A repressed vampire princess has a one-night stand with a mysterious stranger from the wrong side of the river, sparking an unexpected chain of events and opening her to a whole new world.
This is our logline for our book. We’ve been working on our logline or elevator pitch for some time now. In case you don’t know what that is, it’s a brief summary of a book, providing a short synopsis and a hook to catch the reader, agent or editor’s interest. We thought shortening our book to a query letter was hard. Try to do it in one or two sentences. Not easy. Did we mention that it can’t be too long either?
We emailed and text back and forth many times to get our logline right. And then what do we do. Find a formula online and completely start over. Then the emailing and texting begins again. But eventually we came up with something we like. So, how did we get to the final one? Here’s how.
The first time we found we needed a one sentence description for book was an online form at an agency. This is what we submitted to them:
Vampire princess, Naya Kensington, meets the man of her dreams, while promised to another vampire of her parents choosing, forcing her to choose between her family and species, or her heart.
The next thing that happened was we submitted our first page to WEbook‘s PageToFame. One of the steps is they want the book summed up. “Hook readers with one or two sentences that describe the essence of your book.” The only stipulation you have is it has to be 300 characters or less. (This includes spaces.) I took what we had before and expanded it.
Vampire princess, Naya Kensington, meets the man of her dreams, while promised to another vampire decreed by her parents. Now she must choose between her family and species or her heart, but she never suspected the man she loves would be anything other than what she believed him to be.
Now this one gave us 300 characters, but I found a website that were reviewing people’s loglines and they had to be 140 characters or less. 140 characters. That’s not much.
One of the things we’ve been looking forward to is submitting our work to Miss Snark’s FirstVictim Annual Baker’s Dozen Agent Auction. Each Baker’s Dozen entry is required to have a logline so this is when we really started working on it. And after many emails we came up with this:
When vampire princess, Naya Kensington, meets a rugged stranger while promised to an aristocratic vampire of her parents choosing, she must decide between her people or her heart. But she never suspects the handsome male is more than she ever imagined, and the two of them coming together changes the course of their futures forever.
Then I was on the Savvy Authors website and I found an article by author Kelly Whitley and she uses a formula. (heroine) must (action) with (hero) to (conflict) or (consequence). We decided to try this and came up with:
A vampire princess resisting societal constraints must reunite with a mysterious stranger from the wrong side of the river after their one-night stand sparks a chain of events.
Now the problem with this one was we had mixed reviews, and we felt like it wasn’t the core of our story. One big difference between Kelly Whitley and us is her books are paranormal suspense romance, and ours are more paranormal contemporary romance. There isn’t some big conflict like the world ending, someone getting kidnapped, a whole species eliminated. Our characters have more everyday conflicts, like he’s rich and she’s a prostitute (Pretty Woman). Okay, so that’s not an everyday conflict, but it’s not paranormal either. Or suspenseful.
So, after doing research we found a website that said there are many formulas you can use. One of the suggestions was: A situation causes the protagonist to face his/her largest obstacle plus outcome. I felt this was much more directed towards use. And after a few more emails we came up with our fifth and final logline.
A repressed vampire princess has a one-night stand with a mysterious stranger from the wrong side of the river, sparking an unexpected chain of events and opening her to a whole new world.
I hope you all agree with us that what we finally came up with is a great logline/elevator pitch. And I hope you all would like to read the book too!
This is our logline for our book. We’ve been working on our logline or elevator pitch for some time now. In case you don’t know what that is, it’s a brief summary of a book, providing a short synopsis and a hook to catch the reader, agent or editor’s interest. We thought shortening our book to a query letter was hard. Try to do it in one or two sentences. Not easy. Did we mention that it can’t be too long either?
We emailed and text back and forth many times to get our logline right. And then what do we do. Find a formula online and completely start over. Then the emailing and texting begins again. But eventually we came up with something we like. So, how did we get to the final one? Here’s how.
The first time we found we needed a one sentence description for book was an online form at an agency. This is what we submitted to them:
Vampire princess, Naya Kensington, meets the man of her dreams, while promised to another vampire of her parents choosing, forcing her to choose between her family and species, or her heart.
The next thing that happened was we submitted our first page to WEbook‘s PageToFame. One of the steps is they want the book summed up. “Hook readers with one or two sentences that describe the essence of your book.” The only stipulation you have is it has to be 300 characters or less. (This includes spaces.) I took what we had before and expanded it.
Vampire princess, Naya Kensington, meets the man of her dreams, while promised to another vampire decreed by her parents. Now she must choose between her family and species or her heart, but she never suspected the man she loves would be anything other than what she believed him to be.
Now this one gave us 300 characters, but I found a website that were reviewing people’s loglines and they had to be 140 characters or less. 140 characters. That’s not much.
One of the things we’ve been looking forward to is submitting our work to Miss Snark’s FirstVictim Annual Baker’s Dozen Agent Auction. Each Baker’s Dozen entry is required to have a logline so this is when we really started working on it. And after many emails we came up with this:
When vampire princess, Naya Kensington, meets a rugged stranger while promised to an aristocratic vampire of her parents choosing, she must decide between her people or her heart. But she never suspects the handsome male is more than she ever imagined, and the two of them coming together changes the course of their futures forever.
Then I was on the Savvy Authors website and I found an article by author Kelly Whitley and she uses a formula. (heroine) must (action) with (hero) to (conflict) or (consequence). We decided to try this and came up with:
A vampire princess resisting societal constraints must reunite with a mysterious stranger from the wrong side of the river after their one-night stand sparks a chain of events.
Now the problem with this one was we had mixed reviews, and we felt like it wasn’t the core of our story. One big difference between Kelly Whitley and us is her books are paranormal suspense romance, and ours are more paranormal contemporary romance. There isn’t some big conflict like the world ending, someone getting kidnapped, a whole species eliminated. Our characters have more everyday conflicts, like he’s rich and she’s a prostitute (Pretty Woman). Okay, so that’s not an everyday conflict, but it’s not paranormal either. Or suspenseful.
So, after doing research we found a website that said there are many formulas you can use. One of the suggestions was: A situation causes the protagonist to face his/her largest obstacle plus outcome. I felt this was much more directed towards use. And after a few more emails we came up with our fifth and final logline.
A repressed vampire princess has a one-night stand with a mysterious stranger from the wrong side of the river, sparking an unexpected chain of events and opening her to a whole new world.
I hope you all agree with us that what we finally came up with is a great logline/elevator pitch. And I hope you all would like to read the book too!