I’ve been reading a lot about taglines and loglines for novels. They’re part of the marketing and sales process to interest literary agents and readers in your work. One process I’ve tried is contained in this post: Writing a Killer Logline on a site maintained by Graeme Shimmin. Shimmin’s site addresses taglines, loglines, elevator pitches and novel summaries among other things. He suggests that one method of developing a novel logline. He suggests that writers identify the following elements to build a tagline:
SETTING
PROTAGONIST
PROBLEM
ANTAGONIST
CONFLICT
GOAL
Shimmin’s idea is that filling in these elements several times give the writer words and idea that can be strung together into a great logline. For Twin Worlds, here’s one of the loglines I came up with:
On two planets with a delicate balance, an unconventional starship captain and his colleague lead a band of amateurs against an enemy who profits from conflict to expose a conspiracy and keep the twin words from imminent war.
Shimmin suggests that actual names not be used. As I said, I thought having the antagonist identified as an archetype and the idea of a band of amateurs added some drama to the logline.
I had a little less time for Take Hart, but here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
In a city like any other, a police officer with something to prove risks it all to bring down a kingpin and save the city from an all-out drug war.
As I said, these are works in progress.
I had a little more success with taglines, those very short description that are designed to make potential readers look twice at your book. Joan Reeves says that a good tagline is short and succinct, can should “capture the essence of the book.” She continues by saying that “You want them to read the tagline, have an emotional reaction, and then read it again.” And after reading it again, they want to know more and either pick put the physical book to look at it, or look for more information on Amazon. That’s essentially what I do when reading brief summaries and taglines through Bookbub. So, given that structure, here are my current taglines:
“Diplomacy? War? Is there really a difference?” and,
“Because the city needed a new champion.”
I’m pretty happy with the tagline for Take Hart, and warming up to the one for Twin Worlds. If nothing else, equating diplomacy and war can cause people to look a second time, and that’s a significant goal of Reeves’ article.
My hope is to use these now while I refine them for the future.
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