When a space trucker saves Elvis Presley from assassination he must return to Earth, a planet that abandoned him as a child, and recover Presley’s hidden time machine to prevent it from being used to destroy the galaxy.
solidjimLogliner
When a space trucker saves Elvis Presley from assassination he must return to Earth, a planet that abandoned him as a child, and recover Presley’s hidden time machine to prevent it from being used to destroy the galaxy.
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There are three versions of the same logline in this one thread, I’ll refer to the most recent iteration.
There is a disconnect between the first half of the logline and the second half, as previously mentioned, a logline needs to illustrate the cause and effect relationship between the inciting incident and goal or risk confusing the reader.
When a reader first reads that Elvis is saved from an assassination it puts very specific ideas in the reader’s mind, such as Elvis befriending his new savior or that Elvis will appoint him to be his personal bodyguard. However, for the MC to then be made out to save the entire galaxy is entirely unexpected as it doesn’t logically flow on as a result of Elvis being saved. The two actions are being forced together into the one logline with no connection to each other.
A lack of cause and effect will render a logline unclear.
>>>When a space trucker discovers Elvis Presley is not dead, and the future leader of the entire galaxy, he must help recover Presley?s lost time machine to prevent an alien from undoing all of history.
This version sort of clears up one persistent problem I have had with the concept: ?since Elvis Presley is supposed to be dead, how can he still be alive, and be under a threat of an assassination? ?You can’t just toss Elvis into the mix of a logline without some explanation in the face of the assumption and common knowledge that he’s dead.
Discovering that he’s not dead means that even the protagonist –like everyone reading the logline and script –thinks he is dead. ? There’s an implied promise the script will deliver an explanation as to why he still lives.
However, the concept still seems disjointed and cluttered; consequently, ?it still seems difficult to buy into the premise by suspending disbelief. ?And suspending disbelief is ?always a primary challenge for a story of this genre.
By cluttered I mean that it has so many elements that require a suspension of disbelief. ?IMHO, you are asking a script reader — and movie audience — to swallow too much exposition to just kick start the plot.
?In order to buy into the concept, a logline reader must suspend disbelief and accept that 1]Elvis isn’t dead’ 2] He’s the future leader of the galaxy; 3] He’s got a time machine…somewhere; 4] An evil alien intends to “undo all history”. ?(What does that mean? ); 5] And all of this is causally connected.
I shudder to think how much exposition the script may get bogged down in explaining how ?it all fits together.. All of these elements have to be set up, explained and aligned in the 1st Act, 30 pages, 30 minutes, max.
In one sentence, what is your story hook for logline readers?
And what’s your personal hook in the story? ?Why do you want to — why must you — write it?
fwiw
Most things have been covered on this one. But I think the best course of action would be writing this out as a paragraph-long synopsis and then start trimming it back until you have something 25-30 words. Because there is plenty of important things here you’ve missed out and plenty of things that really are unnecessary.
What makes the Space Trucker your protag (i.e. what is his flaw)? Is Elvis in outer space when it happens? Who must return to Earth and why the hell does Elvis have a time machine?
But we don’t need to know about the assassination because it seems that the main plot is the time machine theft. So drop it. A lot of this could be dropped. Good luck.