I've written a story and my logline is this: A recently widowed, Christian father begins to question his faith and beliefs after he and his child suffer through numerous, life tragedies. Now, is that a good logline? Or does it need some work to make it more exciting, appealing, and interesting?
There's a Louis and a Clarke in your story? I would definitely change one of those names. Unless of course they're exploring the rivers of The New World on an expedition of discovery, and perhaps trapping beavers along the way.
A recently widowed, Christian father begins to question his faith and beliefs after he and his child suffer through numerous, life tragedies. It's one sentence, but ideally a strong logline should contain the story's central irony. There should be a 'but' in it. If the logline doesn't have this and can't produce it - that can often reveal a deeper problem with the story. I think I remember seeing a story like this in the Workshop a few weeks ago (but without the fantasy elements: parasites and archons). The worry would be that "Man realises he's agnostic" isn't a satisfying character arc, it's just polemical. So looking afresh at the info in the OP, and forgetting the earlier workshop piece: is there a "but" that could go into the logline? "Man thinks God is nice, but discovers really He isn't." also feels like it might be missing something. What character development is there? What conflicts are there? Does character drive the story or is character passive? From a few reads of the OP I think all these aspects of storytelling might be missing from the description - and if they're missing from the story as well then a good logline probably won't come.
That story in the workshop was mine. Basically, the story is of a man who is a devout Christian, he lives, eats, sleeps, and breathes God. He even abandons his wife for God but then when the man starts going through numerous life tragedies, God, (just like all the other Christians in his life), turns his back on the man. Leaving the man to realize that he can no longer serve a god who he can't determine is good and caring or evil and an asshole. The story focuses on Maltheism, which is the belief that God is evil and that Lucifer and God are one in the same. The man isn't agnostic, he isn't an atheist, he's no longer a Christian, he, by the end of the story, becomes a spiritualist with Maltheist beliefs. The story is based on actual events that actually happened in real life. It tells not only the story of Maltheism but the story of how a group of Archon beings influences people and uses people as an energy source to feed off of. The "but" of this real life story is that, this man is devoted and loyal to God but when he needs help God is nowhere to be found to help him, at all.
No, this book is influenced by my father and I's own experiences, with me growing up as a child. We were homeless, in poverty and through it all my father, a devout Christian, prayed for God's help but God refused to help us, as a result. My father took his life over it. As a result, I found out why God never helped us and so I decided to turn my entire experience with my father into a novel because I promised my father I would, and this is a story that needs to be told.
I'd suggest that for this to become a novel it needs to start telling the story of a character and how they change through conflict. There are very many other ways of putting that - there are infinite approaches - but if it's about Maltheism and God and Archons and not about the interesting things going on inside Louis, it's going to lack interest value. It might be that the OP doesn't do Louis' character arc justice, or that he has a bit of a character arc that could be salvaged - but here it reads as the story of a man changing his opinions when the situation changes. A story arc like this:- Main character likes cake Main character gets tooth decay Main character gives up cake Isn't really a character arc - because the character's attitude to cake is external to them, it's a plot device. In fiction anything external is false - only the inside self of the character is real. That example is just to illustrate - but I'd suggest that from a hard-structuralist perspective, God and Cake are actually pretty interchangeable, and that Louis' story does reduce to things outside him, rather than who is his on the inside. At least it seems that way from what's been posted so far. I think this is the reason the logline is proving difficult.
Definitely think about what makes your story unique for a logline. 'Christian questions faith after tragedy' could apply to a large chunk of Christian fiction. Showcase what is interesting and different about your novel. What's the hook that makes your book stand out. Also, be careful about misleading your audience. From this logline, if I hadn't read your synopsis, I would assume that it ends with him regaining his faith, like a classic Christian fiction novel. People who are looking for stories about people reaffirming their faith would be put off by a novel that ended with the character hating God, and vice versa, people who aren't interested in stories about reaffirming faith might be interested in one about coming to hate God. I also agree with evild4ve, right now the logline reads, 'man reacts to an event in an understandable way' What is your character doing, or what is his internal life? Writing stories that are close to your heart can be difficult, good luck!
I'm sorry for your loss. Autobiographical stories always involve tension with what storytelling is, and I know from my work that it can be more painful to find the story than it is to say "here is the lesson that I want to pass on." But readers will need your actual life to be artificially re-framed for them, in the form of a literary irony, for it to work as a novel. One approach is to say "it's fiction," and make stuff up - or at the other extreme some writers practise detachment so as to examine their life as if it's from the outside. Since there are already fantasy elements here, and since the OP's experiences were so extreme, I imagine the former approach might be healthier.
