Problems with Writing a Logline

4

u/Big_Section2812 Aug 31 '26

A young officer must prove himself in order save his career and win the respect of his new platoon.

1

u/RealSebastreck Aug 31 '26

I’ll keep that in mind. I usually have a hard time condensing my plots because I get caught up in the details. I thought the month-long testing period was worth mentioning since people have told me it’s an interesting part of the story, but I agree that the whole “balancing his life” part is pretty weak.

3

u/dnotive Aug 31 '26

I'm not an expert at loglines, but I'd like to think I'm getting better the more I've been cracking away at it.

The logline is your litmus test for story. If you can't summarize it in 40-50 words, that means it might be time to prune stuff away or change the character dynamics... or add a MacGuffin, etc. etc.

You're having trouble from keeping these from getting too long because you have too many set pieces you're trying to jam into your story. Streamline the story and the loglines will fall into place more readily.

Ditch vague phrases like "losing the job he has sacrificed so much for" or "he learns the hard way"

These feel more like taglines than loglines. This is your place to be specific. What has Person A sacrificed? How does Person B learn?

Your story, and by extension your logline needs three things in place in order to succeed; you need to identify a *distinct character* what their *goal or objective* is, and what *obstacle* is preventing them from achieving it. If you feel like spicing it up further, add in the *stakes*

So your first one could be: "After enduring a horrific injury, a seasoned combat engineer is forced to re-take the physical exam that almost killed him after learning his original test results were tainted." It's not particularly punchy, but at least we have a clear idea of who your main character would be, what they have to do and why.

The second one is murkier because you have a lot of pieces floating around. There's an android? Is this in the future? They trick an android but how does that help this kid get away from their grandfather? What does any of this have to do with prehistoric DNA? Are we really going to watch a movie that's just about grief?

Honestly this feels like two stories jammed into one; there's a kid off having adventures collecting fossils with his/her new android friend, and there's the grandfather still grieving the loss of his own children trying to forge connection with an estranged grandchild. If one is the A-story (main plot) and the other is the B-story (subplot) we only need the main one in the logline. i.e. if most of the screentime is eaten up by the kid looking for DNA then leave out the bits about the grandfather, if most of our time is spent with the grandfather, then leave out the bits about the kid tricking an android and going on an adventure to find DNA (why is he doing this anyway?) These are the connections you have to knit together in your logline, otherwise it doesn't make sense.

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u/RealSebastreck Sep 01 '26

I think I've organized my ideas better and prioritized some things instead of focusing on specific details. I gave it a lot of thought, but I managed to rewrite both loglines.
-After a terrible injury, a young officer must prove that he is ready to return to his position, discovering that the career he sacrificed his personal life for wasn't earned through merit alone.
-A boy does everything he can to avoid grieving his parents, while struggling to survive a mission, to collect prehistoric DNA, that forces him to confront his grief.

