Your Stage : Logline advice please and thank you! by Stephanie DeWitt

There's too little information in this logline. A girl contemplates suicide because of the grief of losing her mother.

First of all, this story is about the girl so don't start the logline with her mother, then give us some stakes, what will happen if she succeeds and what will happen if she fails? Will she be saved somehow? If so, who will save her and how is that person connected to her? Unfortunately, I can't even give you some suggestions without more information. I can make some assumptions to try to fill in the gaps but that would be presumptuous as it's not my story.

There's no must. What must she do to overcome her struggle? Then you need the or else. What happens if she fails.

A shy teen, struggles to deal with her mothers sudden death. When her faith is questioned she must find a way through before her suicidal thoughts overcome her.

This is not good either as I don't know the story but you get my gist. Really there needs to be more stakes in the Logline. Suicide is a high stake, but it's a self inflicted one. I suppose suicide can be labelled as the protagonist though. More her battle with grief. So grief would be the Protagonist unless there's a actual protagonist then that needs woven into it. An abusive parent, a unemotional care system, an horrific nun maybe. Grief is an internal battle and so maybe there's also an external battle.

Thank you all so much! So the story is spirited and outgoing mom loved by everyone, tight knit religious family. Mom gets diagnosed with cancer and passes. Girl struggles. She’s entering high school so her mom will not be there for all the new big things in her life. Girl acts fine in front of everyone at first but starts to withdraw. Struggles with the grief. Blames God and loses faith in him. When her dad and her are sitting in the window seat in her room - where her and her mom used to sit and talk or read - her dad grabs a book off the shelf. It has a handwritten title L.A.M. (Life after mom) which is a journal written by her mom to help her cope with her mom’s passing and includes bible verses that correlate to the stages of grief. Somewhere in there she contemplated suicide. That’s the gist of it.

I'm not very good with faith based movies I'm afraid. For me it's a story of a girl who loses herself, and through a book her mum speaks to her and helps her overcome her grief. God doesn't come into it for me I am afraid. I'm sure there's a huge market for faith based films though.

Thank you! I will keep working on it!

When death finds her mother, a young girl must hide her desire to rejoin her by looking to the cross.

Well, with what i can see, your story would be a nice one only if you work it out perfectly. do you have the story already? or are you off with picturing it?

if you are down with the story and in need of perfect logline. you will need somebody you'd trust to go through the entire manuscript, before a perfect logline could be attained. so think about it. hope this helped...a bit?

Thank you, Uchechi. I have the whole thing in my head, just have to get it written down. I’m just now learning screenwriting so it will be a while. I may also be doing things out of order due to my lack of screenwriting knowledge.