In an earlier post, I wrote about the writers’ residency I attended from November 15th to 21st, 2022 in Srimangal, the tea capital of Bangladesh.
Each day offered a lecture by a mentor, an immersive excursion to inspire us to incorporate sensory details in our writing, free writing time, and four opportunities to exchange informally around the delicious food prepared by kind host, Sultana Nahar, and the friendly staff at Hermitage Srimangal. At the start of the residency, participants met with their mentors to discuss their novel-in-progress based on a submission they provided ahead of time. On the last day, participants met again with their mentors to discuss any new direction they wished to pursue following their residency experience. All those present also had a chance to read out loud a short excerpt from their work-in-progress or recent publications.
The first lecture, given by Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth, shortlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, encouraged us to articulate “What is my Story About” in a succinct premise sentence, or logline, for our projects. It should address:
Who?
Fighting whom?
Over what?
To make this exercise even more interesting, I’d like to compare loglines to clotheslines using pictures I took in Bangladesh to record the beauty of clotheslines and celebrate the work of everyone involved in doing laundry:
What should an ideal logline look like, A, B, C, D, or E? Let me know what you think in the comments.
Here are the premise sentences for my two manuscripts, crafted using Julia’s method:
Our Fifth Season – manuscript completed in 2021 after six major drafts; not yet sold to a publisher:
South Korean screen star, Adam, faces a baffling murder charge at home while Joanne, the American woman he loves, desperately tries to help him even though he has severed all ties between them.
Firefly – my current novel project, now in its 2nd draft; this is the project I sought to improve at the writers’ residency with the help of my mentor, Omar El Akkad:
Firefly, a courtesan in 17th-century Korea, finds that she must destroy the man she loves if she wants to avenge her family, executed by his father in a political purge.
In my view, a logline should look like clothesline D and give focused information rather than too much, too little, or too diffuse.
Do you have a logline for your narrative project? Does it answer the three key questions listed above? Please share!
Point of View / Josée Sigouin 