Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Logline Critique Round One #19

TITLE: The House That Nobody Built
GENRE: Fantasy

Chuch-Ky is a petty conman, the least dangerous criminal in a prison of cyclopes, manticores and broken gods. When a riot breaks out, Chuch is mistaken for the man in the next cell over, Zhanjee the Butcher, an infamous soldier, and only Zhanjee’s reputation keeps Chuch uneaten. That same reputation gets him sucked into a conspiracy between the inmates to fortify their prison against the Munenori Empire that locked them up and now seeks to exterminate them. He is trapped between becoming prey or a casualty, when all he wants to do is run away.

10 comments:

  1. A few comments:
    -way too much detail for a logline. You can't introduce new terms in your world that you don't have time to explain
    -your protagonist is not choosing to enter this conflict and that makes it hard for us to engage in his quest
    -his quest is written in a way that makes him sound like a coward. You should try to re-word it so his escape sounds more like a victory.

    Good luck!
    Holly

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  2. Holly said all I wanted to, give us an active protagonist, not a victim.

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  3. Soooo much of this doesn't matter for a logline. The whole of the first three long sentences can be summed up in a fraction of those words. All we need to know is the hint of the setting you give with the cyclopes, manticore stuff and the word prison. You don't even necessarily need to point out that he's relatively harmless because that's implied in the fact that he's mistaken for a vicious murderer, in other words, he's not one.

    Lose details like the names that will mean nothing to us and clutter the picture we're trying to put together.

    Also, the "he just wants to run away" makes it sound like he wants to wimp out, in which case, why do I want to follow him around and watch him whine and try to avoid the interesting stuff?

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  4. If you said this to me instead of me reading it, I'd have to ask you to repeat it. Lots of detail and names that I think could be cut to make it easier to digest.

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  5. This is a nice query paragraph, but not a good logline. I feel like instead of naming Zhanjee, you should just say "the Butcher, an infamous soldier" and then say "the Butcher's reputation." "An infamous soldier" actually weakens the premise--if his name is Butcher, we get it. He's probably an awful killer.
    So I would take out the names (like Munenori Empire), and trim down a bit, and use this as a query paragraph, not a log-line.

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  6. The main thing this needs is what others have said -- fewer details and a clear (and if possible, noble) goal for the protagonist.

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  7. This is an interesting premise that's getting bogged down in details. Holly and Leah have given you great advice. Is there anything that would tempt him to give up his mistaken identity?

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  8. I think you could introduce Chuch-Ky, the mistaken identity, and his taking advantage of the mistake (maybe even why he does) all in one sentence (something like this, anyway)... "During a prison riot, Chuch-Ky is mistaken for the infamous Butcher and does what any great conman would. He plays along...." which leads to more conflict but at least he's alive... find a way to keep the "cyclopes, manticores, and broken gods" in there... why/how is he sucked into the conspiracy? Is it the only way to perpetuate the con and stay alive until he finds a way out? Or is he relying upon his prison mates to help him escape? I'm assuming these monsters will kill him if they find out who he really is, so what keeps him from trying to escape them entirely?

    In any case, it sounds very interesting... you just need to lose some details and shorten it into a nice, tight logline... also, be specific about his ultimate goal, what's keeping him from it, and the consequences if he does/doesn't accomplish that goal.

    Good luck!

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  9. I liked the opening suggested above by heatheriffle. I thought the problem with yours was simply the way it was written--it reads more like you're explaining your story that presenting it.

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  10. This is long overdue, but thank you all for the feedback. Petre Pan is dead-on - I went with query material when I should have done my homework on log lines. But you've all made it very clear how I needed to approach it, and it's helped me in a sort of crash course. Very grateful to all.

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