My Logline

In our current Twitter-fueled, Instagram-driven market, it is crucial that you have a catchy logline. A logline is an instantly appealing and memorable sentence, far briefer than an elevator pitch, summarizing your work. Your logline should capture the imagination of the person who is receiving your pitch. You also owe it to your creative work that the logline correctly encapsulates the main idea of your book or movie. So here is my logline:

A man from the past and a woman from the future unite to fight forces dedicated to the destruction of mankind.

Let's parse this out:

First, my hero Rei is from the past and that is a critical aspect of his character. It means his personality and worldview are formed in a time different from the universe in which he is awakened. Rei is basically us.

Second, my heroine Rome is from the future, well at least from our future, and again it means her personality and worldview are of her time.

The next section, "unite", is meant to let you know that the two hook up. Rome's Revolution is supposed to be a love story but it is not a story about romantic pursuit. The two main characters join forces very early in the story and the series is actually about the Rei/Rome system that take on the outside forces. While they love each other, getting to that point is not the main element of the story.

The next section, "fight forces", is meant to capture the broad range of villains and dangers Rome and Rei encounter. The forces include OMCOM, the VIRUS units, the Stareaters, the Onsiras, the Overmind of Deucado, the Darwin group, MASAL and MASAL's Sipre among others. I had to boil all of those down to one word!

The final portion, "dedicated to the destruction of mankind", is a little misleading. Not all of the dangers threaten the human species. Certainly unchecked VIRUS units would, the Stareaters for sure and that was MASAL's whole plan. So while not 100% accurate, it is close enough.

I am most proud of the construction of the logline itself. I tried to use rhyming and alliteration to make the sentence punchy. "From the future", alliteration. "Unite to fight", rhyme. "Fight forces", alliteration. "Dedicated to the destruction", alliteration.

I worked on this sentence for two weeks! What do you think?