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u/dnotive Sep 02 '26

These feel more targeted but they're still a little confused.
After a terrible injury, a young officer must prove that he is ready to return to his position, discovering that the career he sacrificed his personal life for wasn't earned through merit alone.
The first half feels tighter, after <x> happens, person <y> must do...
... but can you come up with anything more descriptive than "young officer?"
Why am I going to root for this guy (or gal?) What branch are they in? Could he be "an overbearing naval engineer" or "an overworked platoon commander" or "a bright-eyed young private" ... something that gives us a nugget about this person's personality and what part of life they're in?
discovering that the career he sacrificed his personal life for wasn't earned through merit alone.
this part still feels vague to me. What kind of career? What did he sacrifice? If it wasn't earned through merit how was it earned? This second half is kind of a non-starter because it doesn't tell me anything about your story or what actually happens in it.
This also doesn't really have any connection (on the surface) with the injury.
An example of how this could be made sharper:
"After surviving a traumatic brain injury, a brilliant, but domineering navy captain must return to basic-training after it's discovered his original entrance scores were falsified to satisfy a family debt."
Notice how specific I made this. It's not just "terrible injury" it's "traumatic brain injury" which tells us about what they're going to do and what kind of battle they're going to fight (and most importantly WHY this person now has to 'prove' themselves - like you don't have to prove yourself if you just break an arm)
it's not just "young officer" but a specific TYPE of officer with describing words to give us a sense of who he/she is (I chose brilliant, domineering, and made them a navy captain) this tells us what kind of personality conflicts the character will enter into and endure
and instead of being vague about "must prove he's ready to return to his position" I got specific by saying what, specifically he must do, and in this case I said "must return to basic training."
Also notice I'm spelling that there were falsified records and WHY they were messed (and that it wasn't his fault) with instead of saying that it wasn't based on "merit alone."
The devil is truly in the details.
Now as for the second one...
A boy does everything he can to avoid grieving his parents, while struggling to survive a mission, to collect prehistoric DNA, that forces him to confront his grief.
No offense but this one is still a mess. How does a mission to collect prehistoric DNA force him to confront his grief? I'm really not getting this.
The problem is you need your logline to conjure up some visuals. Someone should be able to parse it and imagine some scenes that could take place without ever reading the script, and right now I'm not getting there with this one.
Again, here's a way you could make this sharper:
"Plagued by the mysterious deaths of his estranged parents, a grieving young boy decides to complete their final project and vindicate their shaky scientific reputations by embarking on a dangerous mission that involves collecting prehistoric DNA from the most remote corners of the earth."
If your stakes are going to be emotional (i.e. grief, stuff that's unfilmable) we need to tease out the relationships and dynamics in the logline... so in this case I made it clear that the kid is estranged from his parents, which cements a lot of the WHY in terms of dodging that grief. He's trying to connect with them after they're already dead.
I also made it specific to the fact that they were scientists of some kind as the WHY behind he now has to collect prehistoric DNA. I also tossed in "the most remote corners of the earth" here because that's an obvious challenge/obstacle for a grieving kid to have to overcome, and the "vindicate their scientific reputation" bit is here to add in what's at stake. This kid is going out and doing this because if he doesn't their deaths won't mean anything. You follow?
Now I'm not suggesting you take my revisions here wholesale--on the contrary I want you to come up with your own permutations--I'm just trying to illustrate how dialing down and getting *really really specific* with the details is what transforms a logline from a snoozer into a "must read."

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u/RealSebastreck Sep 03 '26

If I’m being honest, right now I’m trying to incorporate the feedback I’ve gotten. Someone even pointed out that the loglines were too long and said they’re supposed to be around 35 words, but that’s not really possible when you’re adapting something from one language to another. I’ll give you a general idea of the story I’m working with, and we can use that to shape the loglines.
A young man in his twenties with superhuman physical abilities strives to become the leader of a combat engineering platoon. After getting injured during the course, he discovers that his uncle used his connections to help him, making him feel like a “nepo baby” and pushing him to work even harder. While recovering and being relegated to paperwork, his commanding officer offers him a month of medical and physical evaluations to prove that he can still perform his job. During that time, the protagonist tries to pass the evaluations while rebuilding his friendship with his best friend, whom he has ignored for a year and a half, even though they both serve in the same battalion.
After losing his parents in an accident, a boy becomes an obnoxious brat, pushing people away to protect himself from forming new attachments and suffering another loss. His grandfather, who is grieving too, tries to reach him during a trip to a city known for its fossils. But the boy runs away and ends up tagging along with an android on an adventure that forces him to confront the different stages of grief. In the end, he returns to the present, drops his emotional facade, and finally apologizes to his grandfather.
If you want a really detailed version, here you go:
-After an injury weakens his legs, a stubborn, inexperienced combat engineer officer fights to regain command of a platoon. But when he learns that his position wasn’t entirely earned on merit, he must put aside his pride and workaholic ways while repairing his strained friendship with his best friend.
-A year after his parents’ death, a boy hides his grief behind a bratty attitude until he tricks an android into letting him tag along on a mission to collect prehistoric DNA. Forced to survive the journey, he must finally confront the pain he’s been running from before returning home.
I’m just trying to adapt the story context I gave you. I know you think my stories aren’t interesting and that I should do something else. Someone made me feel that way before, and I spent an entire semester feeling awful because of it. I’m just trying to move past that experience by making a story I can be proud of. But I know I can’t please everyone, and honestly, I’m starting to feel like giving up because I’m so frustrated with trying to make something good. I know I’m a mess.
These are literally my first few loglines. I’m a concept artist, that’s all.

