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When a humble bingo floor clerk discovers ability to predict Powerball lotto winning numbers, she must fight her family’s deadly urge to get rich quick.
Firstly, I think you could easily trim this down by removing some unnecessary words. I'm not sure we need to know that she is a bingo floor clerk unless it is essential to the story. Replace "predict Powerball lotto winning numbers" with simply "predict the lottery". Don't use 5 when 3 will do. TheRead more
Firstly, I think you could easily trim this down by removing some unnecessary words. I’m not sure we need to know that she is a bingo floor clerk unless it is essential to the story. Replace “predict Powerball lotto winning numbers” with simply “predict the lottery”. Don’t use 5 when 3 will do.
The characterisation used often goes some way to suggest the character’s arc through the story. Is this the case? Does she go from humble to proud? If not, perhaps consider another characteristic that gives us more information about this character and why we should be interested in her story.
Why must she fight her family’s urge to get rich quick?? Surely that’s exactly what anyone would do if they discovered this superpower? You’d only need to do it once and the whole family is set for life… so why is she fighting? Why is their urge deadly? Whose life is at stake? I feel like this goal is a little bit vague and overly dramatic. Specifically, can you tell us what’s going on? What are her family actually doing and why?
Currently the goal is simply “to fight her family’s urge…”. Fighting is what she does in order to achieve her goal – I’m not really seeing a goal though. Is it stop her family getting rich? (if so why?) Get rid of the ability? Get rich and run away from her crazy family? She needs a specific visual goal. Without that, a reader has no idea where this story will end up.
Hope this helps.
See lessA psychiatrist on the verge of suicide is haunted by a ghost who shows him that the way to his own happiness is through the suffering of his clients.
Please don't post multiple versions of the same logline. It's difficult for people to critique one idea when some fairly major elements of the story change. It's nice to see the evolution of an idea and the associated feedback. I think the version without the ghost is stronger (in my opinion). WithRead more
Please don’t post multiple versions of the same logline. It’s difficult for people to critique one idea when some fairly major elements of the story change. It’s nice to see the evolution of an idea and the associated feedback.
I think the version without the ghost is stronger (in my opinion). With the ghost it’s almost a bit “God told me to do it”. I think it’s darker and funnier when he’s actually just depressed but ?otherwise mentally sound. I’m thinking of Fargo, where William H. Macy is arranging to have his wife kidnapped. It’s far funnier that he plays it rationally, logically and sanely. The juxtaposition between the nature of the character and the action is where a lot of the humour comes from. ?The audience sympathise with him, they understand him, and that’s what you need too.
See lessDr Rob Morath, a depressed psychiatrist, turns his life around by destroying the lives of his patients.
You don't need to include character names in the logline - it takes up valuable word count and adds nothing. What's the incident that kick starts this story? What happens that upsets the balance in his life and will spend the movie trying to correct it? The character, in a bid to make his life betteRead more
You don’t need to include character names in the logline – it takes up valuable word count and adds nothing.
What’s the incident that kick starts this story? What happens that upsets the balance in his life and will spend the movie trying to correct it?
The character, in a bid to make his life better, ruins the lives of other people? Regardless of the ethical dilemma why is the audience going to empathise with a guy like this? They need to want the character to succeed in his quest and I just can’t see that happening here.
His goal is to turn his life around – can you give us something visual and tangible for this. What does something “turning his life around” look like on screen? Film is a visual medium and a logline reader should be able to picture the film in their mind. Find an event that visually represents his life being turned around.
All that being said, I feel like there’s something in this idea. It’s a dark comedy for sure and I can certainly see where the humour could come from. I just think it’s really important to set it up correctly so the audience could empathise with him. The inciting incident needs to be something that makes the journey to the goal understandable. We have to feel like it’s ok for him to ruin his patients’ lives – that’s the only way an audience would get behind me. Easiest way to do this is to make them morally, ethically and socially more despicable than him. His actions are then teaching them a lesson as much as helping him turn his life around… like a comedy version of Saw. I’d watch that!
Hope this helps.
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