Messing up the prophecy would destory all his father stood for.

To me, it sounds like it is saying "a prophecy that could destroy all his father stood for", and I figured you meant messing up the prophecy could destroy all his father stood for. You confirmed that it did mean what I was thinking it did, so it seems like it needs to be clarified somehow. Otherwise, the structure of the logline seems good to me.

Yeah, clarifying that might be good, but I'd like to do that while keeping the prophecy's importance and staying awkwardness-free.

Sounds good.

What's this?! People talking about loglines when I'm not here?!

I'm thrilled, actually! Ira, I'm liking where this is going. Jonathan, good work on the critique.

And I can't come up with anything else, really, so... Carry on!

*grins*

I worked on it some more and came up with this:

Title: The Last Pegasi (same disclaimer as above)
Genre: Fantasy
Logline: When a bitter tanner vows vengence against the creature that killed his father, his misguided bloodlust threatens to upset a prophecy that upholds all that his father stood for.

I'm a little worried about the second use of 'his'. To me it comes off as slightly awkward.... *ponders*

Hmm... that one seems very close. What do you think of this:

That is perfect! Thanks, Jonathan.

I'm glad I could help.

I'm not good at cramming things into one sentence, but I'll give this a try:

TITLE: The Secret Ember (apt to change)
GENRE: Fantasy
LOGLINE: When a girl is sent on a dangerous mission, she seeks to know the truth, but gets a weighty decision thrown on her instead.

Welcome!

What you have right now is a vague description that could be anything, really. How can you quantify the situation?

Or, if you want an easier assignment to start with, try this: Your main character right now is simple a "girl." Who is she? Put an adjective in front of her name. Maybe she's insecure, or flighty, or determined, or... Yeah, you get the picture. Bonus points if you come up with a better noun than "girl" too!

Thanks for the critique. I do have tendencies to be rather vague in my writing.
Is this any better?
When a chandler's daughter get's arrested for the king's service, she must dig to find the truth that has been hidden from her, but what she discovers is that she must make a decision between those she loves and the good of a kingdom.

Getting better.

It's still vague, though. What is the situation here? Can you quantify it?

Eh...do you accept different genres here?
Supposing you do, here's the closest thing I've ever written to a logline, and I'm sure it needs professional help, hence me bringing it here.

Title: Pandemic: A Global Holocaust
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi
Logline: In the wake of a nanovirus that pushed humanity to the brink of extinction, two young people face the harsh reality that they are the only survivors in the (former) U.S.

Oh, we have loglines from all sorts of genres on all three HW forums where there are threads for this. No problem.

You have a great setup here. What I'm left wondering is what happens next. How does this move forward? You might try rewriting to something like...

The only survivors of an epidemic must [you fill in the blank].

@Lycanis: I believe it would even be better/more specific if you said "...two young people must face the..." but that's not necessarily where you are taking the story. (And not neccessarily perfect: I'm not the expert here. )

Must is a fantastic logline word. More on that here, if you're interested: http://phantommoose.com/2011/08/30/its- ... be-forced/

Okay, third attempt :
When a chandler's daughter gets a forced assignment to search for an important map, she uncovers a mysterious history which results in a choice between the family she loves and the good of a kingdom.

Also, could you maybe explain what you mean by quantify, please?

Quantify? It's exactly what you just did! (Rather well, I might add.)

I would think about trying to chip down some words. For example, the latter half could probably be:

"...mysterious history which results in a choice between..."

But otherwise, this is pretty good!

*was interested, and enjoyed reading* I wish I could major in loglines.

There's a whole book coming just as soon as I can get the self-publishing stuff squared away.

Sorry for taking so long to come back! Thanks for the critique, Jordan, and the suggestion, Ira.

Okay, let's see...

"Two young people must face the harsh reality that they are alone in the former US; in a race against time, they struggle to reach the wilderness of Alaska before the nanovirus acclimates to them and round two of the Pandemic begins."

Hum...is that any better?

Oh and I read some of your article, unfortunately I don't have the time to read the whole thing yet, but I'll leave the tab open for now.

That appears to have all the information needed, so it seems like it just needs some pruning, perhaps like this:

Jonathan's rewrite is good, but there's one key issue with both:

The nanovirus is mentioned as a given item that you should already know about by the time it comes up in the logline. That's why I started with, "The only survivors of an epidemic..." because that introduced the concept.

I'm actually wondering if the nanovirus even needs to exist in the logline. It's a very specific word for something that doesn't necessarily matter for getting the point.