No, you're missing what the story is about. The story is about a man finding a truth that he never had before, and how he comes to find that truth. It's not about him liking God, something goes wrong and then he doesn't like God anymore......never mind, just forget it. Thanks anyway for the replies.
What you are saying makes sense, but it may be frustrating to others (and maybe the OP too) on how to differentiate between external factors that are plot devices versus external events which develop or illustrate a character's personality. I mean, in order for anything to happen in almost any story, something has to happen externally, even if it's just dialogue with other characters. So in the OPs example, if the supernatural element were removed (and I'm not suggested they do it - only using it as an example) and Louis' transformation is driven by something more mundane, but still external, would it still be a plot device? Say instead of his wife dying, she leaves him for some other guy, but he believes (from what his church teaches) there is purpose in suffering, and that since he is good, at some point God will send her back to him. And he goes down the same road described - addiction, unemployment, homelessness. And while he is in the homeless shelters, he sees all kinds of people, most even more downtrodden than him, but he notices something: some are more virtuous than he ever was, while others are even more evil or depraved. And he concludes organized religion is a joke, that there is no meaning in suffering. Bad things just happen to people, righteous or unrighteous. Would that be a character arc, or just a plot driven story? A change has happened to him, but without the external events which he experienced or observed, the change wouldn't happen.
The story is that this man, Louis is a holy-roller, he is Jesus obsessed if you will. He does everything For God's love and is always there to serve God but when he is down and out, God is not there. My story is just like the story of Job, only in my story, Louis doesn't get everything he lost back from God, he gets it off of his own belief in himself and in him trusting his own decisions and in the end, he turns away from God. The lesson from the story is that you don't need God or religion to run your daily life, YOU run your daily life and that's what I want people to take from this story, that God is not the loving kind god people think he is. Billions are suffering everywhere and where is God? That's what I think lots of people will resonate with, especially in this day and age - the fact that everyone's suffering - yet where is God? Watching it all, enjoying watching it all, and doing nothing at all. Furthermore, if Louis had run his daily life from day one, instead of being so loyal and rooted in god, his wife wouldn't have been murdered and there would be no story. I just have no idea how to condense all of that into a logline and I thought I'd come here and get some ideas as to how to but....it is what it is, but that's what the story is about and I can't add fiction into something that isn't fiction. Everything in my story actually happened to my father in real life, and the anger and hatred that Louis has for God at one point in the story is what I, the writer have now. So, while it's a fiction novel, it's not fiction.
Departing from the OP's story... which I hope is alright outside the workshop. If it's external, I call it a plot device. I often drill into posters' fantasy elements because the complexity of them can make it harder to see they're detracting from the characters, but when we get down to it the fantasy elements and these mundane things are the same in the most important respect: which is that they didn't happen. (Notwithstanding biographical and historical fiction - in those genres it's that fictionally they didn't happen.) The chap's wife didn't leave him for some other guy any more than the orcs laid siege to Gondor. One of the things that makes the problem easy to pick out is that writers who have it get bogged down in world-building rather than execution. If the characters are there, the world builds itself around them via their viewpoints, and the plot devices fall into place without too much work: of course there will be things that need more research or contradict or sound wrong - but writers' questions tend to be coming from a much more solid base if their characters are solid. In their abstractness. Once a story is being written from character, I don't think others can help us with its plot except in very peripheral ways: we can only write our stories, because the source of our characters is us. The new example @Bruce Johnson gives I think would be a development toward character writing. But if character was driving the plot it might be more like the man's belief in god is patching a hole in his personality (e.g. he's indecisive) which his wife isn't understanding and misinterprets (e.g. as wimpishness) so that's a simple character conflict and maybe it leads to an escalating series of arguments - which are expressed in theological terms but are really a function of who they both are (which can't be described and the writer must place it between the lines for the reader to sense) - they eventually break up and he reflects on the conflict whilst continuing in reality to repeat it - maybe he falls out with a supporting character too. Meanwhile the wife hopefully has a character arc rather than just being fridged, and through hers and the supporting characters' common experience of the MC they hit it off - which makes the MC even more miserable... I think I've lost God from this sketch - but that's okay because like Cake and the Night Shelter and the Themes and the Plot Devices, the almighty has to come in via execution - as part of the stuff that links together all the abstract feelings and concrete dialogue of these three people - which on