Logline

alex whitmer said:
Who knew loggin' was such a deep subject?!

Here's the latest

Long on the run from her powerful father after an attempted rape, a young woman turns to fight when her recurring nightmares reveal the truth about her mother’s murder.

a
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I think that's much better. I would just try and make "Long on the run from her powerful father after an attempted rape" a little more succinct. Too many big adjectives in close proximity.

Or you might want to add another layer of drama in there:
"A young woman promises never to go back home after barely escaping a rape at the hands of her father, but she turns to fight when her recurring nightmares reveal the truth about her mother's murder."


I don't know if that matches up with your story, but now you've got her breaking her promise to herself, and the fact that she barely escaped the rape. You don't need to say that the father is "powerful." It's enough to say that he tried to rape her.

I would only include "powerful" if the father is well connected, as in police / judge connections, in which case that would require more explanation.
 
agcohn said:
Are you saying that I reveal too much of the plot, or that I've put too much detail into the individual beats of the log-line? There is a big difference.

Details are the only thing that make any script original, because we've seen all the general forms before. You want to make the log-line as dramatic as possible. Details allow people to envision the story, while cliches don't.
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For me, it's too much detail and too much plot.

Details are all that make a script original? Not true. How about an original character? For me, There are plenty of original ideas and stories out there if what you were saying is true, every movie would be predictable--yet movies still manage to keep us off balance and interested.

Theme is a tough one, not easy to come up with an original theme. But character and story are still wide open IMHOP.
 
brianluce said:
For me, it's too much detail and too much plot.

Details are all that make a script original? Not true. How about an original character? For me, There are plenty of original ideas and stories out there if what you were saying is true, every movie would be predictable--yet movies still manage to keep us off balance and interested.

Theme is a tough one, not easy to come up with an original theme. But character and story are still wide open IMHOP.
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How do you plan to reveal the originality of the character without detail? Details bring the character to life. Otherwise, he or she is just an archetype we've all seen before. There is no way to make an archetype seem original.

Every single story has been told before at one level or another. It is the details that keep them original.

There have been countless women in danger stories before. Lifetime makes new ones every week. If I were to sum up most of the log-lines in this thread, it would be: "A woman in danger decides to face her past." How original is that?
 
Maybe this will help ... sadly, so far the log doesn't promise anything new. Getting better, but still lacking the ''holy crap, this sounds exciting'' punch.

Synopsis

Gudmilla, a young and free-spirited Swedish woman, is on the run from her violent father and disturbing nightmares. She creates a new life in a new city where she befriends a young Ad Executive named Eric. Eric helps her find work at his company, and in exchange Gudmilla encourages him to pursue a love interest with a cute barrister, Spaz.

All is going well, and Gudmilla, still prone to violent outbursts, is making slow progress on uncovering repressed memories and the source of her nightmares.

After a short time working together, Gudmilla and Eric are assigned a project. Eric had planned to do the work himself at his beach home in Mexico, and ends up inviting Gudmilla along so they can finish on time. Her casual attitude about nudity is at odds with Eric’s more conservative nature, and soon has them at working in cold silence.

On their final night, an ultra-violent nightmare brings Eric to Gudmilla’s rescue. After a bitter and bloody battle Eric finally gains the upper hand. Gudmilla is finally able to recall the night her father attempted to rape her, and how he killer her mother when she tried to stop him. Gudmilla plans to confront her father when she returns to the US.

Meanwhile, Gudmilla’s father ends up under federal investigation. He pulls out all the plugs to find his daughter by creating a web of lies that puts all his legal problems in Gudmilla’s lap. He can not and will not let her live long enough to fully remember the past. Upon Gudmilla’s return from Mexico, she is arrested.

Eric soon finds himself embroiled in the ensuing fiasco, and now must struggle to clear his own name and keep his budding romance with Spaz alive. At the same time he does not want to abandon Gudmilla, and is able to bail her out with the help of a mutual friend.