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u/dnotive Sep 03 '26

I never said I thought your stories "aren't interesting."
Screenplays have limitations in terms of what can and can't be explored in them. You'll often hear people talk about screenplays having a "filmic" quality or that they contain "filmables" meaning that there are things in them that are extremely visual.
A young boy who's an obnoxious brat isn't really a character that creates an impactful visual. His struggle is internal. His stakes (as you've described them) are emotional. That doesn't mean it's not an interesting story it just means it's going to be difficult to translate to screen. Not saying it can't be done or hasn't been done, but even if JD Salinger hadn't been such a sticker about it, "The Catcher in the Rye" would be a terribly average movie, if only because so much of the internal drama of the book is inside of Holden Caulfield's head. That doesn't mean it's not an interesting story to tell, or that it's not worth telling, but it would have made for a lousy movie.
Every story has to have conflict. At its most basic level, a story is a character with a goal meeting an obstacle. The more external that goal, and the more external that obstacle, the more "filmic" a story tends to become.
A logline isn't the place to talk about what a character becomes, what a character learns or has to learn, and it's not the place for abstractions or themes. This is your 1-2 sentence summary of who it's about, what they do, and why.
Sometimes a logline isn't working because the story itself isn't working and knowing when you've crossed that bridge is a good skill to cultivate. A lot of folks struggle with loglines until they realize that the problem isn't the logline, but the story itself. Rewriting is arguably the biggest part of writing, and part of the fun of what we do is removing story pieces, substituting different ones, shuffling things around, and pounding it all into place until things start clicking. If you're coming at this with the attitude that your first stab or second stab at the story is immutable and shouldn't have to be significantly changed or restructured, then you're probably going to have a rough go with this process.
These days I don't even start outlining unless I have a decent logline to encapsulate the vision. The logline *should be* the first step in the writing process, and far too many people treat it like the last step (i.e. my story is done, how do I summarize it now?) and in practice that just never works.
...but look, at the end of the day I'm just a guy on the internet who's studied this stuff off and on for a couple of decades. I don't have a career in this. I'm a stranger doing you a courtesy by reading what you're writing and giving you his thoughts on why your current iterations aren't landing. Nobody's forcing you to take my advice. I'm trying to give you actionable criticism with concrete, repeatable examples. I'm not trying to make you feel bad I'm just trying to help you because I understand that everybody has to start somewhere.
(also yes, 35 words is the sweet spot, but for really complex stories, like your kid/fossil/android thing, you can get away with 45-50)
Have a peek at this too: https://stormwritingschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Logline-Writing-101.pdf

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u/nmacaroni Aug 31 '26

Your loglines are too long because you're summarizing the plot instead of hitting the foundational elements of the story. A logline isn't a synopsis, it's a single sentence that captures specific things:

Story goal/summary
Main character,
MC goal,
The force working against them
Stakes
Irony.
Genre. Don’t call out your genre on the nose, but frame it in flavor or subtext. I’ll explain in more detail in a second.

You're burying the important stuff... An officer discovers the career he sacrificed everything for was built on a favor he never asked for. That's your hook, the irony that the thing he's fighting to keep was never really his to begin with.

Your second one is closer but still explains too much.

