Logline

Graeme Simsion writes in his book The Novel Project that the first step in the process of telling a story is to develop the premise, a single sentence that describes your novel; that is, a logline. This is the most compelling thing you can do to achieve success, and occurs at the very beginning of the project. 

 

So, Phase 1 of the project is "Concept", and the first task is to come up with a logline.

But what is a logline exactly? How to break down this task into something formulaic? Because it is formulaic.

I attended an excellent webinar presented by the Queensland Writers Centre in January 2022 called “Preparing for Submission” by Chris Grace. 

Chris broke the logline down using this formula:

Logline Formula = Protagonist + Inciting Incident + Protagonist’s Goal + Central Conflict

So, first I created the following table based on the formula:

 

Next, I filled in the table:

 

Resulting in a drafted logline like this:

A young martian colonist fights to save his home when mercenaries attack Mars for its advantage in the asteroid rush for resources.

I now have a working draft that reads:

"A young martian colonist fights to save his home when mercenaries attack Mars for its advantage in the asteroid rush for resources."

Or, alternatively:

"A young martian colonist fights to defend his home when mercenaries attack Mars for its unique advantage in the asteroid rush."