Gudmilla, no stranger to physical combat, finds her father as he makes his escape. A knock-down, drag-out fist fight ensues, with Gudmilla the clear winner. She mocks raping him, and gets him to tell her where he buried her mother, all of which she records.

In the final scenes, Gudmilla unearths her mother’s remains, and is able to put to rest her nightmares, and Eric manages to salvage his relationship.

Eric and Gudmilla continue to work together, and in the final scene, Gudmilla meets a handsome man.

a

www.alexwhitmer.wordpress.com

www.guerro.wordpress.com
 
That's a tough one. This will need to be a couple sentences:

"Gudmilla hoped a new city would offer relief from the nightmares that have plagued her for years, but the visions are only getting worse. Concentrating on her dreams for the very first time, Gudmilla suffers a violent revelation. She must return home, and face a world that she had long ago vowed to forget."

edit:
or possibly, if you need it shorter

"Finally facing up to the nightmares that have plagued her for years, a young woman suffers a violent revelation that her sends back into a world she had long vowed to forget."

or

"When the nightmares that have plagued her for years finally come to a head, a young woman must travel back home, to a past she had long vowed to forget."

or

"When the nightmares that have plagued her for years become more than she can handle, a young woman must travel back home, and face a past she had long vowed to forget."
 
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agcohn said:
How do you plan to reveal the originality of the character without detail? Details bring the character to life. Otherwise, he or she is just an archetype we've all seen before. There is no way to make an archetype seem original.

Every single story has been told before at one level or another. It is the details that keep them original.

There have been countless women in danger stories before. Lifetime makes new ones every week. If I were to sum up most of the log-lines in this thread, it would be: "A woman in danger decides to face her past." How original is that?
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Original story: a man discovers a portal in to John Malchovich's head
Original character: a Lawyer loses the ability to lie.
 
brianluce said:
Original story: a man discovers a portal in to John Malchovich's head
Original character: a Lawyer loses the ability to lie.
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Those are neither a story, nor a character. Those are just high-concept hooks that a story might contain.

Either way, Being John Malkovich requires quite a bit of detail and explanation to even come close to describing that story. Plus, the desire to be someone else is not unique to Being John Malkovich.

Liar Liar is a bit easier to describe, but what you have there doesn't even come close to giving a full picture of the character, or the story, and the loss of necessary ability is not unique to this film.
 
agcohn said:
Those are neither a story, nor a character. Those are just high-concept hooks that a story might contain.

Either way, Being John Malkovich requires quite a bit of detail and explanation to even come close to describing that story. Plus, the desire to be someone else is not unique to Being John Malkovich.

Liar Liar is a bit easier to describe, but what you have there doesn't even come close to giving a full picture of the character, or the story, and the loss of necessary ability is not unique to this film.
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Regarding BJM and "The desire to be someone else", I'd consider that theme, not story-- and goes to my earlier point that theme is hard vis a vis originality.

The discussion is about boiling a story down to a single sentence or two. In that context, for my own purposes, my two examples serve as the essence of a story and a character. You feel otherwise. I only know what works for me, not others.

Backing up a bit, from my perspective, less is more with regards to story, perhaps this is the point of demarcation for Agcohn and myself. Be it the logline or the actual script, I go with the idea of parsing out story elements in the smallest possible pieces. The less information you give, the more interest your story generates on the page/screen. Ag seems to argue for giving more information. The danger with my approach is the finished product may seem thin, Ag's approach, I think, runs the risk of a creating a predictable story. There must be a "Fun Zone" between what I'm saying and what Ag is saying. Good luck finding it--it's not easy.
 
brianluce said:
Regarding BJM and "The desire to be someone else", I'd consider that theme, not story-- and goes to my earlier point that theme is hard vis a vis originality.

