ORIGINAL
True love blossoms between a newspaperman and a Western woman until her secret obsession threatens to pull them apart.
REDO
A newspaperman falls for a female miner but her insane obsession with gold forces him to ultimately abandon her in the wilderness.
ORIGINAL
During the recession, a computer-code writer is forced to take a job at a vegetarian co-op, where he learns the value of the organic rather than the synthetic.
REDO
An unemployed computer-code writer is forced to take a job at a vegetarian co-op, and discovers that superfood can do more for the brain than his expensive new mind-mastery program.
ORIGINAL
A stay-at-home mom struggles to keep her family from knowing about her past when it comes back to haunt her and threatens to drag her back into her old job.
REDO
A stay-at-home mom successfully hides that she was once a spy, until a vengeful ex-associate forces her to return to the job when he threatens her new family.
ORIGINAL
A vagrant must keep a magical bird safe at all costs because its song can do amazing things, causing others to try to steal it for their own purposes.
REDO
A vagrant’s magic nightingale’s song gives eternal youth, so he must keep the bird from being stolen by a king bent on immortality.
As you can see, being specific supplies the details that tell you what is special and different about the story, which provides exactly what you need to sell it—or just to get someone else to want to read it or view it.
But what about how the logline sounds? Let’s explore what other elements are involved in a top-notch logline.
Chapter 14
The Voice
I’VE BEEN ASKED ABOUT VOICE BY QUITE A FEW WRITERS over the years. My personal opinion is that if you can give a hint of the voice of your story in the logline, it helps, but it’s not a necessity. It’s much more important that the three main elements are there and that the length is right, rather than whether or not the sentence adequately reflects the writer’s voice. Besides, if the logline has done what it’s supposed to do, then your audience will ultimately be reading your full manuscript, which will, of course, give them the absolute best example of your voice.
That said, if your project has a quirky feel or a funny delivery, it’s probably a good idea to have that be indicated by your vocabulary choices in your logline. It falls into the category of letting readers know what kind of journey they are in for, one of the main anchors of a good logline. Again, adjusting for voice is not always a necessity, but sometimes it can make enough of a difference that it’s worth the effort.
Here’s a good example in which I aided a writer in punching up her logline by helping her infuse it with the same humor as her original story:
ORIGINAL
A blonde woman buys and runs a junkyard to earn money to bail her silly brother out of jail.
There’s actually nothing specifically wrong with this original logline, and we certainly could have left it as it was, but the original is missing one key thing: It doesn’t truly give a feel for how outrageous the writing is. While the logline uses words like “silly” and indicates that there is some comedy involved, I really felt that an overhaul with a bit more of the writer’s funny and broad voice could help it out a great deal.
REDO
A big-breasted bombshell bumbles through running a junkyard to earn money to bail her underwear-stealing brother out of jail.
The carefully chosen new vocabulary, along with being much more specific overall, helped give this logline more of the slapstick comedic flair that the original material offers readers. We are now hinting at the voice of the piece because, in this particular case, it’s a useful selling tool to let the reader know more about the tone of the material.
Here’s another example where I worked with a content creator to focus on the true scariness of his story and emphasize the horror aspect with specific vocabulary choices, in order to make his logline have a much more powerful voice:
ORIGINAL
A college girl is determined to stop the curse in which a spooky house claims the life of a sorority sister every Friday the 13th and turns her into a witch.
This logline is deficient in both the specificity and stakes arenas, but more important, it lacks some carefully chosen horror-based vocabulary, which could give it a stronger selling voice. Here’s the rough redone version:
REDO
A college girl must stop undead souls from killing sorority sisters and reincarnating them as cannibalistic witches, or suffer the same fate.
What we essentially did to fix the original sentence was focus the logline’s voice on precise elements of the horror genre. I asked the writer to be truly specific about what in the house attacked these girls as well as what happened to them once they were taken. When he revealed that undead souls nabbed the sorority sisters and then reincarnated them as witches who gruesomely ate others, I knew we had to emphasize those creepy elements in order to give the logline a much-needed boost and a stronger voice in its particular genre.
Sometimes, however, honing the voice of the logline isn’t about more clearly defining the genre. Many times, the voice of the logline simply comes from concentrating on what makes the project unique. Let’s go back to the Die Hard-type project at Film Engine:
A highly superstitious, world-renowned biological warfare expert must save the president’s life armed only with smarts and a four-leaf clover.
It’s the focus on the fact that he’s superstitious and therefore carrying around a clover that gives the logline its voice. If I hadn’t focused on what made the story different, the voice in the logline wouldn’t be clear, because it would sound like just another Die Hard-type project.
The voice question is not always only about careful choices or particular vocabulary for flavor, either. It’s even more important to make sure that your logline is written with an active voice rather than a passive voice. The difference is this: A passive voice feels like your character is being led through events, while an active voice makes it clear that your protagonist’s actions move the plot along. The leads are actually choosing what to do, which in turn pushes the story forward.
