Film Courage: I have a logline for you. It’s not very good so I’d like to run it by you?
Naomi Beaty, Writer, Screenwriting Teacher and Consultant: Okay.
Film Courage: I’m hoping we can deconstruct it. It’s not very clear and maybe you can help clean it up?
“A well-meaning librarian helps a prison writing group falling head-over-heels for someone entirely out of her circle of friends and peer group teaching her the meaning of true love.”
I know this sounds so cliché.
Naomi: Cool.
Film Courage: So it’s too long? Is it too confusing?
Naomi: Well I don’t think it’s necessarily too long. If you need that many words to convey the story then you need that many words. But I will say the thing that is a little bit confusing about it is that it felt like it jumped from one story to another. If I were going to help you workshop it I would ask you who is your protagonist?
Film Courage: The librarian. She’s highly educated and came from a liberal world but maybe more of a privileged world. She works in this library where they have a writing group and some of the individuals there have been incarcerated and now they’ve come out [to write stories].
Naomi: And what are we watching for sort of the bulk of the movie? Are watching her work with writers or…there was another part to the longline that I’ve forgotten now? Was it before she fell in love? Was there something else?
Film Courage: I think well-meaning? So maybe it shows her life wanting to be involved with community activism and things like that.
Naomi: I thought there was a part about her going outside of her circle of friends?…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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