When a obscene female human guinea pig volunteers to test a new pharmacutical, she discovers the company is killing the subjects, now sympathetic she has 1000 hours before the drug kills them all.

Hi Alex;

I’m confused by the above exchange, but it seems like this might be B8C’s logline WIP? It’s very confusing for other users of the site if you have just reposted your own version of their logline. Like suggested, perhaps save re-writes or suggestions for the comment thread related to the original logline? Also, I’m not certain that everyone here knows who Karel is – this website is used by people around the world, and while they may have come into contact with Karel through the site, you can’t assume anyone will understand who you are in relation to him, or that they won’t be offended by you re-wording and re-titling their idea just because you consider yourself a student of his.

As a general thing, I’ve noticed that you try and include a deadline (or as Snyder says, a time-clock, which is ridiculous, but I guess he had to name it something) in your loglines to heighten the stakes. Whilst the theory behind this is sound, 1000 hours is such a long time, it doesn’t make us think that there is any sense of urgency. That’s like over 40 days … which doesn’t sound really urgent to me. Also, people don’t generally think in terms of days in sets of ten. They think in weeks, months, years. What if you described the protagonist as only having a month and a half to complete their goal. Does that work?

More specifically; what do you mean OBSCENE? What makes the protagonist obscene? What have they done? And in this context, that isn’t really a flaw as far as I can understand it. In addition to the deadline you’ve imposed, you’ve not made it clear was the goal is that must be acheived in that timeframe. Something like “now she must find the antidote to the drug before she wastes away.”

…but, if your protagonist volunteered or agreed to the tests at the beginning, then the stakes (the protagonist dying) are kept kind of low, because we as an audience think “OK, well, it sucks that the scientists lied (I don’t know why they would), but to a degree this protagonist brought it on themselves.” What if, as well as discovering that the scientists are killing their test subjects, she discovers a nefarious plot to unleash this wonderdrug on the general populace? Uh oh, stakes just jumped through the roof!

“A desperate test subject has two days to find the antidote to a flesh eating virus before it is unleashed on the population of a major city.”

B8C … I’m sorry if this is miles away from your original concept.