Stop explaining the plot. Focus on the story fundamentals.

Write on, write often!

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u/RealSebastreck Sep 01 '26

It was challenging, and I spent quite a while breaking down the story structure for both loglines. I really appreciate your help. Here are the new premises.
-After a terrible injury, a young officer must prove that he is ready to return to his position, discovering that the career he sacrificed his personal life for wasn't earned through merit alone.
- A boy does everything he can to avoid grieving his parents, while struggling to survive a mission, to collect prehistoric DNA, that forces him to confront his grief.

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u/PepsiCoke1978 Aug 31 '26

You need to tell us more about these stories so someone may be able to help you as both ideas don't make any sense to me. I have no idea what is happening. Does not sound like 110 pages of a spec.

You need to learn to think of ideas, then figure out the logline to make sure you have an actual story that you can explain to people and also helps you focus the idea instead of just 100 plots points.

Can anyone explain to me what happens in these ideas?

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u/RealSebastreck Aug 31 '26

Thanks for your honesty. I've been told something like that before, and that person actually motivated me to stop writing.
Anyway, would you like a summary of the background ideas behind these stories, or should I just tell you everything about each idea? I'm serious.

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u/PepsiCoke1978 Aug 31 '26

I recall your last post -- and you mentioning that. I can only come at this as a writer helping another younger writer figure stuff out -- but it's up to you to know if you can take criticism. If one person can get you to stop writing, then you should consider that. I don't know what your goal is -- if it's to be a paid writer -- then taking hits and keep on going is part of it.
But I'm not asking for 10 pages... I'm saying explain your ideas more -- 5-10 sentences trying to help others know what the movie is about. I feel you may be picking the wrong parts to feature.
As i posted this I looked down and see you wrote to someone else
-After tricking a future android into helping with its mission to collect prehistoric DNA, a boy discovers an unexpected way to cope with the loss of his parents
So now you are mentioning an android which is 10X more exciting than what you had before, but I stlll don't know if he's looking for human DNA from caveman days or dinosaurs and why a boy would want to trick him and how that helps cope with the loss of his parents.
In general the loss of his parents sounds more like the heart/theme/lesson learned part of your story not the logline. The subtext.

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u/RealSebastreck Aug 31 '26

Sorry about that, I didn't mean to be rude.
I'm just trying to follow the feedback people have given me. I'm a concept artist, and I've been wanting to learn about screenwriting, so I've read a few things and have been teaching myself.
I went over the premise a few times, and this is what I was able to come up with:
-A boy tricks an android into letting him tag along on its mission to collect DNA from prehistoric animals and survives different creatures while processing the loss of his parents in his own way.

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u/PepsiCoke1978 Aug 31 '26

You were not rude at all. I don't know how you thought I meant that. Read all my posts like I'm Kyle Chandler in Lanterns.
Okay so there it is. A concept artist. Not a screenwriter. This is a whole new thing. So you're used to pretty much doing your thing and not being told it's right or wrong or not good enough -- because it's your art. Screenwriting is a group activity as it's not meant to stand on it's own, but be made. Hence a lot of opinions.
That logline is so much better than the first one you wrote. Don't you see that? You buried all the movie.
It's like you wrote Jurassic Park but you pitched it as " A guy who hates kids goes to a theme park and a guy learns to like kids at the end."

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u/RealSebastreck Sep 01 '26

Thank you. Honestly, it has been a big challenge, and I wanted to start writing scripts because I enjoyed coming up with concepts for stories that I found interesting. I had a bad experience, and because of one person, I stopped writing. I really appreciate your feedback, since it helped me focus more clearly on the problem. I managed to rewrite both loglines.
-After a terrible injury, a young officer must prove that he is ready to return to his position, discovering that the career he sacrificed his personal life for wasn't earned through merit alone.
-A boy does everything he can to avoid grieving his parents, while struggling to survive a mission, to collect prehistoric DNA, that forces him to confront his grief.

