CONTEST IS CLOSED!
Happy New Year, everyone! I tell you, 2015 was a CR-AZY year for me, between the launch of One Stop For Writers and moving my family across the country. I’d kind of like to see it calm down a bit, but calm doesn’t seem to be in my cards. And I guess that’s ok, because the only way we’re going to improve and grow and achieve awesome things is by challenging ourselves and getting outside of our comfort zones. If you’re up for a bit of challenge yourself, let me tell you what’s happening with this month’s Critiques 4 U contest.
Last week, I posted about the importance of log lines and challenged you to write one for your story. I hope you were able to come up with something interesting, because I’ll be choosing today’s first-page critique winners based on those log lines. If you didn’t get a chance to write one up, don’t worry. I’ve extended this month’s contest to two days rather than the usual one, to give you some extra time.
To enter, just leave a comment with…
- the log line for your story. Make sure that it contains the three elements mentioned in last week’s post: protagonist, goal, and stakes. If you have multiple stories and you’d like to leave a log line for each one, go for it, but please only enter one log line for each story.
- your email address. Some of you have expressed concern about making your email address public; if you’re sure that the email address associated with your WordPress account is correct, you don’t have to include it here. But if you do win and I’m unable to contact you through that email address, I’ll have to choose an alternate winner.
And that’s it. The three log lines that intrigue me the most will win a first-page critique.
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
I know I’m asking more from you this week than usual, so it’s only fair that I offer a bit more in return. Along with a first-page critique, each winner will also receive a one-month subscription to One Stop For Writers! Holy buckets, folks. That’s a sweet deal. I honestly don’t know how many people will enter this month’s contest, so if you do enter, you might also have less competition than usual.
So get those log lines written and load ’em up. The contest ends Thursday morning, as soon as I can drag myself out of bed and close it out. Good luck!
Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.
Logline: “Identical twin brothers, one paraplegic, the other New Jersey detective, secret military program, special skills, remote viewing, out of body operations, mob, UFO’s, aliens, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, conflict, murder, escape, evasion, action, final battle… An Extraterrestrial Ultimatum.”
Dave Powell
write2create@bellsouth.net
LOGLINE: A delightfully disturbed thirty-nine year old woman experiences love and family for the first time on a Colorado mountain, but her strange vulnerability to physical contact threatens her and those she loves, and she must trust her extraordinary emotional strength, or return to a life of fantasy and touchless isolation.
jcmartellgm @ gmail .com
Oops – got confused on the deadline and had left this page open so also missed the “closed” message . Duh!
BUT – writing the logline helped me tie down the goal & stakes of my story tremendously. Also loved reading the other loglines.
Hope you will do this again (and I will certainly pay better attention!)
Darn, missed it by just a few hours :-/
Would love it if you just looked at my log line and said yay or nay. I’d really appreciate that!
While protecting a little girl who has taken hold of his heart, a man possessed by a demon walks on a destructive path to take revenge for the death of the woman he killed–the only woman he ever loved.
Wow, what a great turn out for this contest! Honestly, I wasn’t sure how it would go since it kind of required homework this time ;). But I shouldn’t have been surprised at your hard work and dedication. I’m proud of you all for working up these log lines. There were many good ones to choose from, but eventually I went with the three that I felt were the most concise and focused while also being clear. So the winners are:
Claire
Marilyn
Lindsey
Congrats! I’ll be in touch with the details about your first-page critique and your one-month subscription to One Stop :). Thanks for entering, everyone!
Thanks for the opportunity. It was a great exercise and made me realize just how unclear I am about the story itself. Took the better part of a day thinking on it, everything sounding so cliche’… so, that in itself shows me how much work I need to do, not just with the story but in the telling of it as well.
An up-and-coming executive in a top financial firm falls for a handsome actor who visits her from the future, claiming to be her future husband.
Hi Becca!
This is SUCH a great contest! Thank you so much for doing this and reading all the wonderful loglines that are being submitted.
At the risk of repeating what others have said, even if I don’t win, I feel as if I’ve learned a lot — not just by reading your posting, but also by experimenting and doing!
I’m submitting two loglines for two different stories (one for each story):
Logline No. 1: In a dystopian future characterized by energy and water shortages, the President must choose between surrender or a worldwide war when a foreign leader threatens to invade.
Logline No. 2: Goaded into shoplifting, a teenaged computer nerd accidentally steals a DVD containing sensitive military secrets. Chased by the FBI and foreign spies, and not knowing who to trust, he’ll have to use his wits to stay alive.
And for each of these, the email to contact me is — rbarnes7557@gmail.com
Thanks again!
