Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Logline Critique Round One #7

TITLE: Elemental Fire
GENRE: Upper MG Fantasy

Fourteen-year-old Brook discovers a Gate to another world in her physicist father's workshop. She inadvertently carries the Gate key, sought by a stranded madman determined to rewrite the ancient rules controlling travel between Tirasvara and parallel Earths. Brook must protect the key and the existence of all Gates, while fighting the temptation to use it and flee to a world where her mother still lives.

11 comments:

  1. Is Tirasvara the other world? I think you might want to clarify that connection in your first sentence. How did she end up with the Gate key? While this is not something you have to address in your logline, I wonder about it because the second sentence (which is a little long/clunky) suggests she's being chased, and I don't know how the madman found out she had the key. The last sentence is what most makes me want to read more--very intriguing dilemma.

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  2. Your goal is not very tangible. Will she be fighting this temptation and protecting the key forever or is this happening only until x happens? Also, the mother part should be in the setup. We need to know this before she is incited as it is her primary motivator.

    Good luck!
    Holly

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  3. I'm a little overwhelmed by all the details. Do we need to know where she finds the gate or her father's profession or the name of the parallel world? A little streamlining would make the premise stand out more clearly.

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  4. Why wouldn't her goal be to get her mother home? Why would she be tempted to abandon her mother?

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  5. May sound like a little thing, but I don't think you should capatalize "gate" in the logline, even if you do in the story. It's distracting and unnecessary to convey the idea of a passage into another world and that it's a Big Deal.

    Also, I'd lose "father's" in the first sentence. It makes the sentence awkward and he father doesn't seem necessary to establish the basic conflict and stakes.

    The second sentence is oncomplete or else not worded to sat what you mean, and is full of unnecessary detail besides. You mean that now a madman is now after her because she has the key and he wants it so her can change the past and the future of hundreds of worlds? Say that, not all the other stuff. Leave out the name of that other world and, honestly, if you make the non-proper-name descriptor plural, it can stand in for the "parallel earths" since they're as good as other worlds to her if she doesn't live in them. Or else lose the other world and just say alternate earths. Simplify. We can learn the exact identity and nature of these things in the actual story.

    The phrasing of the last sentence is a very bad way to set up the stakes. "Fighting temptation" isn't a concrete goal with an end point whereby she can have succeeded or failed. Give us the stakes. What happens if she doesn't protect the key? Lay that out as the final punch that makes us wonder what happens next.

    Besides, is her alternate dead in that other world or is she just going to show up as a duplicate Brook? Is she ditching her dad for her mom? You want specific enough to make the uniqueness of your story evident but not so specific you leave us scratching our heads.

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  6. OMG typos. (Mine, not yours.) Ugh. Hope you can still tell what I mean.

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  7. The middle sentence grows too convoluted; give the madman his own sentence to clear up his circumstances and conflict with Brook. I agree with Lyla, though, that the closing sentence sounds very interesting. You just need to build up its punch more clearly preceding it.

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  8. I very much like it, but the sentence "She inadverntently . . . parallel Earths" is much too long. Also, you may want to include who she is protecting the key from?

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  9. http://makeyourbookamovie.com/building-the-perfect-logline-for-your-book-screenplay-or-other-story/441/

    "When the young daughter of a (renowned?) physicist stumbles upon a mysterious key, she is torn between . . . ."

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  10. This is a little disjointed. The sentence at the end would seem to indicate that she already knew about the Gate because she's aware her mother still lives on another world. But in the first sentence you say Brook discovers the Gate. Why is rewriting the rules controlling travel a bad thing?

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  11. Good start, just streamline it. The capital on Gate threw me off, and I also found it strange that a madman was after her even though she didn't know she held the key. Will something terrible happen if she reunites with her mother? What must she sacrifice in order to reach her goal?

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