When an emotionally detached woman returns home after a decade of uncontrollable jumps into parallel universes, she must reconnect with her estranged father to create a cure before vanishing once again.
KnightriderMentor
When an emotionally detached woman returns home after a decade of uncontrollable jumps into parallel universes, she must reconnect with her estranged father to create a cure before vanishing once again.
Share
What is the hook?
Not sure what the psychological hook is into a subjective need. Unless she must overcome her inclination to rebel, learn to submit to (some) authority, cooperate with others to save the universe.? IOW:? she must answer the call inspite of her rebellious nature, her reflexive inclination to flip the finger. Well, that might work.
None that I can detect that ties the story together and explains all the story “magic”.
1] She wakes up in a parallel universe. How is that possible?
2] The antagonist wants to reset the universe. Why? What’s his motive?
3] By killing his alternate self.? Say what?? How is that possible?? What’s the causal link between killing his alternate self and resetting the universe?
4] And if he can reset the universe by killing his alternate self, than does that mean others can, too? Like the rebellious young woman?
I can suspend disbelief (temporarily) for a couple of the magic elements — but not all of them at once. ?It seems to me the premise and logline is overloaded with “magic”.?Consequently, the logline raises more questions in my mind than answers.?Others’ mileage may vary.
“When a rebellious young woman wakes up in a parallel universe, she is recruited to help stop a misguided man from killing his alternate selves in a quest to gain enough power to reset the universe.”
By gain enough power you’re going by the idea that if one were to kill all of their alternate selves then they would become “The One” and have increased powers? I can’t think of any specific story at the moment other than I believe Jet Li’s “The One”, but I’m sure it’s a premise that’s been done multiple times. (I think also maybe the Spider-verse story line?)
I’m guessing your differing yours by this “Reset the universe” concept, but I don’t know what you mean by that. As in, reset time itself, restart everything?
The only suggestion I can think of at the moment is adding a reason for the man wanting to reset the universe. What has he been misguided into believing killing all of his alternate selves will do?
“I can suspend disbelief (temporarily) for a couple of the magic elements ? but not all of them at once. ?It seems to me the premise and logline is overloaded with ?magic?. ”
By my understanding it’s quite simple, and all stems from one idea: Parallel universes means that there’s a version of a person in each universe, and killing one version releases the energy of one into the rest, so if one version kills them all they become all powerful.
And besides, I don’t ever really see how a story has “too much magic” if it’s a fantasy/sci fi story. It may raise questions in shared universes such as: Why does Batman even need to fight anyone? Why doesn’t Superman just fly in a throw the Joker in jail? And other similar questions, but basically if it’s fantasy/sci-fi I don’t see a reason why anyone should feel they need to limit themselves to one type of idea, unless they want to.
But that’s my opinion anyway, an avid fantasy/sci-fi reader/watcher. I think comic books are an excellent example, all of DC’s characters live in the same fictional universe, meaning they have all types of powers and ideas. Aliens, parallel universes, sci-fi powers, magic, non-powered people, time-travel, angels and demons, gods. Sometimes all in one story.
Kind of a re work of Quantum Leep. This concept could work today, but the logline needs work itself – it’s too long, and describes the inciting incident at the end.
The plot is what she does after she gets back home for the first time in many years – this was the out of the ordinary event. What is her goal then? Does she have a day to figure out how to stop her curse before falling asleep again? If so best to mention it in detail. Writing that she “…must learn to control her abilities …” is less clear and doesn’t imply as much an urgency as ; must learn how to stop moving between universes before falling asleep again.
Dkpough1, Re:
>>> I don?t ever really see how a story has ?too much magic?
The DC characters and their world are well known, ?pre-sold concepts thanks to decades of comic book series. ?So it isn’t necessary to explain all the magic in those story worlds.
The character and world of this logline is neither familiar nor pre-sold.?
By “magic” I mean a feature of the “reel” world of the story that contradicts, violates, or doesn’t exist by the rules of the real world. ?It’s a feature on which the “reel” story depends and it will require exposition for the story to make sense.
