When his accidental time-travelling disrupts his parents’ first meeting, a teenager must get them to fall in love, before a historical lightning can reignite his time machine.

A great choice, giannisggeorgiou.? This is another challenging plot with a lot to unpack and explore.

Here’s my first cut:

A teenager travels 30 years back in time where his mother-to-be falls fall in love with him. Now he has one week to make her fall in love with his father-to-be otherwise he won’t exist in the future.
(38 words)

Most of the time, the standard practice to state the plot in one sentence.? But I elect to split this logline into two sentences because of? a distinguishing feature of time travel plots:? they entail paradox and rely upon counterfactual premises that can’t be crammed into a logline.? ? The logic just doesn’t compute.? By means of sleight of hand exposition the audience has to be persuaded to suspend disbelief and just go along for the ride.

As the character Older Joe says in “Looper”: “I don’t want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we’re going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.”

I also feel comfortable with splitting the logline into two sentences because each sentence contains a great story hook.

A teenager travels 30 years back in time where his mother-to-be falls fall in love with him.

Shades of Oedipus!? The first sentence sets up a situation that echoes back in time to Greek mythology, to Sophocle’s tragedy,? “Oedipus the King”. (Which, btw ,is the model for Aristotle’s theory of tragic drama as expounded in his “Poetics”.)

Okay, so the protagonist is placed in? compelling predicament.? What objective goal arises from it and what are the stakes?

Now he has one week to make her fall in love with his father-to-be otherwise he won’t exist in the future.

As to the why and wherefore? that he is under the pressure of a? “the ticking clock” to? achieve his objective goal,? there’s isn’t space to explain.? The logline is already? 38 words long.? Read the script.? Or better yet, watch the movie? Imho, the strength of the premise, a double story hook,? is more than sufficient to get the script read, the movie viewed without having to explain the logic.

(BTW:? How did I arrive at the “one week” ticking clock?? Marty, the teenage protagonist, goes back in time to? November 5, 1955.? The script sets up well beforehand a thunderbolt that will strike the town clock tower on November 12, 1955.? That thunderbolt will provide the time-travel DeLorean with the power needed to get back to the future-present.)

Finally, it will be remarked upon that the logline is way over the ideal logline maximum length of 25 words.? Indeed, it is.? But I suggest that it possible to get away with a long logline if and only if it contains a great story hook.? The logline for “Back to the Future” has two great story hooks.

fwiw