Let’s explore the difference active rather than passive voice can make to the logline overall. Below is an example of shifting a logline from passive to active voice. The first example, written by a new writer, has much less going for it than the second logline, which we created together:
ORIGINAL
An amnesiac astronaut had vowed to stop an opposing race from annihilating Earth, but he had discovered the aliens had stolen his lost memories and ultimately, he believes he will be forced to choose between completing his quest to recover his memories and working to ensure the survival of the planet.
REDO
An amnesiac astronaut had vowed VOWS to stop an opposing race from annihilating Earth, but he had discovered the aliens had stolen his lost memories and ultimately, he believes he will be forced to MUST choose between completing his quest to recoverING his memories and working to ensureING the PLANET’S survival of the planet.
CLEAN
An amnesiac astronaut vows to stop an opposing race from annihilating Earth but must choose between recovering his memories and ensuring the planet’s survival.
The redone logline is clearly more powerful, and not just because it’s much shorter. The change from passive voice to active voice emphasizes that this is happening right now and is extremely urgent. This is important when marketing your story, as it makes it feel imperative—an essential element when selling a story. The urgency of the action makes what’s happening feel significant.
Additionally, it’s always of paramount importance to have an active protagonist versus a passive protagonist, since we follow that person throughout the piece. Who wants to invest their time in a character who isn’t dynamically leading the process of events alo
ng?
Here’s another example where we made some shifts from passive voice to active voice:
ORIGINAL
A camera is found by a boy who discovers that deadly images were taken and he wants to figure out why, and wants to try to fix it, before everyone he’s taken a snapshot of ends up deceased.
REDO
A camera is found by a boy FINDS A CAMERA who discovers that PRODUCES deadly images were taken and he wants to MUST figure out why, and wants to try to fix it, before everyone he’s taken a IN THE snapshotS of ends up dead.
CLEAN
A boy finds a camera that produces deadly images and must figure out why and fix it before everyone in the snapshots ends up dead.
The redone logline is obviously more powerful, but why? First of all, the camera isn’t “found by the boy;” the boy “finds” the camera. (The boy is the protagonist, not the camera.) The active participation involved in finding something rather than simply allowing it to be found is what makes all the difference. Additionally, deadly images weren’t “taken”—past tense. Instead, the camera “produces”—present tense—deadly images. These images are being created right now, not eons ago. Overall, these may seem like subtle changes and shifts, but re-read the two versions of the same logline:
ORIGINAL
A camera is found by a boy who discovers that deadly images were taken and he wants to figure out why, and wants to try to fix it, before everyone he’s taken a snapshot of ends up deceased.
REDO
A boy finds a camera that produces deadly images and must figure out why and fix it before everyone in the snapshots ends up deceased.
You can easily see the difference. Better results occur when these changes are made, because they give both the events and the actions immediacy, so the import of what is happening is front and center.
In the end, though, it’s most important that you spend your time focusing on ending up with a single tight sentence that highlights what distinguishes your story from others in the same genre, and is as powerful as you can make it. If you do that, then worrying about the voice becomes less of an issue.
To this point, we’ve gotten through the basic steps for creation of a top-notch, one-sentence selling tool like no other. Now we need to concentrate our efforts on finessing. Attaining a great marketing tool is all about that final important push to make the logline just that much tighter and just that much better.
Chapter 15
Finessing
ONCE YOU GET THE STRUCTURE OF YOUR LOGLINE IN shape, it is important to work on taking it from rough draft to final by further tweaking the vocabulary and picking more dynamic words that add to the overall drama. For example, writing that a character “wants to” do something is okay, but writing that a character is “desperate to” do something adds a sense of urgency that the logline would otherwise lack. Making changes of this nature can help you sell your tale as an exciting journey. Your word choices during the logline creation process, just as when you write your story, can strongly influence the reader, so it’s worth the time to carefully finesse and polish until your logline has the most possible impact.
Consider the ways you might describe what’s going on in your story. A “poor” man is just someone without funds, but a “destitute” man is someone who is so broke that he is at the end of his rope, which is more dynamic and more powerful. Someone who is “building” a machine is just a person assembling something, but someone who is “creating” a machine is crafting or inventing something, which sounds more unique and makes the character come across as imaginative. If someone “holds on to” an object, they are just keeping it, but if they are “hoarding” that same object, it conveys more worth, because it’s something that feels like it’s being guarded and valued in some way. I am always surprised by what one deceptively simple word change can do to the perception of certain elements in a story.
I had a project at one time called The Amazing Days of Abby Hayes, based on the 22-book series by Anne Mazer. Here’s an example of an early draft of the logline I crafted for it, though I knew it still needed some additional finessing:
A young girl in a family of geniuses must find the one thing she is good at, or resign herself to a life of ordinariness.