The more “magic” there is, ?the more features in the “reel” world that depart from the real world, the more exposition (mostly in the 1st Act) the script may require ?so the audience will suspend disbelief and understand what is going on.?
Exposition you can’t put in a logline. ?Loglines are a particular challenge and bane for writers of original scifi and fantasy scripts because there simply isn’t space in a logline to explain ?the “magic”. ? So, to the greatest degree possible, save the “magic” for the script.
Knightrider:
>>who wakes up in a new parallel universe every time she falls asleep
Okay, that works for me.
But I’m still mystified by the rest of the revised logline on other plot elements. ? “Control her abilities” would seems to be a means to a end, not and end of itself. ?It’s a way of attaining an objective goal. ?What is that goal? ??And who or what opposes or threatens her? ?What are the stakes? ?What are the consequences if she fails to do whatever she has to do.
The hook for me in your story is the fact that I “wake up” every time I fall asleep in an alternative world of vivid dreams. ?I have even developed some control of them — lucid dreaming. ?But I don’t what the idea is you wish to explore in this story, the itch is you’re trying to scratch.
Still, I’m intrigued.
“When an emotionally detached woman returns home after a decade of uncontrollable jumps into parallel universes whenever she sleeps, she must reconnect with her past to prevent herself vanishing once again.”
Like dpg, I am intrigued by this concept. I personally have never seen anything quite like this. t seems you may be trying to go for an angle of she has to go back to the time of the event which may have caused her to become emotionally detached. That I like. But what exactly do you mean by reconnect?
“the more features in the ?reel? world that depart from the real world, the more exposition”
While trying to introduce and explain every one of those elements I listed would just be too much exposition, there’s a fairly simple shortcut. One is just ?’show, not tell’ and show a whole bunch of cool stuff with as little explanation as possible. This worked quite well for the Nightside (book) series by Simon R. Green. I can’t think of any film/ series quite like that but the Nightside books basically say “Anything goes in the NIghtside” and then introduces different sci-fi/fantasy aspects quite often.
However, yes, a logline probably can’t and shouldn’t try to explain the magic.
Basically, if the mindset you have going into a fantastical story is “how am I going to suspend disbelief” then I think it’s the wrong mindset in the first place. This, I imagine, is why some people can only read/watch historical, realistic, and non-fiction type stories.
That’s not to say that every concept simply works. Sometimes they are badly written or whatever it is that jerks you out of the fantasy. Things such as inconsistent magic systems and illogical uses of the very ‘magic’ that has been established to do something.
>>>a decade of uncontrollable jumps into parallel universes
I find that a very interesting dramatic framework. ?But to what purpose? ? The movie adaptation of ?”Slaughterhouse Five” comes to mind where the hapless protagonist jumps uncontrollably back and forth in time. ?Which Kurt Vonnegut used to dramatize his absurd and senseless experiences as a POW during World War II.
What’s your purpose? ?What’s the itch you need to scratch with this concept?
What about a person? Someone to bond with, to anchor her heart in ?one location?
Yeah, I know she’s emotionally detached. ?But could that be a problem with the logline as well as the character? ?There’s the possibility for arcing to emotional attachment ?– but no hint of an arc to another person. ?Just a location?
There’s no obvious antagonist. ?I have no problem with that. ?The predicament (flip-flopping in time-space) is good enough for the cause and aggravation of the dramatic problem.
But it seems to me, the logline would benefit by inclusion of another ?character with whom the protagonist is in an emotional relationship. Or wants to be or needs to be.
The obvious go-to relationship character would be a “love interest”.
Or maybe?a stakes character (like a child), some one who needs her.
Or an incentive character whom she desperately needs (subjectively) to be united with.
“Inception” comes to mind. ?Cobb’s undertakes the inception job to be re-united with his children. ?That’s the emotional? draw and payoff for him. ?Not just getting back to his home ?in the U.S. — but the ?humans in that home, his kids.
My own gut feeling is that getting emotionally detached to a place just isn’t compelling enough. ?Rather, the best emotional attachments in drama are to people, not places.
fwiw