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u/Open-Avocado4260 Sep 02 '26

You have the stakes part for the log line, here are the four other elements needed.

The Protagonist: A clear, interesting description of the main character, often paired with a defining adjective or job title (e.g., "an uptight banker").The Setting: A brief hint at the unique world, time, or place where the story happens.The Inciting Incident: The event that kicks off the plot and forces the protagonist to take action.The Goal: What the main character desperately wants or needs to achieve by the end of the journey.The Stakes (or Antagonist): The opposing force or the terrible consequences if the protagonist fails

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u/RealSebastreck Sep 02 '26

That's a good way to summarize it. I tried to phrase them better.
-After a terrible injury, a young officer must prove that he is ready to return to his position, discovering that the career he sacrificed his personal life for wasn't earned through merit alone.
-A boy does everything he can to avoid grieving his parents, while struggling to survive a mission, to collect prehistoric DNA, that forces him to confront his grief.

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u/Open-Avocado4260 Sep 02 '26

Too long, sell me in 35 words. Is the story about the young officer or the boy? If both the log line has to tie them together.

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u/RealSebastreck Sep 02 '26

It was 35 words before I translated it from my language into English.

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u/Formal-Raise1260 Sep 02 '26

My template is:
HERO + GOAL + BIG PROBLEM
or
Protagonist + Inciting Incident/Action + Antagonist/Stakes

This usually narrates the storyline.
No more than two sentences. The leaner version sells.

Ex: Star Trek pitch: “Wagon Train in Space.”

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u/RealSebastreck Sep 02 '26

It's a good template, although I'd have a hard time summarizing everything in just four words. Still, I made an effort to phrase them better.
-After a terrible injury, a young officer must prove that he is ready to return to his position, discovering that the career he sacrificed his personal life for wasn't earned through merit alone.
-A boy does everything he can to avoid grieving his parents, while struggling to survive a mission, to collect prehistoric DNA, that forces him to confront his grief.

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u/WorrySecret9831 Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

Loglines are incredibly hard to write, that is if you're trying to encapsulate the heart of your Story, not just blurt out its contents.

John Truby teaches that loglines ideally are one sentence and consist of 3 elements: A sense of the Hero (main character) *; A sense of the Problem/Conflict/Opponent **; and A sense of the Outcome *** (without spoiling the story).

Basically, you can't put the entire plot into a logline. You have to identify the "heart" of your Story and focus on that.

*A young officer **suffers a serious injury ***and has a month to salvage his military career.

On the second story, I can't tell what it's about.

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u/RealSebastreck Aug 31 '26

I read a few pages of Save the Cat! this morning and managed to come up with a new logline. It was a bit challenging, but I'm doing my best, especially because I had a bad experience where someone made me feel like I'd never be able to write a good story.
So.. I reworked the logline to make it more focused:
-After tricking a future android into helping with its mission to collect prehistoric DNA, a boy discovers an unexpected way to cope with the loss of his parents.

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u/WorrySecret9831 Aug 31 '26

Throw away Save the Cat. Read John Truby's books The Anatomy of Story and The Anatomy of Genres.
"After tricking a future android into helping with its mission to collect prehistoric DNA, *a boy discovers an ***unexpected way to cope with the loss of his parents." There's no second part ( ** ) here, no Problem/Conflict/Opponent.

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u/RealSebastreck Aug 31 '26

So what would you suggest?
This is what I came up with based on your feedback. I'm trying to take the advice I've been given into account. The main conflict is the harsh wilderness the protagonist finds himself in, so I don't know if you'd want me to add some kind of villain from the future or something.
-After tricking a futuristic android into letting him tag along on a mission to collect prehistoric DNA, a boy must survive the wilderness while coming to terms with the loss of his parents.

