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What's it Really About?
Mar. 15th, 2010 09:48 amI've been practicing the logline theory of understanding one's novel. In other words, if it makes sense at (very) short length, it makes sense at longer length.
To that end, I took ten books that resonated with me and wrote loglines for them. How many of these do you recognize? (I'll put the full list at the bottom of this post, for those who need to know.)
***
A young English spy competes with a master criminal and spies of other nations to seize control of assets before the European crime syndicate whose money it is realizes it’s missing and sends assassins to kill them all.
A no-longer-young private detective races across New England to rescue a novelist kidnapped in retaliation for her incendiary views before her extremist captors can complete their vengeful destruction of her character.
Four English blueblood cousins must unravel a web of deception, ritual magic, and murder before the conspirators can trigger a bloody xenophobic conflict that will see every foreigner in England exiled once more to homelands that want them dead.
When an alien artifact loaned to the Earth by an intergalactic society goes missing in his apartment, a professional student is forced to rely on strange, extrasensory instructions to evade the deadly interest of those hunting the artifact and solve the mystery of its existence before the Earth can be blackballed for its loss.
Two disgraced Colonial Earth diplomats dispatched to an upstart world rich in the resources Earth desperately needs find themselves negotiating between shadowy conspiracies to find the one group who will let them perpetrate the treachery they had all along intended: freedom for the colonials from hegemony and the ultimate destruction of the nanotech responsible for culling Earth’s population.
As the tensions between the Earps and the Clantons escalate, a widowed lady newshound and a young man fleeing the magic running through his veins join ranks to free the town of Tombstone and the surrounding land from the thrall of sorcerers intent on taking, and holding through deadly force, all of the territory’s wealth.
The departure of her sister for a role in the Nicaraguan independence struggle leaves a shattered young woman to weave a future from the secrets of her family’s past and to defend the community she never thought herself a part of from the rapacity of a corporation which prizes wealth above the viability of the river which is the town’s lifeblood.
When a man with burning eyes, one of the latest crop of summer people, uses magic against the teenage son of the sleepy mountain town’s general store, the boy must come to grips with the changing landscape of young adulthood, his mother’s abandonment of him and his father, and the magical birthright that seems intent upon wielding the boy as its champion against the interlopers’ hunger for power.
When the computer programmer daughter of a middle-aged fiddle player disappears, her mother enlists the help of an aged black Chinese man to uncover the bank fraud scheme whose perpetrators kidnapped the daughter and would willingly kill the mother and her friend to cover their tracks.
A young orphan who grew up knowing only the abuse of the other boys of the military academy where he—-sometimes student, sometimes servant—-spent all of his childhood discovers an odd tutor who teaches him about his foreign birthright and arms him with logic and self-possession, weapons which he must use to defend his nation’s young monarch from the machinations of a senior minister who has killed before and now would be king.
***
Yeah, not all of them are difficult to guess. That's probably a hint for how to write them better - get the unique detail worked out and make sure you mention it, eh?
One of my writer friends suggested jotting down two or three words, what the book's really about, and expanding from there. I suspect that method will work for those who already understand the essence of their work. I myself can only get at that understanding through iterations of exercises like this one. Multiple iterations. *g*
The list:
Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. Book, oh book. The only movie made of any of the Fleming novels that's been even within spitting distance of the book that was supposedly its source was the recent remake of this one.
Looking for Rachel Wallace, by Robert B. Parker. Do you know how hard it was to come up with a non-derogatory adjective for a middle-aged man?
Freedom and Necessity, by Steven Brust and Emma Bull. As I told the authors a couple of years ago, the ending of this one left me in tears.
Doorways in the Sand, by Roger Zelazny. I have all of Zelazny's work. This one stands out, even in that glittering galaxy. If you haven't read it, consider this a recommendation of the strongest sort.
Carnival, by Elizabeth Bear. One of the examples that's not hard to guess if you've ever read it - where it's unique, I think it's very unique.
Territory, by Emma Bull. If there isn't an upsurge in Western-themed work coming, I'll be surprised (and disappointed).
Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver. Theme - it's a textbook.
The Silent Strength of Stones, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. I could as easily have chosen its stablemate, The Thread That Binds the Bones; they are very much of a piece. Hoffman's fabulous at characterization.
Tea With the Black Dragon, by R.A. MacAvoy. This book started my love affair with this writer. I hope she keeps writing. Note the additional difficulty with adjectives!
And The Lens of the World, also by MacAvoy; that there are two of her books on this list at first surprised me, and then did not. The depth of her characterization is stunning. I can so see my interest in the boundaries between what is real and what is not in this book.
