Davalynn posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
What happened to the tagline workshop we were all working on a few months ago? I’ve been super busy – like you and others – so I may have just missed it after the first two or three. If so, my apologies. However, I learn a great deal from your critiques and from comments of other reader/writers.
Randy sez: Critiquing one-sentence Storylines has been an immensely popular exercise that we do on my blog from time to time. I’ve found that it’s hard to keep track of the posted Storylines. When I put out a call for Storylines, I’ll typically see several dozen loyal blog readers post their Storylines as comments all in one day. Then we’ll start working through them one by one, and within a couple of weeks, the original set of Storylines becomes older and older on the list of blog entries and harder and harder to find. So I don’t think a blog is the right tool to use for running this kind of an ongoing clinic.
I really enjoy critiquing these Storylines. I think that a great one-sentence Storyline is critical to the success of a novel. However, I’m still looking for a solution to the administrative problem.
I think that the best solution may be to create an online forum just for doing critiques like that. There could be a different section in the forum for one-sentence Storylines, another for Three Act Structures, and others for dealing with other aspects of the craft.
I will be looking into this once I finish finalizing the next upgrade of Snowflake Pro. (I’m almost done with version 1.1. It’ll have some new features that are the most-requested features by my current set of users. Today, I’ll be finishing revisions to the Help files. The only other task on the list is to make sure the audio files are still up to date and then to do a final round of internal testing. I hope to send the new upgrade to my team of alpha testers for external testing next week.)
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.
Dear Randy,
I really like your idea of a forum. I look forward to sending in my storylines, and critiquing others 🙂
Sounds like a good plan – absent loyal subscriber. 🙂
I agree—this is a terrific idea—and I look forward to participating.
A forum sounds like a great idea. I always see so many great one-sentance summaries I want to comment on, but there’s always a million people after them.
A brilliant physicist/author/inventor/mentor must save his magic novel-creating device from a deranged plumber’s remote exploding helicopter.
20 words. Still too long?
Awesome, Camille, I love it. Though maybe you should add “-control” to the end of “remote.” Do we separately count slash words and hyphenated words? If not, you’re in at 16!