Month: October 2010

Loglines, Part Deux

Another week, another round of loglines on Authoress Anon’s blog, and I have to say, I was pretty impressed overall. I don’t think I read a single logline without a clearly defined (and described!) main character.  I also found that almost all loglines made the main character’s goals quite clear and most even stated the conflict and the consequences. If I had to point out two things that I noticed a few times, they would be these:

1) Loglines are usually about the main character’s outer goal and the outer goal has to be tangible. Does this mean you can’t write your logline about the inner goal? Not necessarily. But outer goals are the ones that are routed in the concept and that tends to be the unique hook a novel offers. Sure, maybe you can find a way to create a character arc that is totally unique, but I’m willing to guess that it’s going to be pretty hard.

2) Consequences (or stakes) cannot be wishy washey. Take these examples:

a) If Bob doesn’t return the diamond, Gino is going to cut his throat.

b) If Bob doesn’t return the diamond, Gino might cut his throat.

c) If Bob doesn’t return the diamond, Gino might possibly do something really bad to some people.

The point of these examples is to show that A is a rock solid consequence,  B is a possible consequence and C is just something vague that may or may not happen to someone. What you want in a logline is A. Yes, it may be more complicated than that in your book. Doesn’t matter. For the purposes of your logline, you need these consequences to be crystal clear.

3) I said I only had two items but I just thought of a third. Don’t confuse your obstacles with your goal. For example:

I need to make a cake for a birthday party tomorrow.

This is a goal.

I need my husband to get home soon so I can borrow his car to go to the store so I can buy eggs that I need to make a cake for a birthday party tomorrow.

Up until the “need to make a cake” part, what I’ve listed are the obstacles that are going to make my goal more difficult. For the purposes of the logline, we don’t need these.

I’ve just read that Authoress is going to do another round next week. OY! I guess I’ll see you then!

The Critical Choice

In my post, The Five Stages of a Character Arc, I mentioned that a character’s arc is basically their journey from their identity to their essence. What I want to talk about today is the thing that happens at the end of stage four: the critical choice.

According to Dr. Phil McGraw, we are the people we are today because of three types of external factors. One of these is called the Seven Critical Choices. Here is the definition from McGraw’s Web site:

Seven Critical Choices: There are a surprisingly small number of choices that rise to the level of life-changing ones. Critical choices are those that have changed your life, positively or negatively, and are major factors in determining who and what you will become. They are the choices that have affected your life up to today, and have set you on a path.

The reason I am quoting Dr. Phil is not because I have decided to take up Pop Psychology. It’s also not because I am the next future guest host of Oprah. Although…wait, no.

The reason I am bringing this up is because every great story is about one of these critical choices and that choice is made at the end of stage four (the climax of the story). Let’s look at the example from my previous post:

After Fiona runs into her ex-boyfriend, Jake asks her for another date and she refuses because she believes he will dump her just like her ex did, even though Jake has given her no reason to think this. Her sassy gay friend finds out, slaps her across the face and sends her on her way.

What happens next? Fiona makes a choice: either give in to her fears and let Jake walk away forever, or listen to her sassy gay friend and go after Jake. Obviously, she picks the latter choice.  Maybe she marries Jake. Maybe they have three wonderful children and a dog named Buck.  The point is that Fiona makes a critical choice that changes the direction of her life and if you want your readers to feel like your main character has gone through a similar life-changing transformation, he/she must make one too.

Loglines

In preparation for her December Agent Auction, the fabulous Authoress let people submit trial loglines on her blog today. Because she was so gracious to use my logline formula, I thought I should return the favor and critique all of the entries.

In case you didn’t see it, the formula of mine that she posted was as follows:

When [MAIN CHARACTER] [INCITING INCIDENT], he [CONFLICT]. And if he doesn’t [GOAL] he will [CONSEQUENCES].

When I critiqued the entries, I looked for the following:

[MAIN CHARACTER]: I prefer a name here and possibly one characteristic, such as “14-year-old Cara” or “professional assassin Bob”. What I didn’t want to see was a long list of characters with no obvious main character, or a introduction like, “Bob Smith was born in Ireland in 1975. His parents were potato farmers but they were both involved in a horrific car accident involving a tractor and a flying spaceship. Sadly, they didn’t survive so Bob had to live the rest of his life in an orphanage which is where we start this story.” Luckily, Authoress’s contributors are better than this so while I did occasionally see a bit TMI, I saw more people leaving the details out.

[INCITING INCIDENT] – This is whatever situation starts the story. For example, “When Amy’s parents decide to move the entire family to Mars…” Most of the posts today had this information although a couple didn’t put it right up front and it really belongs at the beginning of the logline.

[CONFLICT] – This is the conflict in the story or the “who/what is going to stop the MC from reaching his goal”. For example, “Bob must defeat a group of evil squirrels.” Note that this does not have to be stated before the goal (often, it is easy to put them together). In most of the posts I read, the conflict was fairly clear.

[GOAL] – This is the tangible outer goal of the main character. For example, “Bob needs to find the stolen jewel and return it to his boss before midnight.” A lot of the posts I read were either missing this or had it buried. This really is the most important part of your plot. It can’t be missing from the logline.

[CONSEQUENCES] – This is what happens if the main character fails to meet his goal. For example, “If Amy doesn’t get her job back, she won’t be able to pay her rent and her children will have to live on the street.” A lot of the loglines I read were either missing this or didn’t make it strong enough to make us care.

If there is one thing I think everyone should take away from this contest it is this: the point of a logline, and of a novel,  is not just to make the reader interested, it’s to MAKE THEM CARE.

I look forward to the next round of entries!

Creating a Secondary Character

I’m currently working on the first act of a new novel and have been struggling with the role of one of the secondary characters. I knew I wanted him to be blond and that I wanted him to shake up the main character’s life but that was about it. Not exactly enough to fill 200 pages.

So I decided to put some of the Hauge tips into practice and thought I’d share how it worked. Here is what I did:

I made a table showing the Before and After pictures for the main character. In the first column, I wrote my Six Things That Need Fixing (a la Blake Snyder). In the third column, I wrote the end of result of those things being fixed. When I was done, I used column 2 to write ways in which the secondary character could help the MC change from who she is in column 1 to who she will become in column 3. For example:

Column 1: MC Before
Susan hates Cheese

Column 2: Transition from 1-3
Bob takes Susan to cheese emporium where she discovers that Gorgonzola is actually quite tasty

Column 3: Main Character  After
Susan loves cheese

This may sound like a bit of a trivial exercise but I can honestly say that it helped me nail exactly what my secondary character needs to do in the novel.

And now that I have patted myself on the back, I am going to eat some Gorgonzola. It really is lovely in a cream sauce with a few red grapes thrown over some tortellini. Mmmm.

Does Your Protagonist Have a Tangible Outer Goal?

If there was one thing Michael Hauge told us over and over again, it was that every main character needs a tangible outer goal: a single, measurable “thing” that the protagonist is actively pursuing throughout the story. According to Hauge, there are only 5 types of outer goals:

  1. To escape from a bad situation
  2. To stop something bad from happening
  3. To deliver something of value so that something good can happen, or something bad can be avoided
  4. To retrieve something of value
  5. To win, either the game, the competition or the love of another character

As you can see, there are no items that start with  “To understand…” or “To improve…”. Why? Because goals that involve feelings are, by definition, inner goals and while you certainly can (and must) have these as well, they cannot take the place of the outer goal. The outer goal is the thing that is visibly accomplished in the end of the story. It is what hooks the reader and carries them through to the end. If the reader cannot see it, he cannot attach to it and if he cannot attach to it, he probably won’t keep reading.