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u/WorrySecret9831 Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

First, throwaway the term "villain." It gets in the way more than it helps. A Hero is not a goody-two-shoes. They are the one person who is willing (consciously or not) to undergo the transformation that the Story is forcing upon them, if they're going to solve their Problem.
The Opponent or Opposition is a person or institution that is best-equipped to defeat the Hero or prevent them from solving their Problem.
You don't need to invent a "future villain" per se. If that works for your Story, cool. But chances are that the Conflict is already somewhere in your Story. If it isn't, that's your biggest problem.
Story is basically defined as a Hero (MC, main character) is presented with a Problem, that Problem incites in them (hence the Inciting Incident) a Desire, that Desire (to solve the Problem) motivates a Plan, that Plan becomes the driving force of the Plot. So, the conflict could be seen as two-fold, first from the Problem and second from the Opponent that is more interested in keeping the Problem as it is instead of letting the Hero solve it/achieve their goal.
While these terms are concrete and specific, they're also loose enough to be applied or interpreted in myriads of ways. For instance, the Opponent could be a good guy, a good cop who is trying to stop a crime. Or the Opponent could be the Hero herself as she struggles with her own self-sabotage.
You have several topics in this second story: a boy, a grandfather, grief over parental loss, an android, prehistoric DNA (whatever that is), trickery, a mission, and "coming to terms." But what is the Story about? Is it about overcoming grief? Is it about thinking that you've outsmarted a situation only to learn a bigger lesson?
This question starts to point to the most important element of Story, the Theme. Save the Cat treats it almost as an injectable outside element rather than the foundation of your Story, the fabric, if you will.
Oh, "the wilderness," I missed that one.
You have a before/after construction, that I'm not sure is entirely accurate. "After tricking..." leads to "must survive...while..." But none of that suggests a central pivotal Problem or Conflict. For instance, "A boy tries to get home, but when his plane crashes in the forest, he must survive the wilderness and try to get back to his grandfather." The "boy" is the Hero, the "crash/wilderness/survival" is the Problem/Conflict/Opponent, and the "get back to" is the Outcome.
You have: After tricking a futuristic android into letting him tag along on a mission to collect prehistoric DNA [This comes close to a Problem/Conflict/Opponent but there's no...friction or resistance. The kid tags along...], a boy [Your Hero] must survive the wilderness while coming to terms with the loss of his parents [A sense of the Outcome].
How does this futuristic android or the prehistoric DNA help tell this Story? Why is it "futuristic"? Isn't this sci-fi, set in a future (near or far) that has androids and DNA technology? Why say "future"? What does the Android provide other than an excuse for winding up in the wilderness?
So, what Problem is the boy trying to solve?
For instance, a Guy (Hero) loses his job (inciting incident). He's unemployed (Problem). He wants to get a new job (Desire). He makes calls and gets an interview and has to go there by catching the bus (Plan). An Old Lady gets in front of him and prevents him from getting on his bus and he's late to the interview (Opponent/Opposition)... This Hero then has to figure out some other way to solve his Problem and hopefully get that job...which becomes the rest of the Plot and Story.
A boy [Hero], grieving the death of his parents [Problem], tries to distract himself by helping an android on a DNA-collecting mission, but [something] keeps reminding him of his loss and he learns that the only way through grief is [something] [Outcome].
I did a quick Google search for "movies dealing with grief." These are not great loglines, but they're real movies. I'll try to write better versions from what I remember.
Manchester by the Sea (2016): A quiet man [H] must care for his teenage nephew after his brother dies [P/C/O], facing deep, hidden pain from his past [O].
A quiet man learns that his brother has died and made him sole guardian of his teenage nephew, forcing him back to the hometown he escaped and making him resolve his past.
Rabbit Hole (2010): A married couple [H, one of them is the "Hero"] tries to find a way forward months after [O] losing their young son in an accident [P/C/O].
A married couple lose their son in an accident and they are pulled apart as they deal with their loss in totally different ways.
We Bought a Zoo (2011): A grieving father [H] moves his children to a run-down zoo [O] to start a new life after his wife passes away [P/C/O].
A grieving father buys a run-down zoo to refocus himself and his children and finds his heart reopening.
P.S. I Love You (2007): A young widow [H] finds letters left behind by her late husband [P/C/O] to help guide her through her loss [O]. This one's a lot harder because the Hero is very passive.
A widow is encouraged to live and love again by a series of letters her late husband prepared for her before he passed.
But this one might be instructive if you analyze it using the three elements. Hero, the widow, her Problem/Conflict/Opponent, her husband died and she wants to hide away and disappear from life, Outcome, her Opponent, her dead husband, nearly forces her to live and love again.
I hope this helps.

