A Logline for Malachi

Day 439

If I don’t write in the morning I don’t write all that day no matter how I might promise myself I will write. If I don’t write the next day after the missed day I don’t write the next day after that one. So here I am: making it right.

An ex-con and mage must rescue his senile mentor before the dragon that captured the old mage learns a secret to unravel magic and itself be freed from its human prison.

Let’s call that the first logline I’ve ever written. I’ve hacked out a couple in my head but never put them on a page. Let’s call this one a first pass at the final. I don’t like the excessive use of pronouns though I think I’ve got the antecedents worked out properly—or at least in order…

Malachi, an ex-con and mage, must rescue his senile mentor before the dragon that captured the older mage learns a secret to unravel magic and itself be freed from its human prison.

I realize I didn’t really fix the pronoun thing just now, but having a name lends an anchor to the phrasing that helps me. I don’t like that the dragon will just happen to ‘learn’ the secret. It is not clear that he will learn it from the mentor. Short of adding “beats a confession out of” I’m not sure how to get that across.

Malachi, an ex-con and mage, must rescue his senile mentor before the dragon that captured the older mage extracts the man’s secret to unravel magic and itself be freed from its human prison.

That doesn’t help the pronoun game, but seems to put just enough touch on what part the mentor plays in the whole ‘secret’ thing. If I play on the dubious idea that dragons are always bad then I might do OK with something like this:

Malachi, an ex-con and mage, must rescue his senile mentor before the dragon that captured the older mage extracts the man’s secret to unravel all magic.

Though that doesn’t have the life threatening immediacy I’m looking for in this logline—I don’t think the other versions did either, but at least they had a dragon obviously breaking loose. Maybe:

Malachi, an ex-con and mage, must rescue his senile mentor before the dragon that captured the older mage extracts the man’s secret to unravel and destroy all magic.

I suppose that’s a big deal if you’re a mage or a dragon but how do the rest of us—the readers—care? There is no magic already so if it’s lost we’re right where we were when we started reading. How to make the dragon a menacing threat to the reader?

Malachi, an ex-con and mage, must rescue his senile mentor before the dragon that captured the older mage extracts the man’s secret to unravel and destroy all magic and with it the world.

Ha ha.
Hmmmm?
No. Try again.

Malachi, an ex-con and mage, must rescue his senile mentor before the dragon that captured the older mage extracts the man’s secret to unravel and destroy all magic. Without magic Malachi’s daughter Karen will die.

Ok. Somewhat better, but I don’t like the back-loaded jeopardy or the huge plotline I just introduced on a whim. Maybe merely flipping it will do the trick?

Without magic Karen will die. Malachi, her ex-con and mage father, must rescue his senile mentor before the dragon that captured the older mage extracts the man’s secret to unravel and destroy all magic.

That has more appeal than I expected it to have. It pulls focus off Malachi our hero. Though now I’m feeling like the reason for the dragon to unravel magic is lost. To be sure it was never there before either, but now I’m noticing. That might work as a question the logline reader would ask themselves, but I don’t know that I’ve put the hint in there to do just that.

Without magic Malachi’s daughter will die. He must rescue his senile mentor before the dragon that captured the older mage extracts the man’s secret to unravel and destroy all magic.

The indicators that Malachi is a mage get muddled in that version. I could find no plausible way to indicate he’s an ex-con either. Maybe he’s not an ex.  Maybe he’s in prison?  He needs to escape prison and rescue his mentor from the dragon. Fuck. That’s better. And a shitload harder since I know jack about prison-hood.

Without magic Malachi’s daughter will die. He must escape from a Texas prison and rescue his senile mentor from a dragon before that dragon extracts the man’s secret to unravel and destroy all magic.

20100204 Update: Done a bit more reading recently and I’m maybe missing the mark a bit on my logline here. Without too much fanfare or any of the above overworking I’ll just drop this new–still in need of work–version on you:

A prison escapee must slay a dragon to save his daughter from death.