In my last post, I challenged my loyal blog readers to critique Armando’s one-sentence Storyline:
A man writes and sings an incantation over and over wherever he stands to unravel the prophecy that beckons the next savior of the world.
A number of you provided a wide range of critiques of this, and most of the comments were quite incisive. I agree with the majority view that the Storyline doesn’t tell enough about the story. There are a lot of unanswered questions, but we don’t know enough about this man and his incantations to root for him (or against him). That raises a critical point — the Storyline must make you care about the Story Question. Normally, we care about someone if we can identify with him or we agree with his goal.
My challenge for Armando is to read all the comments and then try to improve on this Storyline.
Wolfhardt posted this Storyline:
On a space station a shell-shocked security chief tries to save the dreaded aliens survivors of a peace conference disrupted by a human religious terrorist.
Randy sez: I think we can immediately identify with “a shell-shocked security chief,” so that’s a very good beginning (for those readers interested in space stations). Please note how important that caveat I just made is. Wolfhardt had started with the location, which pegs it as science fiction. That will turn away some readers, but that’s OK. Good marketing is less concerned with turning away certain readers than it is with catching the attention of certain other readers. You simply can’t appeal to EVERYBODY. So your best bet is to appeal to SOMEBODY — some niche of readers. So Wolfhardt has started well.
The Storyline begins to get unfocused in the middle of the sentence, however. Our hero is trying to save “dreaded aliens.” The immediate question is why we should care about aliens who are dreaded? Wolfhardt, can you revise this? I’d suggest either a different word than “dreaded” or else give more facts to explain why these aliens are actually worth saving, even if they’re dreaded.
The ending also needs more kick. We have a human religious terrorist. There are two issues here. Most readers have some religious views, so when they hear about a “religious terrorist” they may well be worrying that this story is going to be kicking their own religion. And nobody enjoys having their religion kicked. So it would be best to get explicit here. What sort of a religious terrorist are we dealing with here? That will give potential readers more info on whether the book is going to insult them or not. It’s better to be clear — so that some readers KNOW for sure they’ll be insulted and the rest KNOW for sure they won’t. You don’t want to leave things ambiguous, so that nobody knows whether they’ll be offended by the story or not.
But there’s a bigger issue. What does that pesky religious terrorist want to achieve? So far, we can gather that he may be anti-alien and he may be dangerous. But what’s his goal? Ethnic cleansing? Burning at the stake? Mass baptisms? We need something concrete that we can visualize.
Wolfhardt, can you refine your sentence for us?
Grace wrote an intriguing Storyline:
A Belfast biologist is forced to run from her own creation — across the real world and into a virtual one, where a strange power wrestles for control of her life.
Randy sez: Once again, I have some thoughts on this, but first I’d like to hear what my loyal blog readers think? Grace has done at least two things here that work really well. What are they? But there are two things that are missing. What are they?
Post a comment with your thoughts. The more you wrestle with Storylines — both your own and those of other people — the better you’ll get at the process.
We know:
who: female biologist
where: Belfast – and a virtual reality
We have only hints:
what: she has created something apparently dangerous
why: is she forced to run – Is the creation dangerous just to her or to Belfast or to the world?
strange powers: what kind of powers? for good or evil? and why do they want to control her?
But this is strong enough for me to want to know more.
I’m interested in reading Grace’s story. It has tension and an interesting story-line.
What’s lacking is specificity. I agree with Lois. What is her own creation? Obviously, it’s something dangerous…but I need to be connected to her and the thing she’s running away from.
She’s running across the real world. Can you just tell us what is “Real”? Is she running across Asia, the Middle East?
I like that she’s trying to wrestle something for power. What is that something? What are they wrestling about? What is at stake?
I think Grace’s storyline is pretty strong as-is. Too many details would make it too long. It gives me just enough to make me curious. I actually like that the “creation” is not specified–it makes me think, “What? What did she create?” and want to read to find out.
However, I think the word “strange” is kind of weak and could be replaced with something stronger and more specific. “Alien” or “supernatural” or “computer-generated” or whatever is applicable.
But, really, very good job :).
I’m wondering why it’s a bad thing for this strange power to control her life. What would happen if it did? That’s what we need to know. You need to answer the “so what?” question.
And why is she running from her own creation? Is it like “Frankenstein”?
I like Grace’s storyline. I know the protagonist is female and a scientist. I know the location starts with Belfast – interesting in its own right – and moves and will include the internet… so I know there’s some sort of sci fi involved. And I know there’s danger and excitement. Definitely intriguing.
I like the way Grace uses the sentence to show me what the story’s about rather than telling me – makes me think I’d like her writing.
I like the first part of the sentence; it tells me the gender and job of the main character. However, I want to know more about her creation and why the strange power is a threat. I also like the alliteration of Belfast biologist, though it could have been totally coincidental – I like the language of it.
A Belfast biologist is forced to run from her own creation — across the real world and into a virtual one, where a strange power wrestles for control of her life.
This storyline is a good start, just needs a little work. As many have already said why does this biologist have to run from her own creation. Was this creation breaking laws or rules of the people she works for? Was this creation accidental?
I think it is a good start but I am thrown off by the last part were you jump to a strange power wrestles for control of her life. What does this have to do with her creation? Does this power after her creation and need her to control it? It seems just thrown in and I am not seeing anything that makes it important to the beginnng of the setence. It could be very important but I don’t see that based on this sentence.