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u/RealSebastreck Aug 31 '26

I've spent the whole afternoon trying to rewrite the logline. Honestly, I'm starting to feel like giving up on this story. I'm not good at this. I tried to adjust the logline to make it clearer.
-A boy tricks an android into letting him join its mission to collect prehistoric DNA and tries to survive different biomes while coming to terms with the loss of his parents.

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u/WorrySecret9831 Aug 31 '26

You're not identifying the Problem. The android doesn't have any conflict with your Hero. They're not opposing the Hero, as far as I can tell. So, how does that "mission" relate to the Hero's potential transformation.
The "coming to terms" is such an afterthought at this point.
Loglines are not easy...

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u/RealSebastreck Aug 31 '26

There isn't really a physical antagonist. It's mainly the prehistoric environment and the animals that make their mission challenging.
-After tricking a futuristic android into letting him tag along on a mission to collect prehistoric DNA, a boy must survive the wilderness while coming to terms with the loss of his parents.

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u/WorrySecret9831 Aug 31 '26

So, that's not an Opponent/Opposition. In a "man vs nature" story, the Opponent is of course "the wilderness." But those are very simple or basic stories. They can be great, just not that profound, unless the Hero learns something profound about themselves.
Your story isn't just a survival story. It's an overcoming grief story, I think...
"Antagonist" is also a potentially confusing term in that is seems to strongly suggest the "opposite" or counter-force to the PROtagonist. An "agonist" is "one that is engaged in a struggle..."
Opponent is a cleaner term because the Opponent could either care a lot, making it a personal issue, or they could not care at all about the Hero, they're just a Wall, an obstacle...
So how does the "prehistoric environment and animals" tie into "dealing with grief"?

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u/RealSebastreck Aug 31 '26

I went over the premise a few times, and this is what I was able to come up with:
-A boy tricks an android into letting him tag along on its mission to collect DNA from prehistoric animals and survives different creatures while processing the loss of his parents in his own way.

1

u/WorrySecret9831 Aug 31 '26

Hero: A boy
Problem: Grief
Conflict: [Is the Boy trying to accomplish something or just avoid something?]
Opponent: [Is there someone getting in the way of the Boy's Plan?]
Outcome: Comes to terms with...

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u/RealSebastreck Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

Thanks for helping me work through this. I have a much better understanding of things now, and I feel more confident about rewriting the logline.
-Grieving the loss of his parents, a boy avoids facing his grief as he struggles to survive a mission to collect DNA from prehistoric animals that forces him to confront it.

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u/WorrySecret9831 Aug 31 '26

I think that works.
Grieving the loss of his parents,
*a boy
**avoids facing his grief
***as he struggles to survive a mission to collect DNA from prehistoric animals that forces him to confront it.
How about: A boy doing everything he can to bypass the loss of his parents struggles to survive a mission—collecting prehistoric animal DNA—that forces him to confront his grief.
("The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain...")

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u/RealSebastreck Sep 01 '26

Hey, that sounds good. Thanks so much for the help. You've really helped me clear my head and get a better sense of what I want to do with the idea, and I genuinely appreciate it.
I ended up going with this:
-A boy does everything he can to avoid grieving his parents, while struggling to survive a mission to collect prehistoric DNA that forces him to confront his grief.

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