The OWW writing mailing list lately has been having a wonderful discussion about Loglines - a movie industry term meaning a 1 or 2 sentence description of a story. I read a bunch of them and decided that I don't have enough hours in the day to read all the books that I want to now that I know what people are writing (fortunately most of the books so described on the list are not currently available because they aren't done being written yet). So I decided to try it myself and here's what I came up with:
Jemma, a gallactically known and sought after investigator, has never worried that her Deafness would interfere with her work, until her latest assignment takes her where her holographic interpreter can't go.
Much to my surprise, almost immediately, the guy who started the whole thing wrote back saying: "Now that is a good logline. It grabs me and makes me want to know what happened." Woohoo - and now I have even more reason to get my butt into that chair and get the darned thing written.
Of course shortly thereafter another person wrote back saying that he didn't see why anyone would still be Deaf if we'd progressed our technology far enough to have holographic interpreters. Before I managed to write back with the explanation that she comes from a world where you have to be Deaf to survive (thanks to a sonic disturbance that can cause brain damage) and "fixing" her Deafness would mean that she could never go home. Someone else chimed in siting Children of a Lesser God.
A discussion ensued that helped me see what questions I'm going to have to answer for people to believe in Jemma as a real person. I'm also going to have to spend more time learning about the Deaf perspective if I'm going to write her well enough. (Also good since that will mean spending time among Deaf people which is something that I'm going to have to do anyway for my studies).
Overall, I'm happy that I decided to speak up. I'm happy that I managed to put forth a good logline. And I'm all set now to apply Butt to Chair and get this thing done.
Posted by Becca at January 12, 2005 12:50 PMI think that sounds like a really interesting story idea.
Posted by: Heather at January 13, 2005 02:36 PM