Thursday, December 06, 2012

TAGLINE Critique ... now!

It's the first Thursday of December and we've decided to offer up some tagline - a/k/a log line - critiques.  Do you have yours all polished and ready?  'Cause we're ready to help your tag lines really soar.
Photo by ismellsheep in WANA Commons

Leave your one-sentence tag line in the comments and we'll drop in through the day to leave you some feedback.  We can't wait to see what you've got for us!

Need more examples?  Here are a few:

Just before the outbreak of World War II, an adventuring archaeologist named Indiana Jones races around the globe to single-handedly prevent the Nazis from turning the greatest archaeological relic of all time into a weapon of world conquest.                                                                                                                                (Raiders of the Lost Ark)

A young man and woman from different social classes fall in love aboard an ill-fated voyage at sea. (Titanic)


Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on a road trip with his best friend to try to find some new direction in his life.
(An Abundance of Katherines)

Alright, now share yours!  Go!


46 comments:

  1. Okay, here it is. I thank you for any feedback you can give me. (I'm so scared.)

    Junior year sucks for Sadie Perkins, she creates a dream world (hot guy included) to escape her far-from-perfect life, but when monsters try to enslave her, she must fight to leave her growing nightmare alive.

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  2. I know I need help with this one XD

    Gwen had her eighteenth birthday all planned out - the climax of which was her rocking party that the kids at school would surely talk about for weeks - and it was going perfectly... until someone in a Scream mask tried to murder her.

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  3. Christine - sounds interesting! Just a few changes I'd suggest.
    Junior year sucks for Sadie Perkins, SO (some sort of transition word)she creates a dream world (hot guy included) to [distract from her] far-from-perfect life[;] but when monsters try to enslave her [there], she must fight to [escape] her growing nightmare alive.
    Where is the dream world? In her head, on paper? You could maybe cut the lead in and just say like:
    Sadie Perkins' sucktastic junior year inspires her to create a dream world (hot guy included) in the pages of her journal, but when...

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  4. Christine - I totally agree with Jessie's feedback! I definitely think you need the transition word in the first sentence in this format - or going with something like her second version would even help you add in some voice. Good luck!

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  5. Kahzy, just a couple quick comments.

    I think "climax" and "rockin" are sort of odd word choices - adult in a way (and rockin seems a throw-back to an older time). Consider changing to this:

    Gwen's eighteenth birthday party was going just as planned, complete with XYZ (kissing her crush, whatever) and ABC, until someone in a Scream mask tried to murder her.

    And quick question - does the entire novel take place during this one party? The tagline makes it sound that way ... if it is more about solving the mystery of who is in the mask, you may need to extend the tagline to include it.

    Good luck!

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  6. Chris - I'm with Jessie and Nikki! Plus, I'm loving this idea.

    Kahzy - For me, I think what it's missing is a clear goal. She's having a party and someone shows up to kill her. So what? (I'm saying that in a nice way. Just bringing up the point.) Insert what her goal is and how this will affect her; I think that will up the ante a ton.

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  7. A nameless, genderless teen rides shotgun on a mission to dump the corpse of a classmate whose death they might have, sort of, maybe had something to do with.

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  8. Taglines are so difficult! I've left out so much and yet it still feels long and unwieldy.

    While planning to escape their nightmarish home, 16-year-old abused and battered Brian and his older brother Doug must hide their more-than-brotherly relationship -- until Brian faces the ultimate betrayal when Doug abandons him.

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  9. Thanks so much guys!!This was very helpful. Taglines are one of my weaknesses.

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  10. Christie, I think yours is pretty clean as is. My only suggestion is to maybe make the "more-than-brotherly" relationship more concrete. Is it sexual/incestual?

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  11. This seems awesome! So I'm hopping in with mine, even though it's not really one sentence.

    17 year old Alice just met a ghost, which is cool. Then he starts killing people, not so cool. Guess becoming his girlfriend wasn’t such a good idea.

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  12. Ah...I'll give it a shot

    Carly could never forget the unsolved murders and when they start up again she learns that surviving means opening the evil inside her.

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  13. Um..help?

    Sixteen-year-old Alexandra's love life is utterly nonexistent, that is, until she steals Cupid's dart gun and finds herself thrust back in time to relive the death of Cupid’s ex-girlfriend in her already soul-occupied body.

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  14. Protecting the people I love from the Nosferatu has been my lifelong goal, one that is even more important to me now when one more person is taken away, and the one person I thought I could trust most in the world may just want me as dead as I want the monsters.