It was tough to find a way for the journey to sound dynamic, since the stakes are not exactly life and death. But after finessing it for a while, “find” became “uncover,” and I added the word “special” to show how difficult the search would be. I also changed “is good at” to “excels at,” both because it was shorter (remember, ten dollars per word) and because it raised the stakes. Lastly, I switched “ordinariness” to “insignificance” because it seemed more extreme and therefore more powerful. Compare the two examples, just one draft apart:
ORIGINAL
A young girl in a family of geniuses must find the one thing she is good at, or resign herself to a life of ordinariness.
REDO
A young girl in a family of geniuses must UNCOVER the one SPECIAL thing she EXCELS at, or resign herself to a life of INSIGNIFICANCE.
As you can see here, a little finessing has made a big difference to the overall perception of the protagonist’s journey. Never underestimate the power of changing even one word.
For those of you paying attention, you might be wondering why I left in the word “young.” This story has a strong family dynamic, so it was important for the reader to understand that Abby is the youngest in her family pecking order, because that element soundly affects how she sees herself. Her character’s main weakness (and what motivates her journey) is that because she’s the youngest she continuously compares her own accomplishments to those of the older members of her family. Thus, in this instance, the adjective was just too important to cut.
Here’s another great example of finessing. I had what I thought was my final logline for this family film, but I still felt like there was something missing. It just didn’t have the impact I was hoping for. See what happened when I changed only a few words:
ORIGINAL
A baker has dough that comes to life, but once it rises he can’t control what he’s made, which puts his town at risk.
REDO
A baker CREATES dough that comes to life, but once it rises he can’t control THE WILD ANIMALS he’s made, which puts his ENTIRE town IN PERIL.
“Creates” is a strong word, because it implies that there was some imagination or invention involved in the process. I chose to be more specific about what the baker made by adding “the wild animals,” since I felt that it gave a better picture of the danger to the town. I also used “entire town” for the scope (and therefore impact) it added. Lastly, I switched “at risk” to “in peril” because that made the logline more dramatic.
Here’s another example of some necessary tweaking. A content creator brought me a great version of her logline after attending one of my seminars at Grub Street’s Muse and the Marketplace. I was impressed with her changes, but I was even more impressed that, as good as it was, she still wanted me to show her how to make it stronger. So we took the time to sit down at lunch and do some little final changes. Below, you can see what a difference that extra half hour of work made to the overall logline.
ORIGINAL
An amputee wants to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, a journey during which every other member of her family has died before.
REDO
A LEG amputee IS DETERMINED to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, a journey THAT ALREADY KILLED BOTH HER PARENTS AND SISTER.
By being specific about the protagonist’s injury (leg amputee) the revised logline more powerfully underscores the difficulties inherent in climbing that mountain. It’s not that the word “amputee” by itself doesn’t show that as well, but by adding the leg element it highlights an even greater degree of difficulty. Additionally, explicitly mentioning “her parents and her sister” rather than the amorphous “every other member of her family” gives more emotion and meaning to the journey because now
we get a little sense of how close she was to these folks who perished undertaking the same dangerous expedition. Remember, you can never go wrong by being more specific when it comes to your logline.
During the finessing step is also the time to take another look at the length of your sentence and really ask yourself if anything else can be taken out, if there is any way to shorten it, even by a single word. Here’s an example from which I took out just a tiny bit of excess text, but it made the logline shorter and tighter, and therefore more impactful:
ORIGINAL
A baby-crazy woman breaks into a local sperm bank and attempts to impregnate herself with the samples before the police can arrest her.
REDO
A baby-crazy woman breaks into a local sperm bank and attempts to impregnate herself with the samples before the police can arrest her.
CLEAN
A baby-crazy woman breaks into a sperm bank and attempts to impregnate herself before police arrest her.
The initial logline was good, but the final is better. And if I had to do a quick pitch of this property to an exec while in a meeting or walking to lunch, I’d much rather pitch the clean redo than my longer original.
Finessing is the final part of the logline creation process, and sometimes the changes are relatively small, but I find that it always makes a very big difference to the overall logline in the end. By taking the time to finesse, you could quite possibly turn a “maybe I’ll read it” into a solid “yes.”
Chapter 16
Usage
WELL, YOU’VE GONE THROUGH THE PROCESS AND you’ve finally got a top-notch logline under your belt. So what do you do with it? Most importantly, memorize it. That way, the next time you are at a backyard barbecue with a friend, in an elevator with an executive, or a room at a writers’ conference filled with literary agents, when someone asks the standard question, “What is your story about?” you’ve got the perfect answer ready to go. Trust me, you’ll be thanking me when you’ve managed to pop out a great answer to the most frequently asked, most dreaded question content creators face.
Sell Your Story in Single Sentence Page 8
