When her boyfriend’ doctors are unable to treat his fatal illness, an unsophisticated Papuan girl in service to his father must convince him to abandon his traditional medical views and travel to Papua to allow her and her Medicine man grandfather to save is life.
Leon DavisLogliner
When her boyfriend’ doctors are unable to treat his fatal illness, an unsophisticated Papuan girl in service to his father must convince him to abandon his traditional medical views and travel to Papua to allow her and her Medicine man grandfather to save is life.
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The logline is tagged as a coming of age story. How so?
Coming of age for whom? The boy? The girl? Both?
Who is in the driver’s seat of the plot? Who is the pov character?
Hi Leon,
I’ll give this a go…
INTENTION: must convince him to abandon his traditional medical views and travel to Papua to allow her and her Medicine man grandfather to save his life (quite a mouthful.)
OBSTACLE: fatal illness/ticking clock.
Attempt 1:
When traditional medicine is unable to treat her boyfriend’s fatal illness, a Papuan girl must convince her boyfriend’s family of doctors to journey to Papua and allow her Medicine man grandfather to save his life.
– Hopefully it’s suggested an obstacle is the fact that it’s his “last remaining days”. Of course, a family of doctors would be resistant for their son to spend his remaining days on a “ridiculous pilgrimage”.
– The “family of doctors” should give us some added conflict. (As in – our protagonist will have to fight and do everything in her power to convince them to see her grandfather. And even during the journey, she’ll still have to win their confidence. A very uphill battle.)
Apart from that, I honestly think your original logline was pretty good but just needed some trimming.
Very interesting concept.
Good luck!
Agree with comment by Richiev -> Protagonist == “an unsophisticated Papuan girl”
A quick google search of “Papuan girl” returns stereotypical images of a native girl. Therefore,
Is ‘unsophisticated’ really a Character Trait, given the stereotype already connotes such an idea?
Character can be both innate (as in a trait), but also acquired through character action/s. In this logline, our Papuan girl’s action is to challenge tradition and embrace science based medicine. Where might such ‘sophisticated’ ideas be born from, given the remote context?
Stakes are appropriately high in this logline (she might lose her father). However, how might the stakes be raised even higher? Just riffing, but maybe the whole tribe’s social order is at stake – if traditional medicine is replaced with Western ideals …
I think it reads well this way, from the perspective of the girlfriend. It does seem like she is the one with the actual story goal. to get her boyfriend to her medicine man Grandfather.