When her male colleagues wager on her best friend’s chastity, a woman remains silent; when the bet ends in rape, she seeks redemption through vengeance.
yqwertzMentor
When her male colleagues wager on her best friend’s chastity, a woman remains silent; when the bet ends in rape, she seeks redemption through vengeance.
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“When her male colleagues wager on her best friend?s chastity, a woman remains silent; when the bet ends in rape, she seeks redemption through vengeance.”
The wager is not the inciting incident. The inciting incident, the event which propels the story is the rape. ?Describe her, what is her personality? And what does she need redemption from? Describe the specific way she seeks vengeance. Does she use a knife to slowly mutilate each of the them before killing them? Does she know martial arts? It almost reminds me of Kill Bill.
Example:?When her best friend is raped because of a bet, a woman seeks vengeance against the men who made the bet. (21)
I can understand the need for redemption for failing to warn her friend, but I would like a clarification on the nature of the bet.
Were the sexist pigs wagering on whether her friend was a virgin or who could deflower her?
And how does she intend to take revenge? ?By legals means or…?
“After a reticent woman fails to warn her friend she could be raped and she is raped, the woman seeks to redeem herself through vengeance.”
The logline suffers from telling, not showing. Don’t tell us she seeks to redeem herself, tell us the thing she needs redemption from and then show us how she does it. Don’t just tell us she seeks vengeance, describe how she achieves it, or plans to achieve it.
Example:?After failing to prevent her friend from being raped, a woman seeks vengeance by gathering evidence to but the men in prison. (22)
Keep in mind this just me coming up with something using your story elements to show you an example of a logline. I still don’t know exactly what the main action of the story is, how she achieves her goal of vengeance.?
As of right now, I think the logline fails to present a compelling hook. Not to say it isn’t an interesting idea with potential, but it needs that something that sticks out, something that draws attention and reels the reader in. Perhaps her method of vengeance can be interesting and unique, something a producer would look at and want to fund to see it on the big screen.?
I hope this helps.?
>>>I would claim that ?stop the killing monster? has the same level of clarity as ?redeem herself by avenging her friend?. Why is it necessary to be more specific in the logline about the method of vengeance?
I respectfully disagree.
“Killing the monster” suggests a clearly defined end-point– a?visual moment — that cues the audience that the protagonist has succeeded. ?A scene where the shark dies, one way or another, and the audience has visual confirmation that the shark has been killed.
What’s the visual confirmation for “getting revenge”. ?There are so many ways that a character can get revenge. ?Does she Get him arrested and convicted, locked up in prison? ?Does she castrate him? Does she kill him?
There are few movies about someone trying to kill a shark. ?There are countless movies about someone wanting to get revenge. ?Consequently, there’s nothing particularly unique, no hook in someone wanting to get revenge. ??
In a revenge movie, ?the hook is in the how — how they intend to get it.
I realize that you may not want to disclose the “how” in the logline because you believe the hook will be stolen. ?That can be a dilemma and a writer has to weigh the trade offs. ?You have to decide what is the greater risk, having your hook stolen by revealing it, or not having your script read by hiding it.
Just saying.
Thanks for your comments. I understand your position. Until now, I understood that the hook in the logline got you just to the end of the first act. (At that point my heroine has decided what she must do, but she does not figure out the how until the end of the second act.)
What you all seem to be saying is that the logline take us as far into the film as necessary until we come to a unique hook. Is that a fair summary?
Yqwertz:
You raise an excellent question.
The general formula is that a logline should describe the plot of a protagonist who, as a result of an inciting incident, chooses a course of action toward a specific objective goal in the face of a protagonist and/or other obstacles. ?The objective goal is decided upon by the end of Act 1 — that plot point usually ?demarcates the?end of the 1st Act. ?Ideally, ?the hook should be embedded in that decisive plot point.
But there are exceptions. One instance is “The King’s Speech” which was a thread of discussion here last September. ?One reason it is an exception to the rule is because it’s based on an historical character and events in ?his life. ?And it can be challenging to adapt messy history with verisimilitude to the requirements for a tidy drama.