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  15. 1000th monkey - I like everything except the "nameless, genderless" part. It makes it feel almost like not a real story. (You aren't pulling my leg, are you?) I like the way the sentence ends though - great voice. And the line is short and to the point, which is good.

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  16. Christie - I agree with Nikki. Are you imply that their relationship is incestuous, because that's how it sounds.

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  17. Hannah Grace - While convention dictates that loglines be 1 sentence, I've seen them where they're not. Your sentences are short enough that it works. I might try re-working it just a little along these lines.
    Seventeen year old Alice just started dating a ghost, which is cool. Then he starts killing people. Guess becoming his girlfriend wasn’t such a good idea.

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  18. E. Arroyo -
    I'd say you need to be a little more specific. Some concrete details will help pique the reader's interest.
    Carly could never forget the unsolved murders (which ones? the ones that plagued her town? that took her relatives? what?) and when they start up again she learns (realizes?) that [to survive a killer she must open]an evil inside her(self).
    You could also restructure so it reads more like: When a town's unsolved serial murders start happening once again, 17 year old Carly realizes that to survive the killer, she must tap into her own evil side.

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  19. This is great! I just had my first page critiqued but not my tagline. Here it is:


    A terminally ill teen builds a lasting tribute to his father, a relationship with a beautiful outcast, and a legacy all his own.


    I'm looking forward to your feedback. :-)

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  20. Elizabeth - you had me at Cupid. :)
    Sixteen-year-old Alexandra's love life is utterly nonexistent (delete "that is") until she steals Cupid's dart gun and finds herself thrust back in time to relive the death of Cupid’s ex-girlfriend [in her already soul-occupied body - this part confuses me. I think what you're saying is she's dropped into the ex-girlfriend's body and the ex-girlfriend is still in the body too?]. And how does being dropped back into the body change Alexandra's love life? She's still got none of her own it would seem. And is that what's most important about the story?
    What about something more like: When 16 yo Alexandra steals Cupid's dart gun, she doesn't get added spark in her love life; she gets transported back in time and dropped in the body of Cupid's ex-girlfriend, who hasn't vacated the body, but who is about to be murdered.

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  21. Insomniac - I like your tagline but I feel like it doesn't hold any tension or conflict other than him being ill ... is it a race against time (without using that as it is cliche) or something else?

    It sounds a little similar to The Fault in Our Stars by John Greene. The (longer) tagline for that book is: Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

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  22. KS - I really like the tone of this, but I feel like a logline doesn't work when it's first person. It also doesn't tell me age and gender of my narrator.

    I'm a bit confused about whether "the person who is taken away" and "the one person I thought I could trust" are the same person? I'm thinking not, but it's hard to tell. In general, I'd say you need to streamline this and add some description so we know who the protagonist is. Since I don't have these details, I'm just guessing:

    Libby's lifelong goal has been to protect the people she loves from the Nosferatu, but her ideals are shaken when it appears that the one person she trusts above all others wants her dead.

    or
    16-yr old Nosferatu-hunter, Libby Lane, must reexamine what she's fighting for when it appears that the one person she trusted above all others suddenly wants her dead.

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  23. Insomniac - I don't think I could improve on what you've got. Wow.

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  24. Ha - just saw that Nikki and I have differing thoughts on Insomniac's log line. Is that the beauty of art? It's so subjective.

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  25. Hee Jessie :) I do like it and think it's clean ... maybe it doesn't need more!

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  26. Wow, thank you both for your analysis. I'm going to be diplomatic and say that you're *both* right: maybe my short-form tagline is good, but I need a longer, more detailed logline as Nikki suggested. Should I try to add more details? It is a race against time, the main character is dying of a brain tumor and is determined to finish his father's lighthouse before he dies.

    I'm glad you mentioned John Green, he's definitely an influence and my literary hero. :-)

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  27. 1000monkey - I think the adjectives you've used at the beginning give the line a chunky feel. 'Genderless' is interesting, though. Maybe incorporate it differently. The other issue is this tagline might be just a bit too vague. I think you need to state a goal. Ask yourself a few questions like Why does this teen not know whether he/she was involved? What would he/she lose by being involved or gain by not being involved?

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  28. Christie - I'm totally going to second Nikki on this one. Other than that one suggestion, nice tagline.

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  29. Elizabeth Prats - I really like this one. I think 'that is' is unnecessary, so I'd take that out. The only other thing is the last phrase. Can you make it clearer, less hard to read? It's not that I don't understand what you're getting at; it's just doesn't flow. I still think an agent would love this, though.

