearly.? She’s not just accused of a murder, she’s accused of murdering someone she has no recollection of. Who, specifically? A man? A woman? A child? Her husband??
And at that point, I felt no need to continue further until it’s clarified who is the designated protagonist. ?Or ought to be. ?I nominate the teenage son to be the the protagonist. Who do you intend to be the protagonist, the character who carries the primary responsibility for the objective goal? ?And why?