Even if your character doesn’t figure out the winning m.o. until the end of the 2nd Act, she has to start out with a specific end in mind, right? (Death, incarceration, or whatever). ? And ?that specific end should be in the logline. ?Because, again, “get revenge” tells me nothing about what makes her struggle different from all the other movies where characters?seek revenge.
Just as the logline for “Jaws” describes the end goal — kill the shark. ?That turns out to be harder than they originally imagine and the way they finally do kill the animal is with a desperate, “Hail Mary”, improvised m.o late in the 3rd Act after everything else has failed.
To go along with what DPG ?said, I simply have to point out one thing: In both of my posts I had to ask how she seeks out her revenge. As DPG said revenge can encompass many different actions that the protagonist would take to achieve her goal. You even had to make the distinction of it being closer to a Hitchcock movie rather than Kill Bill.
“When a woman?s failure to speak-up leads to her best friend?s rape, she must redeem herself by avenging her friend.”
I think you handled the inciting incident better than I did in my example. I had trouble trying to word it to be specific and introduce the guilt and redemption arc.
“What you all seem to be saying is that the logline take us as far into the film as necessary until we come to a unique hook.”
How far the hook is in the film doesn’t really matter, what matters is that it is present in the logline, to get your script read. We’ve had a discussion before about the importance of the elements in a logline, and first and foremost, the most important thing is the hook. The hook could be the concept itself, or a high concept story, which could be a twist on a tried and familiar story type, such as this logline?DPG posted. Or if it’s fantasy or sci-fi it could be a new and cool technology or magic, something people would want to see on screen.
So what’s your twist, your hook? What’s the thing that sets your story apart from the numerous revenge stories we’ve seen? What will make a producer want to read your script, fund it and see this on screen?
OK, if I downplay the redemption angle and accept that the bet is not the inciting incident and extend the hook farther into the story, I have:
When a women commits suicide after being raped, her best friend wants the billionaire locked up; when he gets off scot-free, she wants him dead.
“When a women commits suicide after being raped, her best friend wants the billionaire locked up; when he gets off scot-free, she wants him dead.”
How early in the story does he get out of going to prison? ?What is the goal that initially arises from the inciting incident, what is it that she wants right after her friend commits suicide? If he evades the legal system early in the story, then you need to only describe her goal to kill him, if it’s late in the story, then describe the goal as being her attempt to get him convicted.
This version of the logline touches upon an issue of rapists not being punished for their crime. It has the potential to be very topical and that could be a hook. The logline still has issues, though.
In loglines, the protagonist doesn’t just ‘want’. What does she actively do in order to get him locked up? What does she actively do to make sure he dies? One other note, I think it’s easier when you describe everyone in a logline in relation to to the protagonist. So, rather than describe the woman who commits suicide as just a woman, describe her as the protagonist’s best friend.
What job does the protagonist have? What skills does she have that means she achieve her goal?
Here’s my example:?When her best friend commits suicide after being raped, a woman must gather evidence to make sure the billionaire playboy who raped her is brought to justice. (27)?
I agree with Dkpough1 that the logline needs to translate “want” into a specific “do” because that’s what a plot is about. It’s not enough for a logline to say what a character wants; a logline must say what the character must do to get what he wants.
And both Dkpough1 and I believe that the most critical ingredient for an effective logline (that is, one that gets people to read the script) is a strong hook.
Alas, I think Dkpough1’s suggested version obscures the hook. And the hook for me is the character arc. How her struggle to get justice transmorgifies into a plot to get revenge.
Here is a logline with a more specific do:
A woman seeks justice for her friend who commits suicide after being raped; when the billionaire goes scot-free, she seeks to drive him suicidally insane. (25 words)
“A woman seeks justice for her friend who commits suicide after being raped; when the billionaire goes scot-free, she seeks to drive him suicidally insane.”
When I read the logline I get no visual image, I can’t imagine what the action of the movie is going to be. It doesn’t have to be extremely descriptive, but there needs to be a visual description that allows anyone who reads the logline to be able to develop some sort of mental image of your idea.
>>>she seeks to drive him suicidally insane.?
Why doesn’t she just plot his death?
OR: what is the emotional truth in the moment after the rapist beats the rap? ?What is the emotional truth in the heart of the protagonist?
What is the emotional truth in the heart of the audience as they witness such an outrageous injustice?