- Paperback: 108 pages
- Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 2 edition (December 10, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1481045407
- ISBN-13: 978-1481045407
- Source: I received this book in exchange for an honest review.
- Rating: 4/5
What’s your story about?
It’s the most frightening question in the world if all you have is a blank stare. But what if you had an attention-grabbing answer that left your audience wanting more? It’s not only possible, it’s simple if you have the right tools.
Story consultant and author Jordan Smith has helped countless storytellers strengthen and pitch their stories. His tool of choice is the logline, a technique for selling screenplays that is little known outside of Hollywood. Jordan has adapted this powerful tool and made it accessible to all storytellers.
Not only is a logline useful for answering that frightening question, it’s also handy for keeping your story on track. If you don’t know the core of your story, you run the risk of meandering it into places where it doesn’t belong. With these techniques, you can solve story problems early before they cause you trouble.
Inside this book, you’ll find:
Whether you write novels, movies, comic books, songs, or even operas, this book is for you. Every storyteller should be able to say in one sentence what his story is about. Finding the Core of Your Story will help you learn to do just that.
- The Quick-Start Logline Chapter to get you going right away
- Exercises to build your logline skills one step at a time
- The four fundamental logline rules
- Useful chapters to dig deeper and handle special cases
- More examples than you can shake a stick at
- And more!
Jordan's book does a great job of making you stop thinking about the tiny details and look at the entire overall piece of the work. Yeah, it's hard. But the book does give you some great tips for doing it.
I think loglines are freaking hard to write, it doesn't matter how long you've been writing. This is an essential book for those just starting out and might not even understand the concept of breaking your book down into one single thought.
I'm a pantser kinda girl so even with this great tool, my loglines are always something that I sit and struggle with. I want the wording to be absolutely perfect- you know, getting caught up in the little details again? Eh, it's what I do. :)
It's a good read for those that have a hard time with breaking your epic masterpiece down into a single thought.
Jordan Smith is a storyteller who generally works in the realm of film, though he branches out into other forms of fiction frequently. He's always picking stories apart to see what makes them tick. He is the author of Finding the Core of Your Story and A Purple and Gold Afghan and other stories, and the producer/director of the Month of the Novel web series.
When he's not telling stories, Jordan can be found relaxing with a good book, watching hockey, talking to himself in a most alarming array of voices, or attempting to paralyze his tongue with hot sauce.
Jordan blogs about all manner of story-related things at FixMyStory.com and tweets regularly as @Malfhok.