When a botched scientific experiment enables her to read minds, a reserved psychology student realises the intrusive burden of her ability and must discover how to reverse her gift to restore her normal life.
tsalex20Logliner
When a botched scientific experiment enables her to read minds, a reserved psychology student realises the intrusive burden of her ability and must discover how to reverse her gift to restore her normal life.
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Sounds like a female version of Mel Gibson’s character in?What Women Want.
Is it intended as a comedy, drama, coming of age, medical thriller or pure SF?
A better logline description of the experiment would be that it had unintended/unexpected consequence rather being botched. Inducing telepathy would be a major discovery in itself. Also if it is the result of scientific experiment, a lot of people especially the military would be after her. ?Her trying to escape the threat to be either dissected or used as a spy weapons would make it a much more visual justification to want to get rid of the ability.
Also getting rid of the telepathy should have a time constraint to create more tension. If it is not life threatening, figuratively or literally, then there is no urgency to resolve the issue. The protagonist can always fix it later without being too negatively impacted.
Regarding the alienation that getting telepathic power can create, the SF book?Dying Inside Is a great classic on the subject.
Yeah, the 1st thing that came to my mind was also “What Women Want”.? ?So will industry folks who read this.? And the 1st question that will pop into their mind is:? given, essentially,? a similar inciting incident, what is the fresh take on the resulting action?
Taking this logline literally, it says that the plot is about how the protagonist struggles to undo the transformation, not about how? she struggles to explore the opportunities and deal with the challenges the transformation creates.
Obviously the really interesting? plot — the one that’s going to sell tickets — is how she struggles with the consequences of the transformation — not how she struggles to undo it.? Although, she can come to that point in her character and story arc at or after the MPR (the mid-point reversal).? But loglines and plots are not about what happens at or after the MPR — but what happens before.? ?So what’s the plot, the unitary action line, that is created by the inciting incident before the MPR?
>>>she initially realises how eye-opening everything is to know what people are thinking and to use that to her advantage (perhaps in a school environment)
Fine.? But how,, does she leverage it to her advantage?? What becomes her specific objective goal?? (In “What Women Want”, when the guy realizes he can read women’s minds, his objective goal becomes to use his ability to get his female boss’s job.)
>>> after the MPR she tries to get rid of the ability after discovering the negative consequences outweighing the positive ones.
Okay, but a logline is about what happens before the MPR — not after.
(IMHO, the military or covert intelligence agencies as the bad guys is a too convenient, greatly overused trope.? Besides how are they going to compel her cooperation when because she can read their minds, she has the ability to be one, two, three steps ahead of them at every plot point?)
This highlights precisely why it’s never a good idea to start a logline with “When” – you’re placing the pronoun “her” prior to its antecedent, the student…so start with the student. Always start with the protagonist, then cover the antagonist & conflict in whatever order works better, and finish it off with the stakes. Maybe this isn’t quite your story, but:
A reserved psychology student acquires the ability to read minds but must reverse the effect when it stops being fun and threatens her very sanity.
Twenty-five words, no punctation, sums up the main points of interest in your story. You may have an actual person of an antagonist in the script (and probably should), but at this stage the stakes are clear and serious enough you don’t need to mention any government, or military, or a professor who figures out her secret and wants it for himself, or whatever actually happens in the story. The point is, with this short sentence you’ve identified a sympathetic main character (reserved student), stated the premise (ability to read minds), indicated the second act storyline (it stops being fun), and summed up both conflict & stakes (threatened sanity). That should be enough to get anyone interested to read more and see how it all plays out.
And if this isn’t quite how your story works, change the sentence to show your actual plot points, but keep it short and simple. Additional details are for the script; a logline is nothing but one big broad stroke. But don’t be vague, because vague isn’t compelling. “Restore her normal life” is vague, and we don’t know yet what her life is like before or after, because that’s too detailed for a logline, but possibly losing her sanity…well, that’s something anyone can understand.
I’m a never-say-never guy, but mrliteral’s rewrite is a good example of how to get around starting a logline with “when”.? A practice,I agree, is overused.