A French village and pacifist priest must work with a bloodthirsty resistance group to fight invading Nazi’s and save 5000 Jews from extermination using only their Protestant values, an amateur forger and a one-legged female spy. *True Holocaust Story*

5 reviews

CraigDGriffiths Singularity · 20,463 pts

There is a saying with a logline "Sell don't Tell".

If you remove "using" onwards you have a pretty good logline. You are selling a story that would make a read want to read more. You have mystery without confusion.

I would remove pacifist from in front of priest as they all take a vow to do no harm. I think it is s but like saying a wet fish. But it's your call.

dpg Singularity · 112,231 pts

>>>doesn?t matter that it is a true story,

I beg to differ. That it's a true story is a value-added factor; it makes the story more credible, more marketable. ?So I think it ought to be part of the logline.

But I, too, don't see a value-added factor in shoe horning the forger into the logline. ?Nor the resistance group. ?So both can be dropped.?

So if you're pitching your story with dual protagonists than maybe something like:

The true story one-legged female spy and pacifist priest who teamed up to save 5000 Jews from the death camps in occupied France.

( 23 words, ?129 characters , equivalent to ?a .92 tweet* versus 34 words, ?195 characters or 1.39 tweets* in the revised version.)

I don't think "wage a clandestine war" is necessary. It seems to me that it obvious and implicit.

*Note: I started measuring loglines in terms of tweets -- character length as well as word length -- ?when my survey of over 700 loglines revealed that not only was the average word length was truly about 25 words, but the average character length was about 140 characters, the length of a tweet. (And yesterday, a President was inaugurated in the US of A who showed just how successful selling something in 140 character tweets could be. ?In the age of the internet, for better or worse, less is truly more.)

dpg Singularity · 112,231 pts

>>>should I just focus on using the most compelling character to get my script through the door?

I'm face a similar predicament in the script I'm currently writing based on the true story of how women finally got the vote in the USA. ?In terms of historical fact, my protagonist was not the leading character in the struggle. ?Many feminist historians consider her a marginal character, a damned nuisance who set the movement back; they believe women got the vote in spite of her militant tactics, not because of them.

But she is f-a-r and away the most interesting character, the most colorful and controversial, the bravest and most daring. ?She defied the conventions and stereotypes of her sex, broke all the rules was willing to risk her life for what she believed in. ?And Hollywood loves characters who defy conventions and stereotypes, who breaks the rules, who are willing to risk losing everything for a worthy cause. ?So I see her as a no-brainer, slam-dunk choice for the protagonist.

Notice, that I framed my logline for your concept with the female as someone who "helped to save". ?I didn't say she organized and ran the rescue effort. ?I presume it was the priest. ?And other colorful and diverse characters played an important role. ?But ?surely ?she played a pivotal role, did she not?

There's not enough space in a logline ?and its counterproductive, to list all the characters. ?Even in a truly ensemble story, I think a logline should try to feature the most interesting character, the one most likely to hook interest in the script.

And what hooked my interest in your script was not the pacifist priest, nor the amateur forger, but the one-legged female spy.

One other reason I opt for the one-legged female as the main character is that there are a number of stories of Catholic priests who came to the rescue of Jews during World War 2. ?So a Catholic priest risking his life to do the right thing, while a noble action, was not unique.

But how many stories are there of one-legged female spies who came to the rescue of Jews? ?Again, she's unique.. She stands out from crowd.

fwiw and best wishes with your script