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  30. Thanks guys! I suck at taglines =S. So much to convey in such a small description. Is this anywhere close to better?

    Amberlyn Winters hates the Nosferatu, so when one kills her close friend and other teenagers, it’s obvious more people will die if she doesn’t do something, because the person she thought she could trust most might just be working with the deadhead behind it.

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  31. Hannah Grace - I like this idea a lot. I do think you need to shave it down a bit and add a little more specifics. I'd suggest starting with who Alice is, why meeting a ghost is so cool to her, and then (the goal & consequence) for becoming his girlfriend. Make sense??

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  32. E. Arroyo - I like the first half of the tagline. It's the last part that stumps me.
    Why couldn't Carly ever forget about those past unsolved murders? Were they personal? Did they just creep her out? Had she known something about them? How was she connected to them?

    Then, if the story let's you, I'd connect your answer to the above questions to the ending of the tagline where you mention that the evil inside her is her only survival.

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  33. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  34. Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it. Would changing "more-than-brotherly" to "romantic" be sufficient to clarify? I'm hoping the fact that they are hiding their relationship also indicates it does involve incest (though there's no sex) and warns the reader of the taboo subject without actually having to use the word?

    While planning to escape their nightmarish home, 16-year-old abused and battered Brian and his older brother Doug must hide their romantic relationship -- until Brian faces the ultimate betrayal when Doug abandons him.

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  35. Hi K.S. Pendergrass,

    The first part of the sentence doesn't go with the second part. It doesn't build on the hate, which is what you first stated about. I would leave the hate part out unless your whole story is about the hate.

    When a Nosferatu kills one of Amberlyn Winters' closest friend and other teenagers, it's obvious she has to do something about it, but the one person she thought she could trust the most to help her might be the one aiding the deadhead behind the murders.

    Of course, that is not perfect. I don't know what your story is really centered on. Plus, that leads to the question as to why it's obvious (is it really important as to why it's obvious) and why it's up to Amberlyn to do something about it.

    Simplify what you have by answering those questions. Leave out the hate part, you might be able to leave out the obvious part (I don't know), and then see what you come up with.

    I hope something I said helps.

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  36. Christie,

    The only thing I suggest is the..."until Bryan part".

    When stated that way, it sounds like when Bryan has to face the betrayal, the relationship they share no longer has to be hidden.

    Like.

    I really liked bacon cheeseburgers, until I had a heart-attack.

    Does that make sense?

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  37. Whoo! Thanks so much for doing this. =]

    Anyway, here's my tagline:

    Rhian Eventhel escapes her eleven-year captivity with the goal of killing the King who kept her prisoner only to discover a world at war with itself, and discovers she could be the savior--or destroyer--of everything and everyone in it.

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  38. Katie - I could wordsmith some, but I'm not sure it's actually better. (You do use "discover" 2 x so I'd change one. Here's an alternate if you want to play with it...)

    Having escaped her 11-year captivity, Rhian Eventhel just wants to kill the King who kept her prisoner, but a ranging war has the world on the brink of destruction and Rhian just may be the savior - or destroyer - of everything in it.

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  39. Finally got away from finals! Thanks Jessie & Sheri :) Lol this one line pitch business is tough. It's that phrasing of that last line :(

    Would it just be best to cut the last bit? Make it end with"...thrust back in time to relive the death of Cupid's ex-girlfriend" and just forget the soul bit?

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  40. Here's the middle grade contemporary fantasy:

    Muriel the misfit longs to find out where she belongs, leading her to a mansion filled with magical aunts, but she soon finds that even magic can’t solve all of her problems—like bullies, a haunted house, and psychopathic grandparents.



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  41. Thanks J.L. that does make sense. *rethinks*

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  42. Katie, I think maybe make it a little less wordy, but it's a pretty good logline!

    Rhian Eventhel escapes her eleven-year captivity with the goal of killing the King who kept her prisoner only to discover a world at war and that she could be the savior--or destroyer--of everything and everyone in it.

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  43. Theresa -
    I'd say you could ditch "the misfit" - what about something like: Muriel hopes to find the place where she finally belongs when she moves into a mansion with her magical aunts, but she soon finds that even magic is no match for her biggest problems - bullies, a haunted house, and psychopathic grandparents.

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  44. I love the tag line fun! A special thanks to all who have posted!

    http://fiverr.com/ideastothemax/create-3-unique-tag-lines-for-your-websitebusiness

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