Rick Barnes
I’m sorta new at this and just started working on this book but I could’nt resist the opportunity and fun challenge. So here it goes…
1) Logline: After an accident leaves her predecessor unfit, the task of stopping a rampant serial killer in the depths of the skyborne megalopolis of Bastion ends up in the hands of greenhorn necromancer Mari Wykkin.
2) welch . lindsey AT sbcglobal DOT net
Good luck guys!
While a persistent fog hides the ruins of a lighthouse, Eddy hides in a secluded corner of the abandoned estate trying to figure out how to restore it, warn inbound ships of the danger, while avoiding being killed by his opportunistic son.
Sixteen-year-old Mari is a bad witch–like her warlock father who threatens the children of Arctica. To fight back and create her own destiny, Mari must earn the trust of a powerful mage–and her enemy.
Cora will do anything to free her mother from debilitating paranoia, because even though Cora cannot bring back her dead father, she can still save her mother if she can prove that her father died of natural causes and that there really is no one out there after them.
Thank you so much for doing this (and for your post about loglines, it was tremendously helpful!).
(1) Logline (picture book): the only thing five-year old Tiago needs to do is stay out of trouble while on a visit to Paris with his parents, but when his chocolate croissant is taken away he responds in a fit of anger that inadvertently sets off a Rube Goldberg chain off events threatening to leave the city in shambles.
(2) email included
A superhuman woman must hide the fact that she has high functioning autism is she wishes to stay alive.
CESayers@aol.com
A young superhuman must hide the fact that she has high functioning autism and pass for normal if she values her life.
email: CESayers@aol.com
Thank you so much for this opportunity.
—
When Alyssa is attacked and saved by a strange woman, she learns about her power to conjure the elusive Chaos Gates and the ruthless organisation set on killing her and others like her. Then her childhood friend is kidnapped and together with the woman who saved her, sets out to rescue him uncovering in the process a threat that is not only targeting her but the entire human race.
Thank you for holding this contest!
Logline:
A teen heiress signs up for college at her father’s insistence, but takes part in a modeling contest without his knowledge to follow her fashion dreams and escape the dreary 9-to-5 life he has planned for her
Email:
mehra.gargi at gmail.com
Log Line ~
” To better her chances of survival, a teen trains with a professional fighter and risks her life to put an end to the sadistic games of a faceless stalker. ”
TaraAshlyn@yahoo.com
After an insufferable teen chess prodigy accidentally frees a shapeshifting dragon from his slumber, she has to track him down in the magical underbelly of South Korea before a terrorist organization catches him first.
park_silvia at hotmail
Haru Amagawa, the human child of Amaterasu the Shinto Sun Kami, must collect the Imperial Regalia before the next Winter Solstice to get his Grandmother Izanami out of Yomi, the underworld, to full health or she will be stuck there forever.
Email: jones . dylan19 @ yahoo . com
Cora will do anything to free her mother from debilitating paranoia, because even though Cora cannot bring back her dead father, she can still save her mother if she can prove that her father died of natural causes and there really is no one out there after them.
Thanks in advance for any feedback 🙂
Thank you! That’s awesome!
A warrior and a closet-sorcerer find out they’re paired in an arranged marriage, and to get out of it, they both accept the emperor’s commission to find four magical objects that are the supposed cure for the plague with the hopes of winning the reward money.
email: krista.n.quintana@gmail.com
So much more than precious opals are at stake when a man-wary palaeontologist clashes with a charming adventurer, who also happens to be her first love, over a 100-million-year-old treasure buried in the Australian outback.
Thanks so much for offering to do this contest. Here’s my attempt for my MG novel CATastrophe.
A young girl spends Career Day at the cat psychiatrist. With the help from her friend, a tip from the police, a cat, and her younger brother’s kidnapping she uncovers the one clue that reveals the feline doctor’s other profession.
Good-luck, everyone!
Thanks,
Laura
#1 Can love at first sight really happen? Many people say love is like a fine wine, it takes time to develop, so one can fully appreciation the inner beauty of a potential mate. Other’s surmise love at first sight should be more accurately defined as infatuation, admiration, lust, or a possible obsession. Cynthia and Jerry meet at a bar and are instantly drawn to each other. Could their chance rendezvous actually be true love at first sight?
#2 Catastrophic events strike at a moment’s notice. States, counties, towns, and families develop in advance protective measures to reduce the impact of potential disasters. A young family was proactive in having planned and prepared for such an event. However, when the family’s caught in the path of a menacing tornado, were their defensive measures as good as they thought they were?