this approach are the story beats (maybe I've imagined a scene where she throws water over him and says "walk on this, asshole!"). Maybe god comes in because he shouldn't reward the ex-wife and the friend with happiness in these circumstances and so soon after - but this god's a bit maltheistic. The MC realizes the writer's love-triangle is paralleling a malignant deity's perfectly tormenting him, and (somehow) this forms the key to the personality-hole (I won't be indecisive anymore because I'll do what god obviously does and kick off arguments, put cats amongst the pigeons). In his third-act encounters with ex-wife and ex-friend he cunningly nudges them into behaving and thinking like him - drawing the deity's fire and breaking them back up. (Mystery: you are now me and therefore I am now me) He reunites with his wife - but wiser. And the ex-friend ends up as a living warning that other people's personality holes are in fact our only protection against divine malice. Now can it be loglined... Bob thinks his indecision is god's way of keeping him on the straight and narrow, but when his wife leaves him for his friend he learns that narrowstraight things are widecrooked. Which would be to do with the perfection of divine supervision being applied to causing arguments rather than world peace and universal love as we might expect. It might start to refine into "God has a narrow focus on couples picking fights." (picking might pick up indecision) In case the OP's still reading - a trick I sometimes find useful for loglines is to invert a key concept from the part before the 'but'. Even if it sounds wrong initially, by the time the first draft is finished a phrase or cliche that would encapsulate the reversal will have presented itself.
I think I came up with something, I don't know but....it goes like this: After suffering through numerous tragedies, a recently widowed man discovers the truth about faith and religion while trying to get his life back on track.
While more active on your narrator's part, it still suffers from being rather vague and generic. 'Suffering tragedies could mean anything, 'discovering the truth' could mean anything. 'getting his life back on track' could mean anything. Once again, try thinking in terms of hooks. Your logline's goal isn't to accurately convey all the core elements of your story, it's to make members of your target audience want to know more. Take this logline from Gideon the Ninth: 'Lesbian necromancers explore a gothic haunted palace in space'. I've read Gideon the Ninth, this completely fails at capturing the plot and characters. What it does do is hit on all the things that will make its target audience perk up and say Oh? Tell me more right now. Now, all books don't have such a crazy stand-out hook, but hopefully, you do have a hook buried somewhere in there. Perhaps it's Maltheism itself, I haven't seen many books including that at all, and might attract people with similar experiences. Maybe it's how your protagonist's obsession leads to his wife's murder. Figure out your hook, and build the logline around it. Your logline needs to be honest but not all-encompassing.
I'd suggest the logline of Gideon the Ninth for the OP's purposes would come from this longer passage (off their fandom wiki), since it includes the irony:- Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service. It isn't one sentence yet, it's three - but it's nearly there. Would this work? Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse, but her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service. This ain't going to be Proust, but it's got a character conflict. My worry would be that the character arc is "woman quits job" and the irony is "quitting her job is a lot of work" which is a little thin. It's published, so presumably they overcame that - but do you think the logline highlights something the author would have needed to flesh out? === For the OP, there is a lot more information now about what the work is aiming to achieve, and I can see three broad approaches to suggest:- - a survivor testimony This would be close to non-fiction, and in the style of a witness statement for court focusing on what the narrator saw, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. The didactic, lesson-teaching elements would be cut so that the reader can feel the authenticity. And parasite Archons would be cut too unless the OP saw and heard one. It's okay to include some opinion and belief and deduction and research so long as it's contained and the reader can always explicitly distinguish the witness testimony from the interpretation of it. - a bona fide polemic This would be to carry on in the style of the original post and produce a highly-personal work (which is really code for work that readers won't have much patience for.) It is rhetoric rather than fiction or non-fiction, and there are still techniques to make the lesson more impactful. E.g. we can make something appear like a bare-bones witness statement when really it is drip-feeding an ideology. Extremely challenging to execute - currently there probably is a bit of polemic on the bookshelves for gender identity issues and climate crisis, but for religion we would need to be writing as nice as Philip Pullman. It is a high bar. - speculative fiction A probable challenge for the OP is writing a character of someone deceased. That's unimaginably difficult. The person can't be on the page - but the reader requires them to be on the page (not just an external summary of events). Fiction offers a compromise - an imaginary character can be created, who has some similar biographical details but is a different person. Their story can impart the same life lessons, and in a way that is easier for the reader to understand. Also supernatural antagonists like Archon parasites can be given voices (if it is in keeping with the writer's beliefs to do so).