To that end, I took ten books that resonated with me and wrote loglines for them. How many of these do you recognize? (I'll put the full list at the bottom of this post, for those who need to know.)
***
A young English spy competes with a master criminal and spies of other nations to seize control of assets before the European crime syndicate whose money it is realizes it’s missing and sends assassins to kill them all.
A no-longer-young private detective races across New England to rescue a novelist kidnapped in retaliation for her incendiary views before her extremist captors can complete their vengeful destruction of her character.
Four English blueblood cousins must unravel a web of deception, ritual magic, and murder before the conspirators can trigger a bloody xenophobic conflict that will see every foreigner in England exiled once more to homelands that want them dead.
When an alien artifact loaned to the Earth by an intergalactic society goes missing in his apartment, a professional student is forced to rely on strange, extrasensory instructions to evade the deadly interest of those hunting the artifact and solve the mystery of its existence before the Earth can be blackballed for its loss.
Two disgraced Colonial Earth diplomats dispatched to an upstart world rich in the resources Earth desperately needs find themselves negotiating between shadowy conspiracies to find the one group who will let them perpetrate the treachery they had all along intended: freedom for the colonials from hegemony and the ultimate destruction of the nanotech responsible for culling Earth’s population.
As the tensions between the Earps and the Clantons escalate, a widowed lady newshound and a young man fleeing the magic running through his veins join ranks to free the town of Tombstone and the surrounding land from the thrall of sorcerers intent on taking, and holding through deadly force, all of the territory’s wealth.
The departure of her sister for a role in the Nicaraguan independence struggle leaves a shattered young woman to weave a future from the secrets of her family’s past and to defend the community she never thought herself a part of from the rapacity of a corporation which prizes wealth above the viability of the river which is the town’s lifeblood.
When a man with burning eyes, one of the latest crop of summer people, uses magic against the teenage son of the sleepy mountain town’s general store, the boy must come to grips with the changing landscape of young adulthood, his mother’s abandonment of him and his father, and the magical birthright that seems intent upon wielding the boy as its champion against the interlopers’ hunger for power.
When the computer programmer daughter of a middle-aged fiddle player disappears, her mother enlists the help of an aged black Chinese man to uncover the bank fraud scheme whose perpetrators kidnapped the daughter and would willingly kill the mother and her friend to cover their tracks.
A young orphan who grew up knowing only the abuse of the other boys of the military academy where he—-sometimes student, sometimes servant—-spent all of his childhood discovers an odd tutor who teaches him about his foreign birthright and arms him with logic and self-possession, weapons which he must use to defend his nation’s young monarch from the machinations of a senior minister who has killed before and now would be king.
***
Yeah, not all of them are difficult to guess. That's probably a hint for how to write them better - get the unique detail worked out and make sure you mention it, eh?
One of my writer friends suggested jotting down two or three words, what the book's really about, and expanding from there. I suspect that method will work for those who already understand the essence of their work. I myself can only get at that understanding through iterations of exercises like this one. Multiple iterations. *g*
The list:
Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. Book, oh book. The only movie made of any of the Fleming novels that's been even within spitting distance of the book that was supposedly its source was the recent remake of this one.
Looking for Rachel Wallace, by Robert B. Parker. Do you know how hard it was to come up with a non-derogatory adjective for a middle-aged man?
Freedom and Necessity, by Steven Brust and Emma Bull. As I told the authors a couple of years ago, the ending of this one left me in tears.
Doorways in the Sand, by Roger Zelazny. I have all of Zelazny's work. This one stands out, even in that glittering galaxy. If you haven't read it, consider this a recommendation of the strongest sort.
Carnival, by Elizabeth Bear. One of the examples that's not hard to guess if you've ever read it - where it's unique, I think it's very unique.
Territory, by Emma Bull. If there isn't an upsurge in Western-themed work coming, I'll be surprised (and disappointed).
Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver. Theme - it's a textbook.
The Silent Strength of Stones, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. I could as easily have chosen its stablemate, The Thread That Binds the Bones; they are very much of a piece. Hoffman's fabulous at characterization.
Tea With the Black Dragon, by R.A. MacAvoy. This book started my love affair with this writer. I hope she keeps writing. Note the additional difficulty with adjectives!
And The Lens of the World, also by MacAvoy; that there are two of her books on this list at first surprised me, and then did not. The depth of her characterization is stunning. I can so see my interest in the boundaries between what is real and what is not in this book.
