Crafting the Dreaded Logline

Hi everyone,

Today I thought I’d talk about that tricksy little sentence – the logline. The logline is also known as a ‘pitch’ and even sometimes referred to as the ‘elevator pitch’. So called in the off chance you happen to barrel up a hapless editor in an elevator and pitch your novel. You’ve only got a few seconds before those doors open, so you need a sentence that’s short, sharp and grabs their attention.

*Note an elevator is one thing. Please do not follow the so called hapless editor to the bathroom still pitching your idea because that’s just a bit creepy.*

 

A logline can be useful when pitching a story both in person, online or even in your query letter. It can also stop the ‘eye glaze’ when your nearest & dearest ask ‘So what’s your book about?’

However they can also be a bugger to write. It’s very difficult to take your entire story and condense it down to one sentence, whilst still keeping the essence of it. It takes a bit of practice (and maybe a Zen moment with a cup of tea) but if you persist you can conquer the logline.

 

The trick is not only getting as much of the pertinent information into that one little sentence but also keeping it slick.

I’ve broken down a handful of my own loglines in the hope that they could help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So grab your story and have a go. See if you can compress your story into a finely crafted sentence. Go on, I know that you can do it! J

 

Some publishers will call for pitches using loglines. For example Carina Press has just held their #CarinaPitch on Twitter. Here you not only had to have a logline but it had to meet the Twitter criteria of consisting of 140 characters.

Julianna Keyes wrote a very interesting article on crafting 140 character loglines. I’ve included the link -

http://www.juliannakeyes.com/-carinapitch.html

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

Nicóle xx