Sell Your Story in Single Sentence by Lane Shefter Bishop

Author:Lane Shefter Bishop [Bishop, Lane Shefter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781581575101
Publisher: Countryman Press
Published: 2016-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The Voice

I’VE BEEN ASKED ABOUT VOICE BY QUITE A FEW WRITERS over the years. My personal opinion is that if you can give a hint of the voice of your story in the logline, it helps, but it’s not a necessity. It’s much more important that the three main elements are there and that the length is right, rather than whether or not the sentence adequately reflects the writer’s voice. Besides, if the logline has done what it’s supposed to do, then your audience will ultimately be reading your full manuscript, which will, of course, give them the absolute best example of your voice.

That said, if your project has a quirky feel or a funny delivery, it’s probably a good idea to have that be indicated by your vocabulary choices in your logline. It falls into the category of letting readers know what kind of journey they are in for, one of the main anchors of a good logline. Again, adjusting for voice is not always a necessity, but sometimes it can make enough of a difference that it’s worth the effort.

Here’s a good example in which I aided a writer in punching up her logline by helping her infuse it with the same humor as her original story:

ORIGINAL

A blonde woman buys and runs a junkyard to earn money to bail her silly brother out of jail.

There’s actually nothing specifically wrong with this original logline, and we certainly could have left it as it was, but the original is missing one key thing: It doesn’t truly give a feel for how outrageous the writing is. While the logline uses words like “silly” and indicates that there is some comedy involved, I really felt that an overhaul with a bit more of the writer’s funny and broad voice could help it out a great deal.

REDO

A big-breasted bombshell bumbles through running a junkyard to earn money to bail her underwear-stealing brother out of jail.

The carefully chosen new vocabulary, along with being much more specific overall, helped give this logline more of the slapstick comedic flair that the original material offers readers. We are now hinting at the voice of the piece because, in this particular case, it’s a useful selling tool to let the reader know more about the tone of the material.

Here’s another example where I worked with a content creator to focus on the true scariness of his story and emphasize the horror aspect with specific vocabulary choices, in order to make his logline have a much more powerful voice:

ORIGINAL

A college girl is determined to stop the curse in which a spooky house claims the life of a sorority sister every Friday the 13th and turns her into a witch.

This logline is deficient in both the specificity and stakes arenas, but more important, it lacks some carefully chosen horror-based vocabulary, which could give it a stronger selling voice. Here’s the rough redone version:

REDO

A college girl must stop undead souls from killing sorority sisters and reincarnating them as cannibalistic witches, or suffer the same fate.

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