When a college student falls in love with wakeboarding while preparing to win the Women?s World Amateur Golf Tournament, she must decide whether to pursue a future of money and stability, or passion and uncertainty.
pdlz78Logliner
When a college student falls in love with wakeboarding while preparing to win the Women?s World Amateur Golf Tournament, she must decide whether to pursue a future of money and stability, or passion and uncertainty.
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Loglines are about plots. ? And plots are not about a character deciding to decide, refusing to decide, hesitating to decide. Plots are about the decision the character actually makes, the objective goal she commits to, the action that follows.
So what does the character decide to do? ?What becomes her objective goal? ?Who opposes her objective goal?
And what is at stake that an audience should care whether she succeeds or fails?
Thoughts on this revision:
After she loses her #1 women’s world amateur golf ranking, a rebellious college student quits golf to win a wakeboard contest to escape her abusive and controlling father.
1] How does quitting golf for wakeboard enable her to escape her abusive and controlling father?
2] It’s a negative goal. ?She’s?running away from something negative rather running toward something positive.
A character can have negative motivations for an action (anger, revenge);, she can act for the wrong reason. ?Even so, she must always be striving for a positive goal. ?IOW: in reel life (as opposed to real life) a protagonist should be striving for her biggest dream, the one thing she wants more than anything else.
What is her biggest dream? ?What objective goal does she want more than anything else? ?It may be necessary to escape her abusive father. ?But that is not sufficient for drama: she must find a positive alternative.
Movies, marketable ones anyway, are?about pursuing dreams — not just escaping nightmares.
How is this revised approach:
After being publicly humiliated & temporarily? banned for cheating in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Championship, a determined teen enlists the help of a disgraced wakeboarder to win a major wakeboard contest and restore her name to prominence.
So, she wants wants to win a major wakeboard contest to acquire what she didn’t in golf: ?fame. ?Well, that’s positive. Sort of.
But it’s also shallow , superficial. ?And, worst of all, it’s selfish. ?It’s all about her, her self-esteem, her self-image.
(Whatever happened to doing something for the sheer love of the sport?)
Of course, ego is a motivating factor in real life sports. ?But in the reel life of movies the character has to be struggling for more than fame. ?She must also be fighting for a cause, a purpose, a principle greater than her ego.
IOW: there’s gotta be stakes. Stakes that the audience can become emotionally invested in. Stakes that makes the audience want to root for the character to succeed.
Others’ mileage may vary, but purely selfish stakes don’t work for me, don’t make me want to root for the character to succeed.
On the other foot, she did cheat in golf. ?What if she’s trying to turn her life around, to redeem herself, her character, for her cheating?
Who would you rather root for: a character seeking redemption, or a character seeking fame?
(Me, too.)
Yes, agreed! Thank you for the insight! Below is a revised concept:
After suffering public humiliation and a ban from women?s golf, the one-time phenom helps a female wakeboarder raise funding to bring back a women?s division to the Pro Wakeboard Tour.
This concept has come along way through the logline re drafts in this thread.
The last draft, in my mind, seems to lack a cause and effect between the inciting incident – getting banned from women’s golf, and the goal – bring back a women’s division to the pro wakeboard tour.
One does not logically motivate the other. If how ever she were to try and help a young talent up the ranks in golf the connection is made, or conversely if she were to have been banned from wake boarding the connection will also be made.
On a second note, you specified that she wants to “…bring back?” the division, this implies that there was a women’s division and then it was taken away or canceled. What if the inciting incident is just that? She was a pro wakeboarder and the woman’s division was canceled, now she must take action to bring it back or else she will not be able to compete.
Thanks Nir! Good suggestions…thoughts:
When Hudson Holloway learns that the Women?s division in the Pro Wakeboard Tour has been canceled, she enlists the help of a banned, former champion to train her to win in the Men?s division.
Good re draft of the logline, but no need to mention the character’s name and the first clause is too long of a description for the inciting incident.
After the women’s division is canceled in the Pro Wakeboard Tour, a young competitor must enlist the help of the previous Wakeboarding champion to train her to win the men’s division.