Embarking on a mission to save his people from a terrible famin a young tribe leader must defeat his demons, both real and imagined, in order to restore peace and destroy a new dictatorship created by his once trusted second in command during his absence.

I sense real potential in this story. The former ally turning against the hero is a powerful premise. Also there are several major obstacles to overcome: famine and a villain. The famine is the backdrop, much like the war in a war movie. The real drama is between the characters. However by putting the famine upfront in the logline, you're weakening its dramatic power.

So an issue is the order in which you reveal the story information. The story really starts when the dictatorship is installed, which is only mentioned towards the end of the logline. I like when events in a story are revealed more or less (chrono)logically in the logline. That way it makes sense while we're reading it and we don't have to re-read too often.

"a young tribe leader must defeat his demons, both real and imagined" is the heart of this story and logline. Two problems here: 1) the 'imagined demons' refer to the character fears/flaw/weakness. In that sense, the statement is generic because pretty much every hero in every great story has to defeat their inner demons. 2) the real demons are at first not specified, then later in the logline you clarify it is in fact his second in command.

Thank you for the feed back.

Firstly, this is temporally confused. How can a dictatorship be formed in his absence when the young tribe leader is now "embarking" on his mission? No matter, easily fixed if the logline simply jumped to him returning after a long quest (which is a far more interesting set up). Secondly, while there is a long mythic tradition of this sort of scenario (including "The Lion King"), there is nothing in this logline to suggest there is anything unique or special about this particular tellIng of this tale motif. If this tribe is just another bunch of spear-throwers, then so what? Where's the interest to be elicited from the reader?

At a minimum, the logline should paint something interestingly different about this tribe. Like, for instance, that they actually had high technology not long ago (say, a couple of generations back). Or even that they have consciously shunned technology for some philosophical or religious reason and are not at all "primitive" in their understanding of their world (for example, they may still have scientific understanding).

Steven Fernandez (Judge)