When a young mother encounters a random woman in a crowd, she is mysteriously filled with an unceasing desire to kill her, and must do so before the other woman kills her first.
Karel SegersLogliner
When a young mother encounters a random woman in a crowd, she is mysteriously filled with an unceasing desire to kill her, and must do so before the other woman kills her first.
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Why would she fear the other woman killing her? This isn’t explained in the logline. Also the fact that she is filled with the desire to kill another human, and without context, makes her rather awful the audience would likely not empathize with her.? Dexter, for example, was meticulously setup to let the audience learn that he kills for the greater good as well as his own urges and therefore can be liked.
This woman would need a similar context for the audience to want to watch her do the voodoo that she do so well.
I agree with Nir. Right now, we have no context and I get the feeling the logline is?a single moment in an entire movie. I don’t see a story that will take 90 to 120 mins to tell. ??I think the way?you’ve written your logline is confusing.
Let’s break it down —
Inciting Incident – When the young mother encounters a random woman and is filled with a desire to kill
Why would an encounter with a stranger fill this?young mother, let alone anybody with a desire to kill??Is she possessed by a demon? Is she being controlled by some other kind of entity? If she’s just suddenly filled with murderous rage,?I’m 100% certain people will hate this character straight off the bat.
Main Character & Flaw
Young mother. No flaw. Why are you choosing to write this?specific character?
Compelling Action
To kill a random?woman – I?can’t see this?as a movie. I?imagine, that if the young mother is filled with bloodlust, she could kill the other woman in an instant. The movie is over.??
Stakes
Her life – however, because she’s a nut I don’t want her to succeed.
Hello, I could like this as a short movie. Two womans meat on a sidewalk and start a surreal deadly fight. Thius could be fun for 3-5 minutes. As a logline for a feature lenght movie, I think you need to give a better description of the plot. This can be a movie and the kind of movie that I like but a very difficult one to design. ?I think that the ‘mother’ element is not related to the plot so this element can be avoided.
What about:
“When a gentle librarian feels an unmotivated urge to kill a sunny waitress, she starts to organize her life about planning the perfect murder, but?her designed victim is doing the same”.
I tried to embody the characters and give an hint about what we will see in the movie (the meticoulous planning of the murder). I avoided the world mysteriously because it is abused in amateur loglines.
Good luck!
‘gentle librarian’ and ‘sunny waitress’ change the tone, they sound like descriptors for a comedy. I don’t actually want to see a gentle librarian want to kill someone, that sounds like an opposite for the sake of an opposite. I like there to be some level of competency in characters.
I love the concept of a kill mate as the antithesis of the soul mate.? So very Jungian.? That, for me, is the story hook.? Not what she does, but the?WHY,?the?psychological motivation driving the plot, her actions.
But it’s?a tough concept to explain?and ?sell in a few words.? Keep working in it, Tom.? I think?the concept, if not the logline (yet), is a?winner.
I suggest? it might help if the logline were to play the concept of a? hate mate against that?of a soul mate to cue readers, help them grasp your story conceit.? For example, something like:
After a?woman?loses her soul mate to?cancer, she discovers her hate mate, a woman whom she?has the overwhelming?desire to kill as strong as her desire was to love.
(Or her hate mate could be a man. Whatever.)
As I posted earlier, I think?the hook of the story is the hate mate concept.??From her overwhelming desire arises her objective goal: to kill her.??The dramatic question is:? will she follow through, will she succeed in killing the hated other? (That the goal is negative?does not disqualify it?from being a valid objective goal.)?
I think you can squeeze a lot of suspense out of the concept.? Best wishes.