The discussion is about boiling a story down to a single sentence or two. In that context, for my own purposes, my two examples serve as the essence of a story and a character. You feel otherwise. I only know what works for me, not others.

Backing up a bit, from my perspective, less is more with regards to story, perhaps this is the point of demarcation for Agcohn and myself. Be it the logline or the actual script, I go with the idea of parsing out story elements in the smallest possible pieces. The less information you give, the more interest your story generates on the page/screen. Ag seems to argue for giving more information. The danger with my approach is the finished product may seem thin, Ag's approach, I think, runs the risk of a creating a predictable story. There must be a "Fun Zone" between what I'm saying and what Ag is saying. Good luck finding it--it's not easy.
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When did I say you should give out a ton of information? I said you need specific details instead of generalities. I fail to see how that can possibly lead to creating a "predictable" story. If anything, my suggestion does the exact opposite, because you will be setting it apart from other similar log-lines.

I'm not sure you understand what I mean when I say details. You seem to think that means laying out the entire plot for everybody to see, but it doesn't mean anything of the sort. It means touching on specific character emotions and story events in order to give your log-line a greater sense of drama and heart.

You cannot afford to be vague. That will only lead to a log-line that nobody cares about, because the story won't appear to have any life.



Let's look at your first log-line from this thread: "A woman running from her past decides to turn and fight."

That's fairly vague. Why would anybody want to make that movie? Lifetime makes that movie every single week. I've all ready seen that movie at least 3-4 times. You pitch that, and the first thing they are going to do is ask you "what's the story." If they're asking you that, you have all ready lost them.
 
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agcohn said:
When did I say you should give out a ton of information? I said you need specific details instead of generalities. I fail to see how that can possibly lead to creating a "predictable" story. .
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This is getting confusing because I mixed script and general story approaches into a discussion that started out about loglines only. In terms of a screenplay, sure, the more information you give, the more you reveal, the easier it will be to see the story's direction. I suppose the same could be said of a logline, but it's more something that applies to a script or treatment. Here's an example of why I feel that way. Imagine a scene with two people fighting over an envelope. In version I we know the envelope has a key to a safety deposit box with a million dollars in it; version II the envelope's contents are unknown. Personally I find version II more interesting because in version I, my only concern is who will win the fight and get the million dollars, but in version two I'm wondering who will win the fight and also, what are the contents of that envelope? What could be so precious that two people are willing to fight over it? One scene relies on a known fact to create the drama, the other relies on human imagination--which for me, trumps information when if comes to drama.
 
brianluce said:
To the contrary! YOU'VE GOT THEM! They're asking for more!
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It really doesn't work that way. Sorry. They've all ready passed on your story at that point, they just don't know it yet. You haven't told them the story, and in their subconscious they're thinking that if you can't even tell a story in 30 seconds, you'll never be able to do it in a feature-length script.

You want them asking for the script, because they can't wait to read it, not because you haven't given them enough information to know what it's about.
 
agcohn said:
It really doesn't work that way. Sorry. They've all ready passed on your story at that point, they just don't know it yet. You haven't told them the story, and in their subconscious they're thinking that if you can't even tell a story in 30 seconds, you'll never be able to do it in a feature-length script.

You want them asking for the script, because they can't wait to read it, not because you haven't given them enough information to know what it's about.
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Again, just from personal experience, when they're asking ME questions, I'm good, when I'm asking THEM questions I'm screwed. And unfortunately, I've asked a lot more questions than I've answered. When they pass, they don't ask questions... they pass. Your mileage may vary.
 
brianluce said:
Again, just from personal experience, when they're asking ME questions, I'm good, when I'm asking THEM questions I'm screwed. And unfortunately, I've asked a lot more questions than I've answered. When they pass, they don't ask questions... they pass. Your mileage may vary.
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Well I've never had somebody just flat out pass before, at least not in the meeting.
 
How about: "a young woman must resort to violence to protect the people close to her from her violent father"?
 
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