Ok I'm a little scared of posting this here. These are two loglines I have come up with. I need your help to choose which is better.
1) A distraught teenager moves out to town after the death of her abusive stepfather. She soon discovers her past was never dead.
2) Finally getting accepted into st Elizabeth university, a people pleaser must prove her worth by staying till midnight under the Abalone Tree. She soon discovers she had made a grave mistake when a vengeful spirit begins taunting her.
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Hi Bardi, Just a piece of advice. Fear prevents you to achieve your goals. We have a saying, success is laying right behind courage. I'll have a closer look at your loglines later. But I like the second one better.
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Hey Catherine, how about this one:
"A distraught young woman's dream comes true when she receives a scholarship to a prestigious university, unfortunately the vengeful spirit of her abusive step-father threatens to turn her dream into a nightmare."
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Anthony's is pretty good. I'll condense it a little:
"A young woman's dream comes true when she's accepted into a prestigious university, until the vengeful spirit of her abusive step-father turns her dream into a nightmare."
The words I took out are either too specific (scholarship, ivy-league) or unnecessary (distraught, unfortunately) or not immediate (threatens) - IMO.
Remember, a logline IS NOT a description of the whole story. It's the story honed down to its fundamental points; intended to drive the reader into wanting to read more.
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Hi, Bardi. Both versions are a bit confusing and/or too vague. There isn't a clear sense of a narrative or even of the genre(s)—at least as currently written. Is this a drama/horror? A ghost story? Is there some family curse here? A girl goes to college, and for some reason, there's a vengeful spirit. Perhaps it's her dead stepfather? So, I'd kindly suggest you keep going. Keep honing it to craft a succinct, logical logline. Write many many many versions to suss it out. If you cannot nail it down at the logline, then there may be larger story issues that need more work. But that can be fixed too if needed. Roll up those sleeves. ;)
Anyway, I really cannot make suggestions as I have zero context nor knowledge of the story and your creative intent. However, watch your writing as well—grammar, capitalization, sentence structure, etc. Those elements need to be better honed too. ;)
Hold your head high, Bardi! You got this! Hope that helps. Best to you!
@JohnEllis @anthonymoore @bethfoxheisinger I thank you all for your advice. I'll keep working till I can create a better logline. I'll post it when I'm done.