Categories: Drama
A family of four has been ripped apart after the father is killed in a mass-shooting. The mother is trying to keep her own shit together while raising a genius high-schooler and an 8-year-old with an eating disorder. At the same time, they are all confronted with their blackness in the face of their town?s police brutality.
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Not bad. TV series logline is different to a film loglines it needs to define the universe not the story. ?The mother's goal is just a bit vague. Keep her shit together, means different things to different people.
I like the premise for this. As a logline it could do with trimming down and, as Richiev suggested, clarifying who the antagonists are and what happened in the inciting incident. This is the event that is starting the whole series - it must be clear, concise, and strong enough to sustain a whole series. You definitely have that but you just need a little more clarity.
I don't think you need to specify what about the kids makes them unique... kids are tough regardless and in these circumstances it'll be easy to understand that life is going be hard without adding these to the word count.
A definable goal is a good way to proceed so the reader feels like there will be finite ending to the series. It just depends what you see that goal being. What is she searching for?
Hope this helps.
1: The mother needs a definable goal.
2: Mass shootings?are usually stopped by the police, In other words, the shooter stops killing when the police arrive and kill or apprehend the killer. This makes the police the good guys.
But in your story, the police seem to be the bad guys.
Therefore, if you want the police to be the main antagonists, you should have the husband shot by the police, not shot in a mass shooting. This is to avoid dividing the focus.
As for the story, Yes I think, if you give the lead character a definable goal and keep the focus tight, it could make a very topical mini-series.
Here would be an example:
"When her husband is killed by the police, who mistake him for an active shooter; an inner-city mother seeks justice in a city where opposing the police has deadly consequences."
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Perhaps the husband tries to stop a mass shooting and wrestles the gun away from the shooter, the police bust in, see him with the gun and shoot him. That way you could keep the mass shooting angle but the husband would still be wrongly shot by the police.
