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shaanklePenpusher
When a former priest on death row breaks out of prison, all he wants is a fresh start, but his serial-killer split personality only makes it harder for him to evade the FBI? and the lethal injection.
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If the defining characteristic and flaw of the protagonist is a split personality, then that flaw has to be the major plot driver, the major source of dramatic tension. What’s the dramatic tension in wanting to buy a house and how does that relate to his flaw?
“…his split-personality breaks him out of prison, and when he arrives in a new city, he finds a house and falls in love with it…”
This is a series of events part of a sequence and not a single significant event that occurs out of the ordinary which changes the life of the MC in manner that motivates him to need a specific goal.
Secondly the inciting incident normally needs to happen to the MC without their control. If the MC did the inciting incident to him self, in the way you are suggesting, then it would have happened regardless and there fore is not an unusual event.
How does a person fall in love with a house? How is this related to his being on death row? Which of them are we even talking about? And again: why wouldn’t the priest turn himself in?
The inciting incident is his split-personality breaks him out of prison, and when he arrives in a new city, he finds a house and falls in love with it, making it his goal to gain enough money to purchase it.
I’m not sure you can be too specific with an MCs goal.
It is not clear from the original post that his goal is a fresh start.
Either way a fresh start, to settle down and evading the authorities are not goals these are ambitions. Think of a goal as a motivated tangible article made clear with cinematic visuals not general vague ambitions.
The inciting incident must motivate the MC to achieve the goal the two can’t be separate random plot items.
what is the inciting incident that results in setting the MC off on his journey to achieve what goal?
Is it not clear that his goal is a fresh start? It seemed to me that was definitive enough of a goal.
In my previous draft of the logline, I had that his goal was to settle down?, which speaks to his more tangible goal to buy a house. What do you think of that? Would saying he wants to buy a house be too specific?
The audience empathy with your MC will be problematic. Why would the audience root for and want to follow the exploits of a serial killer?
This can be done for example Dexter was a vigilante doing society’s dirty work that gave him a clear redeeming quality. How will the same be achieved here?
Secondly what is his goal? Evading the FBI could go on for years and therefore fails to provide a definitive visual of success.
Hope this helps.
This doesn’t quite make sense, in more ways than one: when you say “former priest on death row” you make it sound like he was on death row and now is out?it doesn’t sound like he used to be a priest and is now on death row, which is what the case appears to be once a reader gets to the part about him breaking out of prison. That isn’t even half of what you wrote and it’s already confusing.
How would a death row escapee expect to get a fresh start? Never mind how anyone could possibly manage to break out anyway, but would he not immediately be on the ten most wanted list? Where could he possibly go without high risk of capture? And who made the choice and the effort to escape? The priest or the serial killer? Putting aside the fact that a split personality movie is an overdone idea that is always horribly inaccurate — if this guy’s made it to death row, obviously the priest guy knows about the killer guy, and a priest would accept his punishment for whatever atrocities he committed. If it’s the killer who escapes, why would the priest want a fresh start? Wouldn’t he turn himself in?
So the big issues here are that the logline is confusing in and of itself, and then the story it describes also doesn’t add up. You may want to seriously rethink the entire script.