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A quirky, slightly neurotic Seattle novelist becomes her own worst enemy when she falls in love with an inveterate ladies’ man.
As Richiev has suggested, you need to tell us what her goal is. What must she do? Currently, this is just the inciting incident. Why is Seattle important? The general consensus is that names (including locations) are unnecessary unless they add a layer of understanding to the story. For example, usiRead more
As Richiev has suggested, you need to tell us what her goal is. What must she do? Currently, this is just the inciting incident.
Why is Seattle important? The general consensus is that names (including locations) are unnecessary unless they add a layer of understanding to the story. For example, using the name of the ship in a logline for Titanic, or a biopic about a well-known person. I would recommend taking out “Seattle” simply because I don’t see how it would change the story if that said “Chicago” or “Munich”.
How does the fact she’s a novelist play into the story? The profession should have a bearing on the story, it can’t just be a random profession.?Take Neo in The Matrix. He?s a computer programmer and a hacker. Neither is directly relevant to the rest of the plot but they say a lot about who he is: Slave to the machines with his day job but fighting against the establishment by night. It?s amazing how much information we can infer from a profession. What does her profession tell us that we wouldn’t get if she was a shop assistant? This must be relevant to the plot. That’s the key.
The characteristic is usually something which is a character flaw and goes some way to giving the reader the character’s arc through the story. Is this the case with “quirky, slightly neurotic”? If not maybe consider another characteristic that reveals more about the character to us.
Why is it such a problem for her to fall in love with this ladies’ man? Why does she become her own worst enemy? These are the antagonistic forces at work so we need to understand why it’s such an issue for her. Dramatic irony could be your friend here – if you said she was a romance novelist her life imitates her art and the reader gets an immediate sense of satisfaction from the story. That might have always been your intention but information like this needs to be in your logline.
You’ve said Drama. As soon as you say “quirky, slightly neurotic” in a film about love the reader is going to assume Rom-Com or at the very least a Romance. Either change the genre or change the logline.
Hope this all helps.
See lessA reformed ex-con returns to NYC’s violent underworld to make fast money for his mother’s cancer treatment.
I wonder whether it would be better if the protagonist had no affiliation with drug dealing at all. The hard choice is realising that the only way to make that money is to do something illegal. I get that this makes this virtually identical to things like Dog Day Afternoon and Breaking Bad but thereRead more
I wonder whether it would be better if the protagonist had no affiliation with drug dealing at all. The hard choice is realising that the only way to make that money is to do something illegal. I get that this makes this virtually identical to things like Dog Day Afternoon and Breaking Bad but there’s a reason why that works. I think if you have HIM as a cop, not even just a cop – a good moral cop – and it’s through his interactions with criminals that he makes the realisation that this is his only option. I worry that either this way or as the re-formed ex-con are both a bit cliche but from a character development point of view, it’s not much of a stretch for an ex-con to return to the world he was a part of. BUT make him moral, good, righteous, and make his mother the person who instills those virtues in him and I think you could have a really interesting character. He doesn’t even have to be a cop – he could be a priest and during confessionals he hears things that tempt him to the criminal world (a God Father if you will).
As with Breaking Bad, at some point he has to achieve his goal (to pay for the operation / or as in BB have money for his family) but the big question is what happens next. This is the point where I think you could veer away from BB and have him doing something different. Like trying to escape from the life and struggling to do so rather than actually enjoying it.
Another way to separate it from BB is to not use drug dealing. I think your hook could be a different way of making the money being related to the profession he has. Similar formula to BB (chemistry teacher -> meth cook) but different enough to not draw such obvious comparisons (border patrol guard -> smuggling people across for a fee for example).
Hope this helps in some way.
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See lessA successful, married spends a night with a woman during a business trip, only to wake up mugged, a few days later the woman is a candidate in a job interview conducted by him and his wife.
As Richiev has pointed out, this is the setup - we need to know what the guy's goal is. Or if the wife is the protagonist what her goal is. As setups go it's an interesting one though!Is this a short? I can see this working well as a 15min film or so but I struggle to see it lasting longer than thatRead more
As Richiev has pointed out, this is the setup – we need to know what the guy’s goal is. Or if the wife is the protagonist what her goal is. As setups go it’s an interesting one though!
Is this a short? I can see this working well as a 15min film or so but I struggle to see it lasting longer than that as it currently stands. As soon as the job interview starts, there’s very limited places it can go.
I’d recommend watching a film called Diaboliques. Great (French) film and has a similar(ish) premise.
If the wife is trying to prove the husband is unfaithful I think it would be better to make her the protagonist. It would be difficult for the audience to get behind this guy whatever his goal is – cos chances are his goal is to get off the hook.
Why does the woman mug him by the way? I’m not sure this is necessary both in the story but most definitely not in the logline. The mugging doesn’t change anything really – unless I’m missing something.
Hope this helps.
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