With character-driven, I’d spend most of my time connecting character to audience. It’s literally the story of a girl, and the girl is more important than necessarily each plot point that happens to her. The title is pretty indicative of the contents. Let’s look at Sara Zarr’s excellent Story of a Girl. With character-driven books, the former part of the logline construction becomes more important. The Hunger Games nails some strong character work, but I would argue that it’s primarily plot-driven, or “high concept.” You should probably be aware early on whether you’re writing a more character-driven or plot-driven story. If I’m working on a contemporary realistic novel, the “plot to market” part is less salient because we’re not exactly within the confines of any buzzy genre. Fiction Loglines in Character-Driven Novels Notice that here, even the character part involves plot (it focuses on Katniss volunteering). (Volunteering for a “fight to the death” contest is a really ballsy thing to do, so we automatically want to learn more.) So to put it together, “A girl volunteers herself to save those she loves in a world where children fight to the death to keep the population under the control of a cruel government.” That’s a bit long, and not necessarily elegant, but it definitely hits all of the high notes of the market at that time, while also appealing emotionally to the audience. To connect the plot to the market, I would’ve said something like, “…in a world where children fight to the death to keep the population under the control of a cruel government.” This says to the book or film agent, “Dystopian! Right here! Get your dystopian!” Putting Your Novel Pitch Together That’s not so much the case anymore, but if I had been pitching this story at that time, I would’ve definitely capitalized on the sinister dystopian world building. At the time that the first Hunger Games was published, dystopian fiction was white hot as a genre. When you pitch your plot, you always want to be thinking about where it fits in the marketplace. For example, with Hunger Games, Katniss would be “A girl hell-bent on survival…” or “A girl who volunteers herself to save those she loves…” This is a way of getting your audience on board. First, begin your logline with your character and their main struggle. That said, my surefire way to think about loglines is as follows:ġ) Connect your character to your audience Nailing it in one sentence is more of an exercise for you than a requirement of getting published. If not, you can still pitch an agent or editor with a query or a one-minute summation of your story at a conference or if you do happen to be stuck with them in an elevator. The first secret to crafting a good logline is that you should probably stop freaking out about it. Boiling down an entire book into four pages? Doable.
If you think queries and synopses are hard, fiction loglines are often a whole new world of pain for writers.
Example of a logline how to#
Most Writers Struggle With How to Write a Logline An epic novel pitch session is about to go down. However, not everyone’s book fits the “meets” way of doing this, so they’re left with constructing their own short sentence to encapsulate their work. It is the same as the “ elevator pitch” or your snappy “meets” comparison ( Harry Potter meets Where the Wild Things Are!). When I talk about how to write a logline, I mean crafting a quick and effective sales pitch for your story.
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