When a top assassin falls for her latest target, she must switch from killer to bodyguard to stay alive long enough to turn the tables.
leejlawsonPenpusher
When a top assassin falls for her latest target, she must switch from killer to bodyguard to stay alive long enough to turn the tables.
Share
I was unsure how much value I’d get from a review of a logline, but this is great! All really valid and insightful points being made. Thanks everyone.
The more I develop the story, the more I veer away from comedy and stray into action with romance. Romaction?!? But comedy, in my humble opinion, is spawned from conflict. It is the trichotomy of two well defined characters in a strange situation and how the dynamics play off each other. This story has plenty of that so there’s great scope for comedy, as long as it’s not too dark what with all the killin’!!
dpg – Great points. In my head, and I’ve obviously not put this onto the comments here in depth, is that she switches to keeping him alive not because she falls in love with him by the end of Act 1, but because of why he has a price on his head in the first place. That meshes with her character driving force. She certainly enjoys his company, they get on well with each other, but she doesn’t notice the growing love until the end of Act 2b when she believes him to be dead (spoiler, he’s not!).
This reads like an original premise for a romantic comedy – I’d watch it. A rom-com about an assassin who falls in love with her target – that’s a great tagline and will likely grab the attention of decision makers.
The inciting incident is her falling in love, whether she falls in love in act one and realises it only in act two it’s still the inciting incident, so your instincts were correct in starting the logline with that.
As with all good love stories,? the nature of whatever is keeping the lovers apart will make the story interesting. It would be best if you described the antagonist in your next version.
>>>She takes the contract but after researching her new target, and accidentally getting into a speed dating event with him, she concludes he?s not a bad guy, but is in fact quite nice.
I applaud the choice to make the protagonist a woman.? My point is it would? be more dramatically interesting? –even for a comedy — if it were not such a “flippant” reversal.? The speed date should sow a seed of doubt and indecision.? Then the story should take the time to let the seed germinate and grows in stages — in a sequence of scenes..? First, she comes to realize he’s a good guy, doesn’t deserve to be executed.? Gradually she comes to realize that? he’s not only an okay guy, but that she’s in love with him.
Your story hook is that she flips roles and goals.? Plant it, develop it, tease it out, then pay it off.? To apply a gross male metaphor about a female character: don’t shoot your wad, the story hook and central conceit of your premise, in? one or two scenes.
Switching roles should be a hard decision.? And hard decisions are always ones characters put off until the plot forces them to decide.? In her case there needs to be a credible, compelling reason why initially she MUST kill him.
fwiw
These are all very good points dpg. I think I need to add further detail to her back story that does allow for a quick turn around like that.
After the suspicious death of her family when she was a teenager (I know it’s a stereotype, but it’s meant to be a comedy), she is taken in by an assassin and learns the trade. But her upbringing fights against the skills she has gained and she reconciles this by agreeing to only kill bad people – those that deserve it. The movie opens on her on a ‘gig’ to take out the general of a military junta somewhere in Asia. She takes the contract but after researching her new target, and accidentally getting into a speed dating event with him, she concludes he’s not a bad guy, but is in fact quite nice. She then get’s to know him better and starts to actually like him, then her ‘boss’ (that gives her the contract) opens it up to any contract killer to get the job done. That’s when she turns into a bodyguard to keep them both alive long enough to discover the person that wants him dead and why. There are reasons, but none that change how she has come to feel about him.
So she’s not emotionally doing an instant 180 degree flip. She’s just keeping with her principles of only killing bad people.
Then other stuff happens, irony creeps into situations to provide humour, we follow them as they link together the target’s past and the contract on this life, the person behind the contract, the assassin’s employer and their connection to the death of the assassin’s family.
this is not Oscar bait by any stretch of the imagination!! It’s more like a run of the mill RomCom that is aiming to reverse the gender stereotypes of heroic Spy man and feeble blonde woman (Knight and Day), or strong male lead and weak female love interest (The Bountyhunter) etc.
So… she gets the job, meets her target, falls in love, does an almost instant 180 degree flip and switches sides — all the? time span of 30? minutes?
Well, that’s a quickie character arc and if you can pull it off in the sense of making it believable more power to you.? And emotionally satisfying: half or more of which is generated in 180 degree character flips, especially in comedy, by watching the character struggle? on the horns of her dilemma? for more than a few minutes before circumstances (the climax) compel her to make a fateful choice.
There should be a compelling reason why initially she MUST kill him.? Like she desperately needs the money.? Or she’s given a Hobson’s choice:? either kill the guy or be killed herself.??And in spite of the MUST hanging over head like? the sword of Damocles, she falls in love with him.? Which creates a genuine dilemma that she must wrestle with and finally resolve by making a fateful choice.
My takeaway is that changes in attitude and goals that flip a character and plot 180 degrees should be hard for a protagonist to? arrive at — not? quick and easy.
Just saying.
If the binary option to either kill or rescue the guy is not the central dilemma, the hardest decision the protagonist will have to make — what is?
This is my first logline here. Should we also post a short synopsis so people can seek answers in there too, or is it all about the logline?
I’m intending for a RomCom with this. I can imagine two people getting to know each other and falling in love while hordes of assassins try to make good on the contract. Then, working together as a team, they unravel the mystery behind the owner of the contract (I don’t quite know how to word that? The person that paid for the other guy to get killed etc.?).
To the questions:
I went and read the Dances with Wolves thread, very interesting. MPR in a log line!?? ok, that’s tough!
After falling in love with her latest target, a top assassin switches from killer to bodyguard to keep him alive and hunt for whoever wants her man dead ??
This reminded me of an awesome version by Knightrider — “When an assassin whose mind is reformatted after every 72 hours falls for his latest target, he must take down those targeting her before his mind resets again”
So I guess she’d turn the tables on ‘her employers’, still keen on his assassination. But that’s something you gotta spell out in your logline (just like Knightrider did with an objective-visual-goal and a ticking clock!)
Secondly, I’m unable to see how it’s posted under comedy.
Good Luck leejlawson
Turn the tables on whom?
Who becomes her antagonist as a result of her switching roles?
The standard formula is that? the inciting incident should occur midway, mas o menos,? into the 1st Act.? But “switching from killer to bodyguard” seems to? be an event that occurs well into Act 2 .? It seems to constitute the MPR — the midpoint reversal plot point.? Because it is necessary to take that much film time to get the audience to buy into the switch; that is to understand? why she reverses her role and to become emotionally invested in? the stakes character as she has.
IMHO,? this departure from the standard formula can be justified in the rare cases where the MPR is the story hook.? Because the story hook is the most important feature of a logline. And the story hook, the twist, in this concept is that the protagonist falls in love with her prey. For some further thoughts, I offer for you consideration the discussion thread on a logline for the? film “Dances with Wolves”.