For your consideration.
maximdryginLogliner
When a humble bingo floor clerk discovers ability to predict Powerball lotto winning numbers, she must fight her family’s deadly urge to get rich quick.
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Firstly, I think you could easily trim this down by removing some unnecessary words. I’m not sure we need to know that she is a bingo floor clerk unless it is essential to the story. Replace “predict Powerball lotto winning numbers” with simply “predict the lottery”. Don’t use 5 when 3 will do.
The characterisation used often goes some way to suggest the character’s arc through the story. Is this the case? Does she go from humble to proud? If not, perhaps consider another characteristic that gives us more information about this character and why we should be interested in her story.
Why must she fight her family’s urge to get rich quick?? Surely that’s exactly what anyone would do if they discovered this superpower? You’d only need to do it once and the whole family is set for life… so why is she fighting? Why is their urge deadly? Whose life is at stake? I feel like this goal is a little bit vague and overly dramatic. Specifically, can you tell us what’s going on? What are her family actually doing and why?
Currently the goal is simply “to fight her family’s urge…”. Fighting is what she does in order to achieve her goal – I’m not really seeing a goal though. Is it stop her family getting rich? (if so why?) Get rid of the ability? Get rich and run away from her crazy family? She needs a specific visual goal. Without that, a reader has no idea where this story will end up.
Hope this helps.
“When a humble bingo floor clerk discovers ability to predict Powerball lotto winning numbers, she must fight her family?s deadly urge to get rich quick.”
I agree with mikepedley85’s review. Here’s a breakdown from my understanding:
Inciting incident: “discovers ability to predict Powerball lotto winning numbers” —-> Agree with mikepedley85’s suggestion.
Protagonist: “a humble bingo floor clerk” —-> Being a bingo floor clerk may have significance in the story, but it doesn’t seem necessary in the logline. Is there a shorter way to include this?? You mentioned that you intend ‘humble’ to mean poor, but I feel as though other than stating her financial status, it doesn’t tell us what kind of personality she has, and that can be used to hint at how her personality affects the story.
Goal: “he must fight her family?s deadly urge to get rich quick.” —-> This should be changed to a specific, visual description of an objective goal. Think of the climax. At that point, what will she be trying to accomplish?
Antagonist: From the logline, it reads as though it’s her family. But in your comment you mention an outside group who tries to kill her, since that part isn’t in the logline I can’t assess it.
I suggest considering these above elements for your revisions.