Billy14:

In my book, the most important element a logline needs is a clear, strong, irresistible hook.? Speaking as a potential audience of one, I am intrigued but not yet hooked on the premise in your logline.? I’m a fish swimming around the hook, curious — but not quite tempted to bite.

One reason I’m not yet biting is because it seems to me the logline confuses means with ends.

The ” rite of death and rebirth…” is a standard issue aspect of a Hero’s Journey, but that rite is usually implicit.? And it’s a necessary step, an unavoidable means, toward reaching the? objective goal.? But the rite of passage leading to the defeat of the guardian cannot be the objective goal, the end game of the young magician’s heroic journey.? Rather it is is the High Noon, moment-of-truth event;? it is the “final exam” he will have to pass/survive in order to obtain the ultimate objective goal, that is, the “boon” (Joseph Campbell), the “reward ” (Christopher Vogler).

The battle with the guardian is a means to an end?? What is that ultimate end, the boon, the reward?? It is not evident to me what that ultimate objective goal is.

For stories that are fantastic, other worldly, stories set in the future (Fantasy, Horror, SciFi), I pose another question:? what archetype under girds the story?? What universal, psychological, social and existential motifs from the real world are mapped in the unreal world of the story?? I consider that mapping to be crucial. In order to get an audience to hook into and buy the story world, they must apprehend elements in the story world that are familiar to them in the real world, elements that they can correlate to their own experience.

I look for two archetypal factors:? the kind of Heroic Journey being undertaken and the kind of archetypal character and character arc being evoked.? I presume you are familiar with how the archetypal the Heroic Journey under girds “Star Wars: The New Hope”.? But I wish to draw attention to the particular character and character arc of the protagonist.? Luke Skywalker is being called to become a Jedi Knight, called to fight the evil Empire.? So his character role is that of the Warrior, and the arc is the training he must undergo to become a valiant, heroic Warrior.? That character arc entails certain expectations of where the will begin (farm boy), what he will have to learn (how to use the force) and where he will end his journey (Jedi Master).

Now then.? The obvious archetypal role for the protagonist in your story is Magician.? As with all archetypal roles, there is a positive and negative aspect.? The positive is that of the mature Magician who functions as a Transformer, a Change Maker for the greater good.? The negative is that of the Trickster who uses magic for mischief, for selfish purposes.

I seems to me that the implied character arc for a young magician would be that he starts out as a fumbling Trickster; he doesn’t know how to use magic well, and, worse, he uses it to “have fun”,? work mischief, to amuse himself, advance his own selfish interests.? He must stop being a Trickster, learn how to be a Magician — and his training will be hard every step of the way, not just in the High Noon fight with the guardian

I would like to see a stronger hint of that arc in the logline.? And the most succinct? way to imply his character arc in a logline is by how he is described.? Well, the logline says he’s ambitious.? Okay, that suggests ego inflation and selfishness.? What is he ambitious to do?? At the start of the story, what does he want to do with magic? Acquire power for his own selfish use?? And is he skilled and careful, or unskilled and reckless?

FWIW