Stakes and genre

[emhoward]

I'm trying to write a script that is a comedy with strong dramatic elements, a dramedy, and I'm having trouble composing a logline that has both stakes and genre. When I do get the stakes in their it always seems to be a little weak and adding the genre is even harder because it's not a straight comedy.

What I did was a went to look for movies that had the same type of genre and tone I want mine to have and I read their loglines, the three movies were Juno, Little Miss Sunshine and The Kids are all right.

Juno
Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, an offbeat young woman makes an unusual decision regarding her unborn child.
Little Miss Sunshine
A family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus.
The kids are all right
Two children conceived by artificial insemination bring their birth father into their family life.

Now I realize that these are not the loglines that the writers wrote in order to sell their script, but I would not consider them bad, maybe just incomplete. Also none of these loglines tell me what type of movie they are and maybe that's because dramedies are so vague.
So I guess my question is would you consider these bad loglines because they don't include any stakes or point towards any genre?

[brianhaas]

I think part of the problem here is you're pulling IMDB summaries as loglines. They are not one in the same. I know you realize these aren't the "real" loglines, but they aren't loglines at all.

Take Juno, for example. I would argue the logline is something more akin to this:

"A sarcastic, pregnant 16-year-old struggles to determine the future of her unborn child when the couple she arranges to adopt it splits up."

Or something along those lines. There are definite stakes involved and they are not weak. Perhaps my example doesn't convey the comedy, but it was a late-night one-off, so I wasn't going for perfection.

Little Miss Sunshine could also have similarly weighty stakes. Again, a quick shot off the top of my head:

"A dysfunctional family struggles to stay together by rallying around a homely but quirky little girl's long-shot chance at the Little Miss Sunshine pageant."

Again, not perfect, but there are stakes: the family itself is at risk.

I haven't seen The Kids Are All Right, but here's my similar take on that story based on summaries I'm seeing on imdb, netflix, etc:

"A family is turned upside-down when two children in a same-sex marriage seek out their sperm donor father."

Again, something is at stake: the family dynamic. Pretty weighty stuff.

I may not have conveyed the genres that well in those loglines, but I think I pulled out the stakes in each story pretty well.

I think that if your stakes aren't that high, your story is probably not strong enough for a screenplay. Some of the skilled, pro screenwriters out there can pull a low-stakes movie off (I'm looking at you Richard Linklater and Dazed and Confused), but I'm thinking us amateurs should be ramping the stakes up as high as possible, without getting ludicrous.

[escarondito]

Brian I think you hit the nail pretty firmly on the head in response to his question. The only other thing I would say is that the 3 movies you are looking at all have a hinge of quirkyness right in the logline

insemination babies of same sex couple seeks out sperm donor = Check
Sarcastic 16-year old makes odd decision on her pregnancy = check
dysfunctional family goes cross country to put their youngest daughter in little miss sunshine pageant = check

You can tell with each story this is going to be about some oddball characters

[emhoward]

Thanks for the replies. I dont like settling for "good enough" and even if a logline could get by without stakes, to me it would be doing just that, plus the more I think about it the more I agree with you guys, stakes need to be in their and the higher the stakes, the better.