Thanks guys! Here’s a little more detail – the full back cover blurb reads:
If you could end world hunger, you’d do it, right? What if governmental experiments caused your miracle fertilizer to become a weapon of mass destruction? Meet Naomi, the Belfast biologist forced to run from her own creation–across the real world and into a virtual one. But there, a strange power wrestles for control of her life.
The ‘strange power’ is in fact a friend of hers who programmed the virtual reality and defined parameters for her virtual existence, but that’s not supposed to be revealed until Naomi finds out for herself near the end. So it’s not really a threat but seems so to her because she’s continually forced by this unseen well-meaning friend to do things she doesn’t want to.
But how to get all of that into one sentence without giving too much away…??
oops, forgot to use speech marks. The back cover blurb is only one paragraph!
Tighten up the first part of the sentence. Remove the past tense “is forced” and change “run” to “runs (or flees)”. A Belfast biologist flees her own creation or runs from her own creation. This sounds better and reads faster. The second part of your sentence leaves me confused. A biologist deals in plants and specializes on either improving them (hybrids) or designing a new sub-species. This is beginning to sound like a re-take of The Little Shop of Horrors movie; you remember the story of the giant man eating plant that says, “Feed me.” Did the biologist engineer a new and deadly plant? One that has part of her own brain—and now wants all of her human functions. Your plot sounds like it could be full of action and mystery. However, I do not know this from reading your tag line. She runs across the “real world” one we live in, experience and see every day. You continue with “into a virtual one”—computer generated or hypothetical. The words “strange power” is vague and ambiguous.
I know who the protagonist is (a Belfast Biologist). I also know her goal (to flee from her own creation). I know what is at stake (her life). What I do not know is her motivation, why is she fleeing and what is the “strange power” trying to control her? Add this to your tag line and you have a winner.
I like Grace’s pitch and would want to know more about it because of the things left out but, since you asked for what’s missing:
I don’t think she placed her story firmly into any particular time/genre. It could be future, Frankenstein-good vs evil-past, today or tomorrow. It could be sci fi, speculative fiction, horror, even religeous.
Also, she did not define the ‘strange power’ enough to give us direction. Is it alien, evil, angelic, destiny, Sky Net?
So overall, when she’s doing her booksigning and someone asks, “What’s the book about?” She’s going to have to spend even more time explaining herself while potential sales get away.
Wow. I wrote my assesment of Grace’s tag line before reading the others.
Her story was nothing like what I expected. Running from her creation made it sound like a living entity–very misleading.
Although I do not know anything about this genre, I will take the chance.
Oh yes, now I have read Grace’s comment.
I got stuck at the word ‘strange’ like everybody else. The storyline is, of course, brilliantly done, bringing in three characters and settings into one sentence.
And from creation, I thought a monster or something. 🙂 The thing is there are too many such movies floating around; people creating monsters and running from them, strange powers manipulating the life of the protagonist. This storyline reminded me of three movies I saw. A little more accuracy maybe will cement it.
I think Grace’s summary suffers the same problem Wolfhardt’s does, as the sentence moves onward it loses specificity.
As others have said, ‘a Belfast biologist running from her own creation’ establishes the scene very well. We know who our protagonist is, what she does, and we can begin to form some intriguing ideas about what her creation is. I don’t mind so much that we don’t know what her creation is, because the setup makes the sense of betrayal (or an experiment backfiring) more interesting. At this point I began to think of this story as a personal one, where something important to this woman is used against her.
From there we lose all sense of direction, though. “Across the real world and into a virtual one” is very generic and sounds almost like an advertisement for a video game. These words on their own don’t carry any interest because there isn’t enough traction on any of them to grab a hold of. Some explanation must be given either of the ‘real’ world or the ‘virtual’ one to continue my excitement from the first part of the summary. Also, which of the two you choose to explain should be an indicator of type of story we’re going to read. Will it be one mostly in the real world or the virtual one? The world your choose to explain will be the one the reader expects to spend the most time in.
Finally, the last part of the sentence continues to use vague description and loses my interest because it’s just so generic. “A strange power wrestles for control of her life” is such a played statement these days because it can apply to almost anything. My infant son has a strange power that wrestles for control of my life, for example. But it’s not something most people would be interested in reading about.
Give us some meat to chew on and you’ll find people’s interest growing. Don’t worry about alienating audiences with a genre story, worry about attracting the attention of the people who have read a hundred novels in that genre.
(I intentionally have not read Grace’s explanation of what her story is about when forming the above opinions because I think its important to view this as an outside person (such as an agent or editor) looking in.)
Okay, I hope I’m not too late to get in on this critiquing! 🙂
My one-sentence summary: “A young queen, banished as a result of a false accusation, is forced to seek the aid of dangerous, magic-wielding rebels.”
I’m not entirely comfortable with it and it’s a little wordy… but it’s a start! Thanks in advance everyone for any advice/suggestions. 🙂
A Belfast biologist is forced to run from her own creation — across the real world and into a virtual one, where a strange power wrestles for control of her life.
I think this line has done its job and done it well.
Any changes I would make is purely a personal choice in the rewording. Here is an example of that.
Forced to run from her own creation, a Belfast Biologist flees across the real world and into a virtual one, where a strange power wrestles for control of her life.
Am not an avid reader of sci-fi, although it’s difficult to tell what genre Grace’s storyline stems. The storyline itself starts brilliantly and sort of fades into ambiguity as it develops. As many have said “strange power” wrestling for control of life is a too-often used idea to seriously grab my attention.