When a man tracks a Mesoamerican heirloom to Brazil, he learns he must choose between revenge for his father?s death, and the life that caused it

RussellN:

Your logline started (inciting incident!) a train of random and not-so-random thoughts about a frequent problem I see in loglines: to wit, the confounding of the dramatic dilemma with the dramatic goal. ?Let me attempt to lay out how I see the issue.

We know, of course, that characters have to make choices during the course of a story. The choices must become progressively harder, entailing greater risk, greater effort, greater sacrifice.

The hardest of all choices is the dramatic dilemma where the protagonist must choose between two equally desirable or two equally undesirable options. He’s damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. But, dammit, he must choose. The character is faced with the dramatic dilemma at the climax of the story in Act 3.

But loglines are not about the dramatic dilemma, the hardest choice of all that must be made in Act 3. ?Rather loglines are about a choice a character makes earlier in the story, by the end of Act 1. That choice creates an objective goal. The pursuit of that goal inevitably leads the character to the dramatic dilemma. (Although, of course, the character doesn’t know it.)

The choice the character makes at the end of Act 1 is not an easy one. In a sense, the end of Act 1 is a mini-dilemma, a hard choice. (Which is why the protagonist usually?hesitates.)

But choose he must at the end of Act 1 — or else there is no plot. If Luke Skywalker doesn’t choose to accept the “Call to Adventure” from Obi Wan, there is no “Star Wars” saga, no franchise.

Loglines are about the consequence of the choice the protagonist makes to resolve the mini-dilemma at the end of Act 1– not the major dilemma he faces near the end of the story.

But in either case, loglines are not about dilemmas, minor or major.

Now then. When does your character face the dilemma you describe in your logline, “learn he must choose between revenge for his father?s death, and the life that caused it”?

If it’s at the end of Act 1, then the logline should not describe the mini-dilemma. Rather, it should simply state the objective goal that arises as a result of the choice he makes. (Any logline about “Star Wars: The New Hope” would not include a description of Luke Skywalker’s mini-dilemma, that he initially rejects the “Call to Adventure” because he feels obligated to help out his uncle. Rather, it would only describe the objective goal that arises for how/when he resolves that mini-dilemma.)

Alternately, if ?the dilemma occurs at the climax of the story, ?that’s?great for the plot, but, again, it doesn’t belong in the logline. ?Because loglines are about how a plot starts, not the climax to which it builds. ( And also because it constitutes a spoiler and loglines should never have a spoiler.)

So, my takeaway is that loglines are about ?the action and goal that happens after a character makes a decision — not about the mini dilemma he has to resolve to make that decision, nor the major dilemma he will eventually confront.

fwiw.