How about...



You would want to explain why Alaska is the goal, by the way. I assume it's because the climate isn't friendly to nanoviruses...

*grins* I can't wait.

Yay! Thanks so much for the advice, and I see what you mean about cutting out some words *scrolls back to edit logline*.

I think that sounds good, my logline has been screaming bloody murder from all the snipping performed on it, but now it tells me it never felt better, so thanks! One thing I'd want to change is the word epidemic, the word pandemic (my understanding of it anyway) means a world-wide epidemic, which is what it is in the story. So the final draft would be:

...yeah, there are gaps in my reasons for Alaska, I'm thinking it's where they should go because it is remote (the part they're going to is anyway) and therefore will not have the virus there (because it doesn't survive for long if it isn't at least on a person if not inside them), but the climate reason could work, too.

*chuckling* Oh, man, I am BAD at logline type stuff.

But here you go.

Title: Of the Element
Genre: Fantasy
Logline:The twisted tale of a young woman, thrown into a world she does not understand, asked to make good decisions and forced to pay the consequences for the bad ones.


Yuck...I wrote it and I already don't like it.

go ahead and blast it into oblivion.

Glad you're participating!

Here's a simple assignment for starters. There's more to do than this, but this one is easy enough.

Take what you have here and rewrite it to begin with, "A young woman is thrown into..."

(Bonus assignment: Find a good adjective for said young woman.)

A rebellious young woman, thrown into a world she does not understand, learns the importance of her decisions, and the consequences she must pay for past mistakes.

There we go!

Okay, now try this...

"world she does not understand" "importance of her decisions" "consequences...past mistakes" are all vague and could be anything. What is unique about this story? Be specific.

*grimace*

There isn't a lot that's unique about this story. It's largely an exercise for me to practice characterization.

But let's see...the world she does not understand would be court, the political arena.

The importance of her decisions has to do with the fact that she's a completely free agent, in league with no political faction, and also extremely powerful. Leaving her with many choices/enemies.

And...the consequences of past mistakes basically means a love interest continuing to haunt her after she's married.

By the way I forgot to say thank you for helping me out with this logline stuff, Jordan and Jonathan and Sui!

Y'think? Watch this.



A rebellious young [some word for a person with no political faction] is thrown into the political arena where she is faced with decisions that will impact her world's livelihood.

Not perfect at all, but you tossed out enough information to make it interesting. Does the above help you?

Glad to help, Lycanis.

*watches Jordan work his magic*

Yes, it does. Thx!

A rebellious young renegade is thrown into the political arena where she is faced with decisions that will affect the fate of the world forever....



Dun, dun, DUN....

(I smile because I actually have an ancient picture file somewhere on an old computer that is titled "Dun dun dun!!" or something to that effect.)

So now I ask... Can you make the decisions concrete? For example, is she faced with, oh, okaying a nuclear bombing (crazy example)? Put that sort of thing in there.

So... I have a little opportunity coming up here!

My logline book is just about ready for primetime. I'm putting the finishing touches on it (mostly just the self-publishing stuff) and I hope to have it available in June!

I'm looking for people who would like to review the book on their blogs and help me promote it. Here's what I'm thinking:

- I'll pick some awesome folks to review the book. They'll get a promo code for a free copy on Smashwords. (The number of awesome folks is not quantified at the moment. It entirely depends on the response I get to this. Basically, if you have a blog and some people reading it, I'll be thrilled if you ask for a code. However, if I get swamped with requests, I reserve the right to be choosy. That said, I'm a nice guy, so give it a shot. )

- Said awesome folks review the book on their blogs.

- Said awesome folks will furthermore receive two or three promo codes for more free Smashwords copies to give away as they see fit. They are encouraged to be creative with this because...

- Said awesome folks will be eligible to win a signed printed copy of the book, given by me to the person with the promo code giveaway that I like bestest. (This, of course, requires that these awesome folks tell me how they gave away their codes.) I love quirky, creative ideas for giving things away, so use your imagination.

Sound like something you'd do? E-mail me: jordan (AT) smithsrus (DOT) com

Include a link to your blog, tell me who you are, why you're excited about my book, whatever you want. I'll put you on my list of people to send review copies to once I have the book published.

(Note: There is nobody on this list as of right now. Nobody. Not even people who were pre-readers. I may contact my pre-readers about this, but I don't guarantee that I'll remember, so if you're interested, you should e-mail me even if you've already read this thing.)

