A young sheriff returns home to where his outlaw mother was brutally killed to find the girl he grew up with now in charge and wanting the same for him.

In bringing his mother's murderer to justice..the town..he's actually fighting the ambitious woman..the girl he grew up with..he just doesn't know it.

Problem is that version of the logline seems to have 2 plots rather than one.

And I don't see how the 1st one is logically, which is to say causally, linked to the latter. He takes on a strong-willed, ambitious woman because he doesn't get emotional catharsis from bringing his mother's murderer to justice? Say what??

In a wild west town, an outlaw turned sheriff is forced to bring justice to his mother?s murderer and when hanging the prime suspect, the town, doesn't erase the pain..he opposes a business woman who lays claim to the town.

In a wild west town, an outlaw turned sheriff is determined to bring to justice his mother's murderer even if it means hanging the prime suspect, his lover.

To find out who murdered his mom, an outlaw turned sheriff opposes a smart business woman whose aspirations of rebuilding the town gets in the way.

A Sci-Fi flick, unlike a Western, need not be tethered to reality.

I don't know. 'Lucy' (Scarlett Johansson) seems to be doing okay, despite the whole "humans only use 10% of their brain" thing being completely debunked.

It's fiction, we let these things slide.

It could be murderous intent once she finds out the change in him. She forces him to be the man he should have been, in her eyes.

1859..ugly and relentless days.

>> What will true love do for you?

True love lost? True love sought? True love found? True love spurned? Where's the love? What's the love? All I can see so far is pathological obsession and murderous intent.

>>we all can be who we were meant to be instead of a product of society

Which she would define for herself as...?
Which he would define for himself as....?

Also, the genre seems to be Western. Is that correct? What's the general time frame? The wild, wild West (USA) of myth and lore before the closing of the frontier?

A beautiful woman, an outlaw turned sheriff, one will take control of a town where they grew up and reenact the events that changed their lives to bring forth a sacrifice of true love.

The question within my movie is: What will true love do for you? A true gift..a gift for one second that we all can be who we were meant to be instead of a product of society. She will sacrifice all for this one second.

So, the dramatic question is from her pov is: can she flip him? Can she make him regress to his earlier outlaw behavior?

>>reenacts the events which killed his mom that changed both of their destiny?s

Echoes of Sigmund Freud's destiny neurosis and repetition compulsion. Sixty years ago, when psychoanalysis was in vogue, that might have worked. But dramatic and acting theories have moved so far beyond Freud (and the therapeutic community these days is largely skeptical of his ideas -- to put it mildly), that I am dubious that a "re-enactment" motivation will find traction.

(One post-Freudian's opinion)

A woman in love with an outlaw turned sheriff takes control of the town where they grew up and reenacts the events which killed his mom that changed both of their lives.

I think you're overthinking it, because that's really confusing.

You're never going to get this down to under 30 words...

K..her motivation is both revenge and love. As a young girl she had to watch her dad cheat on her mom with his mom, then turn around and spend her day with him. But when his mom is killed and he is sent away, she loses that connection. But one day in her travels she finds him and he's now a sheriff, she's tormented cause she's still in love with the young outlaw. So her motivation is to turn him back into an outlaw, not to kill him..but to satisfy her.

A woman in love with an outlaw turned sheriff takes control of the town where they grew up and reenacts the events that tore them apart that changed both their destiny's.

Version 2.0 of the logline states 2 objective goals: 1] Get him to take over the town; 2] Get him killed. The 1st seems to be a means to the 2nd, the final outcome of the story. So the objective goal for the purpose of the logline would be to get him killed.

But I still don't have a handle on her motivation.

A woman in love with an outlaw turned sheriff sees his destiny by taking control of a town once operated by his outlaw mom and tries to give him the life or death he deserves.

dpg...I hate it when you stump me. Ummmm....her character in thinking about it is more of the protagonist, firmly. She tracks him down, she brings him, she tries to change him back, etc. etc.

A young sheriff returns home to where his outlaw mother was brutally killed to find the girl he grew up with now in charge and wanting the same for him.

A young girl loses her best friend in the brutal killing of his mom, a notorious outlaw. All grown up and now in charge of the town, she'll find the man she lost and return to him the resting place beside her. He was born to die without mercy and the one person who understands that is the one who loves him.

Considering the sheriff as the MC, the inciting incident is when he discovers that the girl wants him to die as well.
If this is the case then the logline is structured incorrectly, try placing the inciting incident at the beginning of the logline then describe what the MC needs to do to achieve a goal, which needs to be specified (as previously mentioned by DPG).

Hope this helps Nir.

So that's her objective goal. What is his objective goal if he's the protagonist? (She seems to be the more interesting, the more dominant character. Maybe she should be the protagonist.)

..brutally killed...out of love kind of way. She believes that he wasn't meant to be a sheriff. His mom was an outlaw, he was born an outlaw, and he must die an outlaw...true fate.

Brutally killed.

She wants him to become an outlaw or she wants him to be brutally killed?