Rio, a waitress in a small Texas town, graduated high school last week, survived being burned alive yesterday and today discovered the reason why. She is descended from Quetzalcoatl, Aztec god of Light and Knowledge and their bloodline has been hunted by rival god, Tezcatlipoca, Aztec god of War and his descendants for millennia. After learning more about her lineage, Rio decides to take the fight to the enemy and make the hunters the prey.
Betty GarciaLogliner
Rio, a waitress in a small Texas town, graduated high school last week, survived being burned alive yesterday and today discovered the reason why. She is descended from Quetzalcoatl, Aztec god of Light and Knowledge and their bloodline has been hunted by rival god, Tezcatlipoca, Aztec god of War and his descendants for millennia. After learning more about her lineage, Rio decides to take the fight to the enemy and make the hunters the prey.
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I see where you are going with this.
And I like the premise.
We now have a bad guy, Tezcatlipoca.
Is there something she must do?
Is there an artifact she must retrieve?
A quest she must complete?
In order to defeat the bad guy
I just ask because that will help us understand the story
and help you create a concise logline.
The importance of an item of detail in a logline comes from its relation to other details.
What I mean is that there needs to be a clear cause and effect relationship between all the elements you include in your logline. The latest draft of the logline mentions many things but describes very little.
When writing a logline I always ask; do all the descriptions and details comply with the following:
They did this because of that.
Therefore Richiev’s question, why is she doing what she is doing?
Essentially the following is the only sentence in the latest draft of the logline that describes a plot:
After learning more about her lineage, – [BECAUSE OF THIS SHE MUST DO]
Rio decides to take the fight to the enemy and make the hunters the prey.? – [THAT]
However the? connection which motivates her to take action is not clear and in addition there is nothing about the story that makes it personal. Also there is no specific detail mentioned so it isn’t clear what happened to her and what exactly she is going to do.
Here is an example of the cause and effect I mean:
After an evil Aztec god burns their house down and kills her fiance,? a librarian discovers her Aztec god roots and must go on the hunt to decapitate the evil god and stop him from killing again.
>>>After learning more about her lineage, Rio decides to take the fight to the enemy and make the hunters the prey.
This is not as strong as the?previous iteration where??the rival Aztec? gods were trying to wipe out her and her bloodline making the conflict? as personal as it can get. Consequently, she takes up the fight because she must, the stakes are as high as they can get for her – it’s do or die.
And I don’t think she has to be a librarian.? I think waitress is better.? The more?humble the origins of the character, the?greater the character arc. ??Luke Skywalker was just?a country boy?until….
And how does she find out what the strife means and her destiny???The same way Luke did: ?with the timely training of a mentor.
And better than a fianc?e — who may not be in the bloodline — would be her family, who are in the bloodline.? After all, isn’t that the objective goal of the rival gods, to wipe out her bloodline?
Avoid the character names (names mean nothing, usually you don’t want names in a logline where every word is precious). Avoid places too unless they are absolutely necessary to understand the story (in my opinion this is not the case in this story).
“When a waitress discovers she’s a descendant of an aztec god, she must fight a rival god if she wants to…” What is the main character real goal (not just “survive”)? what is her flow to overcome?
I think that the waitress’s “maintenance”?objective goal of trying to stay alive?is good enough.? What greater personal objective goal can one fight for than one’s own?life?
And there’s another factor.? If she’s a descendant of an Aztec god, surely part of her genetic inheritance would be the god’s particular powers.? Which, it seems to me, ?she must learn to harness for the battle.? Yeah, echoes of Luke Skywalker and the Force, but this story?seem to be hero’s journey? similar? to that? lucrative franchise.? (Which is why I said earlier that?I think this could be an origin story setting up a franchise.)
So something like:
After a Latina waitress discovers she’s descended from a legendary?Aztec god, she must? develop?the powers she has inherited to?defeat rival gods?who have vowed to kill her.
(30 words)