If I had a blog, I would. But sorry.


Her decisions are more in line with, "You're the only person powerful enough to defeat the Emperor," vs. "At the side of the Emperor, you could singlehandedly defeat all rebellion and rule in peace and quiet," vs. "You could overthrow everyone and set up your own government", vs. "It isn't right to possess so much power."

That's good stuff. Can you fit it into your logline?

I know I haven't been here in a while, but I'm finally going to get my logline done and done!

Peacekeeper's Essence
Fantasy
Waking within a dark forest, a lonely dragon that remembers nothing but her name and her love must depend on an assortment of odd creatures for her very survival and to save the father she never knew.

That's the spirit!



I would probably take off the opening clause, just because it doesn't tell us much that we couldn't get from a simple rearranging. Such as, "A lonely dragon awakens in a forest, remembering only her name and her love…"

Which brings me to the second thing. What does it mean that she remembers her love? Is this her love as in another dragon she likes, or is this love as in a driving force behind what she does? (I know, the two aren't mutually exclusive!)

What's she surviving from?

There's a lot of good stuff in here... Just needs a little re-jiggering!

Okay.. I see how the opening should be tweaked. The 'love' would be her crush, but it doesn't exactly become noticed until about 1/5 through the story, and doesn't develop properly until the very end. To be honest, it's more of a crippling concept than good, since she has to battle uncertainly and painful remorse she holds against her father for leaving her when she was young. She doesn't trust males for that reason, even if she can't remember the reason why. I could easily leave out the 'love' part since it's the absence of memory that's important.

And she's trying to survive in a world where she doesn't know a thing about the sorcerer that is tracking her, along with a tyrant queen who wants to use her to get her father to tell the queen vital information for something big she's planning. The sorcerer has other plans but they don't have to be addressed in the logline. What's at stake is keeping the peace between the three worlds, that being the skyworld (may or may not be used in the final draft), the surfaceworld (that would be the normal world where most races are from... just normal. How else do you describe it?), and the underworld (a prison where evil creatures must be contained). So she needs to react to her calling as a Peacekeeper to... keep the peace.

Sounds like you have a kind of breakdown of what you can do with the next version of the logline. I don't see anything wrong with your analysis, so go for it!

I have no idea how I would...

Okay, no worries. Here's what you had before:

A rebellious young renegade is thrown into the political arena where she is faced with decisions that will affect the fate of the world forever....

Here's what you told me about the decisions:



So let's see what we can do with combining the two...

A rebellious young renegade is thrown into the political arena where she is faced with the decision between joining the Emperor or overthrowing him.

I'd look for an adjective for the Emperor, and if this is a story about the renegade trying to bring peace to the world, I'd try to put that in there before the decision. So I'd likely end up with something like this (story details likely to be incorrect):

A rebellious young renegade is thrown into the political arena where she hopes to change the world, but she is faced with the decision between peacefully joining the autocratic Emperor or helping the rebellion to overthrow him.

A rebellious young renegade is thrown into the political arena where she realizes that any choices she makes will change the world; she can either peacefully uphold an oppressive regime or flagrantly support an weakly scrupled resistance, a choice between two betrayals.

Getting there! That part about a choice between two betrayals is really making this one shine, in my opinion.

What if you moved that part earlier? Kind of like...

When a rebellious young renegade is thrown into the political arena, she is faced with a choice between betraying either an oppressive regime or a weakly scrupled resistance.

That's still not quite there... Anybody have any ideas how this could be made better?

Okay... so here's my attempted log line. Beat it up. Crush it. Smash it. Melt it. And make it better.

"As a Minoan civilian witnesses the rise of the Olympians, he writes a first hand record to make clear the rumors that this evil race is not the race of the gods, for he knows that there is only One True God, and he also wants to share his motivations for attempting to defeat this people."

Now there's an interesting story idea!

What I'm thinking here is that you want to specify right away that these are the Greek gods and goddesses, because when you started with Olympians, I thought it was just Greek civilization.

The motivations bit at the end is a little clunky... Could you give the civilian an adjective that would convey his motivations? I'm not entirely sure we need to know he's a Minoan civilian. Even something like "priest of God" would work. (Though I obviously could be going the wrong way with that!)

So, putting all of that together, I'd be re-writing to something like this:

A priest of God recounts his first-hand story of the rise of the Olympian deities as he seeks to convince his people that the Olympians are not truly gods.

That still needs work, but I'd run in that direction.