#3 The economic bubble bursts and Harry suddenly finds himself in a world of financial chaos. His house quickly flips from investment to monetary disaster. With overwhelming debt, he desperately needs a little luck. Is there really such a thing as a lucky charm, and if it really exists, can Harry hold on to it long enough to turn his life around?
I’ve been busy this year. 😉
Logline #1
The stars were aligned for greatness when Harvest was born, but her existence can shatter a kingdom. To give the weak power to rise up, she’ll have to find it in herself first.
Logline #2
As a warrior for Mother Earth, Styx has never asked for help, but she is in it deep, as in Underworld deep, and she must accept help from an unlikely source to protect those she loves.
Logline #3
Always overshadowed by her four older and protective brothers, one young healer must find courage in herself and escape the captivity of a rebel tribe without putting her brothers at risk.
kristinamkelly at gmail
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
In a small Louisiana town, an 11 year-old bi-racial girl, Blessen, finds an abandoned homeless black child, Harmony, and while risking her own safety to rescue Harmony, Blessen finds her way back to the true meaning of family.
Thanks for this great opportunity!
**
Carving a new life after divorcing a two-bit loser, a country music DJ’s dream job becomes a nightmare when the station changes to rock and roll. Can she win over a hardcore audience, or will she prove her hometown naysayers right?
**
candace.colt@gmail.com
After being kidnapped, a young Anglo Chinese woman uses her wits to survive in 1880s Chinatown. Finding acceptance impossible to attain, she pins her hopes on a wealthy San Francisco recluse to help her find where she belongs.
OK, now that you started me, here I am again with the logline for a companion Picture Book to the first I submitted. It is the same events from the perspective of the monsters themselves! Again don’t judge my involuntary mistakes in English. Here is my logline:
“Can monsters befriend humans? Little Zouli hopes so. But when a rescue become a chase and when two more humans, a skunk and an owl are involved, attaining friendship can be tricky!”
Thank you!
Monique
Log line…Sweet Gypsy Rose
Free-spirited Gypsy Rose is trying hard to put her past behind her and impress the eccentric new banker in town but Ray Patterson, her sexy ex-boyfriend has other plans.
email cathybrockmanromance@gmail.com
A traumatized ex-surgeon risks imprisonment for witchcraft as he solves a murder and a seeks a cure for his patients’ madness.
angela . mayfair @ gmail . com
Sweet Gypsy Rose
Free spirited Gypsy Rose is trying hard to put her past behind her and impress the eccentric new banker in town but Ray Patterson, her sexy ex-boyfriend has other plans.
oops disregard the second one please I slipped up
“Escaping persecution, Soli, a Huguenot girl, finds her saving grace in a favorite family recipe.”
Thanks for the opportunity to sharpen my word skills, Becca. . .whether I win or not!
Mell O’Brien is ready to take on life out loud with her fast-approaching thirtieth birthday. No more living underground with her worried past and her fabulous writing career shielded by her pseudonym. Can she trust the world again?
This gave me the motivation to tinker with my logline again, so here goes…
After a disastrous civil war leaves people surviving without technology, a disillusioned former soldier turned freedom fighter opposes a ruthless would-be dictator who tests the limits of his humanity.
And thanks for the opportunity!
Zane King’s running is getting him nowhere. Will he make needed changes in time to save his company and his family?
email: wade @ wadewebster dot com
Savvy businessman, Sawyer Shuster, threatens creative entrepreneur, Katie Coo’s sewing shop when he brings a large retail craft store to small-town Cranberry Bay and both must find a way to trust each other or else risk losing not only their businesses but also their hearts.
‘Wanting a break from her chaotic family, an obediant teenager finds herself questioning what’s real while protecting the children of Effulgent as their school is attacked from within.’
I’m so fricking bad at loglines. Sorry. And THANK YOU! =)
icrusoe@live.se
1. Logline
A haunted teenager’s attempts to defeat an immortal evil bring her closer to the ultimate enemy–death.
2. m.r.buttarsbooks AT gmail DOT com
1. Logline:
Transformed by one man’s sacrifice, Steven, a time traveler, resolves to rescue others from a life of slavery, but in order to reach them he must face the very man who killed his own rescuer.
2. Email-included
Crazy me… If you judge for the content only, I take the risk writing in english without asking my translator to look at it before… sometimes, I must swim by myself!!! here is my logline:
On a canoe excursion, two brothers see monsters on the other side of the lake grabbing two girls from their canoe, and decide to go on a rescue mission during the night while the monsters are asleep. Will the help from a skunk and an owl be enough to make it before daybreak?
As you wrote, if I don’t win, at least I have a nice logline!!! Thanks anyway!!!
Monique