When a neglected housewife discovers that the nest will be empty sooner than she had planned, she follows her daughter to the beach for the summer in an effort to save their last few months together, quickly realizing she has a lot to learn about their relationship, her marriage and herself.
BFinkPenpusher
When a neglected housewife discovers that the nest will be empty sooner than she had planned, she follows her daughter to the beach for the summer in an effort to save their last few months together, quickly realizing she has a lot to learn about their relationship, her marriage and herself.
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Bfink:
In addition to the above I see one other thing that could strengthen the logline’s appeal: ?a strong hook.
“Follows her daughter to the beach” — how unique, how exciting is that to watch?
On the other hand, what if the daughter wants to go to the beach, but ?her mother cajoles and finally bribes — pays her — to join her in hiking the Appalachian trail?
Or biking up the Pacific Coast Highway? ?Or biking the the C&O Canal and Great Allegheny Gap from Washington DC to Pittsburgh?
Or your mom’s solution to her midlife crisis is to buy a Harley — or requistion her soon to be ex’s beloved Harley — ?and drive across country to the Sturgis, South Dakota motorcycle rally.
(I’m assuming you’re from the US of A. If not, replace with some local travel routes in your own country.)
Her subjective need is her last chance to bond with her daughter, repair the wounds inflicted by her failing (or failed?) marriage. ?Her objective goal is reach the destination implied in the Odyssey.
I’m just throwing out ideas. ?My point is build the story around the hook of an interesting journey the audience will want to go along to enjoy the scenery and see how it ends.
fwiw
So the primary focus of your story in the relationship between mother and daughter. Specifically, the mother’s attempt to force her daughter into one last ?”bonding experience”.
That’s fine. ?But…
Movies are a visual medium so I have to ask the question: what is the visual for the “bonding experience”? ?What will that look like on a movie screen? ?What will it look like and what is said and done that indicates she has succeeded — or failed?
As an example, take the movie “Wild” (2014). ?The Reese Witherspoon’s character has an objective goal to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. ?Now, of course, the weight of her backpack is a metaphor for the equally heavy ?psychological baggage she is carrying with her — her subjective problem. ?And if she doesn’t eventually dump her psychological baggage, she will not achieve her objective goal.
But a logline for a movie needs to be framed around her objective goal — not her subjective need.
Either she successfully completes her physical journey — or she doesn’t. And the visual on that is reaching some landmark that indicates success. In the ?movie, that visual is ?walking across the “Bridge of the Gods”that spans the Columbia River. ?That lets the audience know that she has accomplished her objective goal. (And along the way, shed her psychological baggage.)
Now then. ?In the case of your story, what exactly is the visual for the “bonding experience”? ?What does that scene look like? ?What would happen in that scene to indicate success?
Your logline needs to supply or suggest a visual image that would ?inform the audience that she has succeeded.
Another aspect of your story is that the mother’s want is ?clearly the wrong goal. She’s desperately trying to impose her definition of a mother-daughter relationship on her daughter whether her daughter wants it or not. She’s desperately dumping on her daughter the burden of ?the mother’s emotional baggage. ?I would think that would be a hard sell to an audience. ?They might sympathize with her emotional problems, but I don’t think they would be rooting for her method of resolving them –at her daughter’s expense.
Now it’s perfectly legit for a character initially pursue the wrong goal and eventually come to see the error of her goal and embrace the right goal.
But for the purpose of a logline it’s better if the story is framed with an objective goal that ostensibly seems acceptable, desirable from the git go. (Even though during the course of the story the character comes to realize that it’s the wrong goal, or the right goal for the wrong reason.)
fwiw
Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts and ideas. ?This is a tough one for me because the ultimate story is the emotional journey the protagonist goes on, but of course she doesn’t know that going into it, and it’s hard to base a movie around an internal story. ?She is in a bad marriage, which does play into the story a little bit, but I wanted the focus to be on her relationship with her daughter and what she learns about herself through this experience with her. ?So here’s my revised logline. ?I hope it clarifies the story a little bit better:
When a neglected housewife, and soon-to-be empty-nester, learns of her daughter?s plans to spend the summer away from her, she follows her daughter to the beach in an effort to force her into one last bonding experience.
Please let me know what you think.
I like the idea, personally, and recent movies like The Meddler and Hello, My Name is Doris have made me feel like we could definitely be entertained watching older women at this stage of their life.
I ?suppose I could agree with the comment about raising the stakes. ?Are secrets revealed, does he daughter almost reject her, does something that gets newly awakened on this trip threaten her marriage, etc.
I think Richiev’s logline fairly well conveys the gist of the story as far as we know it from the original logline. ? This appears to be a story more about relationship than action.
I, for one, would like to know what the stakes are. ?The immediate stakes. ?What will the mother have lost by the end of the story if she fails? ?What will she gain if she succeeds? ?And as this is a story for a visual medium, ?how does the stakes translate into a specific visual, a specific scene that let’s the audience know whether she has succeeded or failed?
Or to look at it from another angle, this is a story millions of mothers can identify with because this is something they have experienced. There comes a time when children fly away — they take wing and become independent. ?They must.
But this ability to identify with the character’s predicament as a shared experience is a two-edged sword. Because become an empty-nester is so common, such an inevitable and, ergo, ordinary event in a parent’s life, what is so uncommon, so extraordinary about this character and her experience that would induce an audience to want to invest their time and money to vicariously relive it?
To put it ?crudely, after enduring the ordeal of a root canal, why would I want to watch a story about someone else having a root canal? ? Why would I want to re-experience the ordeal, even if only vicariously?
fwiw
When her daughter is accepted to a college across the country, a soon-to-be empty nest housewife follows her daughter to Fort Lauderdale to have one last bonding experience.
Agreed with DPG. The inciting incident and goal descriptions were unclear.
Secondly, the MC sounds like she is a sad derivative of her family instead of a person in her own right. This could make for a good inner journey, in that she needs to learn to become none dependent on her husband and children – her own person. However, this needs to be communicated clearly, and a logline is all about the outer journey to achieve an outer goal. Therefore, best you describe her as actively pursuing a clear outer goal, which is not related to her children, and use her character description to imply that she is emotionally dependent on her family.
Could you be more specific about the inciting incident? ?What exactly happens that makes her realize she will be an empty nester sooner than she had expected.
And ?could you also be more specific about what “save their last few months together” means in terms of dramatic action? ?IOW: ?how does that translate into a specific objective goal? ?In following her daughter to the beach what does she hope to accomplish? ?Talk her daughter out of leaving the nest so soon? ?Or…?
Finally, loglines focus on ?an objective goal, not ?on ?a subjective need (even though the script ?deals with a subjective issue). ?Loglines are concerned about the primary dramatic problem created by the inciting incident, not about the dramatic solution. ?Certainly not a dramatic solution arising out of subjective change or personal epiphany.
Consequently, a logline ?is not about and should never refer to ?”lessons learned”. ?Save the “lesson learned” for the script.
fwiw