When a hurricane kills a middle-aged man and his nephew, the boy?s grieving father must manage his wife?s deteriorating mental health and his company?s spiralling recession.

It seems to me that there are too many moving balls to track and sort out and relate to one another and the plot. Simplify.? I had to read the logline 3 times to sort out the relationship of the 4 characters mentioned.?

Everything and the relationship of every one in a logline should be clear, obvious on one quick read.? A reader shouldn’t have to slow down, shouldn’t have to read a logline two or more times to sort out the characters and figure out what the plot is. (Most industry executives are too busy and distracted to read a logline twice.? If it isn’t obvious and clear on the 1st read, they move on to the next logline.? The logline is DOA.)

If her son hadn’t died (that’s how the relationships connect, isn’t it?), wouldn’t the mother’s her mental health still be deteriorating if the cause were organic?? If so, then the hurricane doesn’t really constitute an inciting incident for her role in the story.??Also,? what is her mental health condition anyway?? Depression, Bipolar, or…?? Be specific.

As for the company’s financial woe’s.? Does the hurricane cause its economic woes — or merely exacerbate them?? If the latter, then once again the hurricane is a complicating incident but not really an inciting incident.

Also, “manage” is static and general, rather than active and specific.? Take a cue from the fantastic opening monologue in the 1970 film “Patton”, where the protagonist, American? General George C. Patton,? lectures his troops:? “Now there’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying that ‘we are holding our position.’? We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We’re going to hold onto him by the nose and we’re going to kick him in the ass. We’re going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we’re going to go through him like crap through a goose!”

Similarly “manage” in drama is merely a holding action.? But in drama protagonists don’t hold a position, they advance, they are proactive .? In your scenario the husband can’t really be very proactive in regards to his wife’s mental health because it’s her dramatic problem? beyond his ability to control and try to solve.? What he can control and try to solve are his company’s economic woes.

A logline is about the plot.? Now then, Aristotle in his classic treatise on tragedy defined a plot as a unitary action, a singular action line, not two or more lines of action.? His definition has been the accepted definition ever since.? So either the plot,? the “A” story, in this story is about the company or about the wife — but not both.? If the “A” story , the primary plot, is about the company, then the wife’s problem is a “B” story, a complication, a subplot.? And a logline should be framed around and focus on the “A” story, the singular unifying action line of the story.

So what is the singular line of action, the “A” story?