Often times the hero lives in a flawed world through no fault of their own. That’s when the hero pursues the “Improve or escape a flawed life” emotional logline.
When the hero lives a somewhat decent life, they may only want to improve it. In “Little Miss Sunshine”, the hero, Olive, is a 12-year old girl who lives with a dysfunctional family that doesn’t get along with each other where her parents are on the verge of getting a divorce. Olive doesn’t want to leave her family so much as she wants them to get along and love one another for who they are.
When the hero lives a horrible life, that’s when they want to escape it. In “Thelma and Louise”, the two women live in a male-dominated world. Rather than just accept this way of living, the two women really yearn to be free from the domination of men altogether.
So the dilemma with the “Improve or escape a flawed life” emotional logline looks like this:
The hero can stay in their flawed life at the risk of losing whatever minor benefits it may offer vs. The hero can improve or escape their flawed life but with no guarantee it will be any better
The basic pattern of the “Improve or escape a flawed life” emotional logline looks like this:
- The hero lives a flawed life and wants to fix it
- The hero takes a chance to improve or escape their flawed life
- Initially, the hero’s actions seem to improve or help them escape their flawed life
- Something dangerous threatens to pull the hero far back in their flawed life
- The hero makes a risky decision to improve or escape their flawed life
- The hero’s life improves, but it’s still not fixed completely
- The hero takes a huge risk that will either wreck their life forever or improve it dramatically
- The hero either improves or escapes their flawed life or fails completely
In “Little Miss Sunshine”, Olive lives with her dysfunctional family that doesn’t get along and constantly fights and argues with each other. This is her flawed life and if life doesn’t change, the family’s life will either stay the same or get worse.
Olive gets a chance to compete in beauty pageant. To get Olive to the beauty pageant, the entire family must drive her there in a van. This forces the entire family together.
By being stuck in a van together, knowing they’re helping Olive get to the beauty pageant, the family initially seems to get along.
Olive’s grandfather suddenly dies, threatening to keep the family from either taking Olive to the beauty pageant or breaking the family up. Only some of them can take Olive to the beauty pageant while the others would have to stay with the grandfather’s dead body in the hospital.
That’s when Olive’s father decides on a third option. They’re not going to let the grandfather’s death stop them from getting Olive to the beauty pageant and they’re not going to separate. Instead, they’re going to take the grandfather’s dead body with them so everyone can continue traveling with Olive to the beauty pageant together.
The family is still together as they take Olive to the beauty pageant, but none of their emotional problems with each other have been resolved.
That’s when Olive decides to compete in the beauty pageant despite her whole family almost begging her not to do it for fear she’ll embarrass herself. If Olive doesn’t compete, her family will never change but if she does compete, she risks embarrassing herself and them as well. Yet she decides to compete anyway.
By competing and horrifying the audience with a strip tease act, Olive helps bring her entire family together as they decide supporting her is more important than what other people may think of them. By supporting Olive, her family has finally resolved their emotional problems with each other and given Olive the improved life she wanted.
In “The Shawshank Redemption”, the hero, Andy, has been unjustly sentenced to life imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit. Now the big question is how can Andy regain his freedom?
Andy tries to behave in prison and work in the prison laundry, but constantly gets raped by a gang. This threatens to make Andy’s life much worse and cause him to give up hope.
That’s when Andy eavesdrops on a conversation from a brutal prison guard who has inherited money but is upset about the problems paying taxes. Andy takes the huge risk to talk to this prison guard who initially threatens to toss Andy off the roof of a building and make it look like an accident.
However, Andy persists by explaining how the prison guard can keep all his inheritance, legally. Knowing Andy used to be a banker, the prison guard realizes that if he listens to Andy, he can keep his entire inheritance.
Soon the other prison guards start turning to Andy for financial advice and Andy starts doing their tax returns. As a favor for Andy’s financial help, the prison guards beat up the gang that had been raping Andy so they eliminate that danger to Andy for good.
Andy soon sets up an illegal money laundering scheme for the warden and while he gains many favors for doing so, he’s still trapped in prison. That’s when Andy decides to break out using a tunnel he’s been digging for the past twenty years. If he succeeds, he’ll be a free man but if he fails, he’ll be trapped in prison forever with no hope of escaping ever again.
Fortunately, Andy escapes, steals all of the warden’s illegal money, and even manages to leave clues for his friend and mentor, Red to join him in Mexico when he gets out of prison as well. By the end of the story, Andy has regained his freedom, gotten revenge against the villain (the prison warden), and reunited with his friend, Red, on the beaches of Mexico where they can both be free for the rest of their lives.
With the “Improve or escape a flawed life” emotional logline, the hero’s biggest fear is that they’ll be stuck in their current flawed life forever, or even something worse. In “Little Miss Sunshine”, Olive’s family not only doesn’t get along, but her parents are on the verge of divorcing, which will make Olive’s life even worse.
In “The Shawshank Redemption”, Andy risks staying in prison for the rest of his life. When his once chance to prove his innocence gets wiped out by the prison warden, that’s when Andy realizes he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison if he doesn’t find a way out.
In “Beauty and the Beast”, the hero, Belle, lives a boring but pleasant life in a small town, where she yearns for a more exciting life. However, to make her life worse, she’s being pursued by Gaston, an arrogant hunter who wants to marry her. Not only doesn’t Belle even like Gaston, but if he marries her, her life will definitely be even worse than before.
When Belle’s father gets captured by a Beast who lives in a castle, Belle takes the chance to change places with him and be the Beast’s prisoner in return for letting her father go free. Now Belle is trapped in a castle, which may or may not be an improvement over her old way of life living in a small but boring town.
Belle decides to make the best of living in the castle and explore while getting to know the servants, who have been turned into moving household objects. However, when Belle finds the enchanted rose that’s keeping the Beast in his present state, he yells at her and she runs away, only to be nearly killed by a pack of wolves.
The Beast saves Belle and they gradually develop a friendship. Life looks much better, but when Belle’s father gets into town and tells the townsfolk about the Beast, Gaston decides to commit him to an asylum so he can blackmail him into getting Belle to marry him.
Gaston now leads a mob of frightened townsfolk to storm the castle and kill the Beast. Seeing the Beast and Gaston fighting, Belle urges the Beast to spare Gaston, but Gaston stabs the Beast before falling to his death.
Belle now takes the chance to profess her love for the Beast as the last petal of the enchanted rose falls. Belle risks either breaking the magical spell or being stuck in love with a hideous Beast. That’s when the spell breaks and the Beast turns into a handsome prince.
Belle has finally fixed her flawed life and now lives the exciting life she’s already read about in books.
Improving or escaping a flawed life involves the hero taking two major steps. First, the hero takes action that partially fixed their flawed life but only on a temporary basis. When that temporary fix fails to last, the hero takes the biggest risk of all, and the success of that risk finally fixes the hero’s flawed life forever.
(Updated versions of “The 15-Minute Movie Method“, “Story Starter“, “Emotional Log Lines” and “Writing Scenes For Screenplays” are now available on Amazon.)