Okay so let me ask this, how would you describe the story, The Pursuit of Happiness? Which is almost like my story but without the God complex? Because basically what I'm hearing is that my story won't work because its controversial because it speaks against Christianity and God. Because I don't understand why everyone is making it out like this would be a difficult story, its not. Its like taking some homeless person's experience and turning it into a story...Their conflict? They're homeless and for some of them - why? They lost their jobs, homes and etc and believed in God to help them but he didn't and somehow they got their lives back on track and upon then doing so, they learned that Gos and Christianity is nothing but B.S. and is tied to Maltheism. That's the entire story, right there.
Philip Pullman speaks against Christianity - very successful author, deftly executed. It works because he writes character - whatever he wants the story to say about god, it's inseparable from Lyra's and the other characters' arcs. The Pursuit of Happyness - I've seen the Will Smith film but not read the book. The film I think is strongly character-written, and from comments on goodreads the book probably moreso. The stand-out scene in the film is the subway scene - where they have to sleep in a public lavatory - and we see the MC's psychology changing from denial to a determination to do something about it. Rags-to-riches isn't something that happens to Will Smith's Chris Gardner from the outside - it's that his character development changes the world around him. I couldn't ascertain if the subway scene exists in the book, or if it's handled differently - but I expect at least it's visualizing something the director strongly felt was there in the memoir. I've read that both the book and the film approach the story as fiction (rather than it being witness testimony or a polemical against welfare dependency) - e.g. raising the boy's age so he can have a voice, and simplifying the comings and goings of the IRS.
My book is the same way. I may not be describing it right in my synopsis but upon reading the story, the story is all about character and how the world all around him changes for character. My story is character written and it's fiction because the names are different, some scenes in the story are different but a lot of the events are the real. So its fiction but not fiction. And polemical means controversial, what's wrong with controversial? No one has a problem with Christians being controversial with their catholic bashing film The Passion Of The Christ but when It's a story that goes against Christianity and Gos, it's controversial. Just forget it, I guess I'll just write a story about a man going through all types of hell but who still loves God to the fullest, like the film, Breakthrough.
By polemical/polemic I mean work that is combative and derives its structure from pushing a contrary viewpoint. All polemic will be controversial to somebody, but it's more usual and more artful to be controversial without being polemical. Readers detect polemical quickly and it switches them off - unless it's delivered as softly and cleverly as Philip Pullman. The Passion of the Christ proselytizes - but it doesn't say "if you currently believe X, stop that (and now believe Y)" - so it isn't usually called a polemical film. It certainly proselytized enough to annoy lots of critics and viewers. It's "if you currently believe X, that's awesome keep going" which is the simplest way to find an audience. And the Catholics are one of the biggest audiences that could be done for - so another thing it gets criticized for is its commercial motive or cynicism.
Yeah and my story doesn't push people to Maltheism, its one character telling another character of his belief in it and why he believes in it and its that other character discovering it for themselves. How is that combative??
One of the theological debates with maltheism is that it needs a theism as a jumping-off point. But I think this part of the thread seemed combative:- The lesson from the story is that you don't need God or religion to run your daily life, YOU run your daily life and that's what I want people to take from this story, that God is not the loving kind god people think he is. This seemed to take the readers' current beliefs/opinions/perceptions as a starting point, and aim to change them. The challenge is just that this isn't what people usually come to novels for - and it's not what the art-form emphasizes. There are diatribes, invectives, essays, manifestos, speeches, blogs - all good, but they are different forms from a novel. I'm conscious this thread isn't picking up many other posters' viewpoints so far - and it's more than likely the OP will find someone else's viewpoints more useful/accessible. This comment though is what it keeps coming back to:- the story is all about character and how the world all around him changes for character This hasn't been obvious to me, and I don't think I've been alone in that. I'd suggest there might be a semantic difference around the word "about". Character writing isn't writing about characters (or around them or concerning them), or how the world changes for them - it's that all the writing grows out from inside the character's self. Even the storyworld does - we don't put a building in a street or a day in the week except to reveal a character's emotions and psychology - their self. When a synopsis is presented as things happening to a character, more than how they are changing on the inside (e.g. "when the man starts going through numerous life tragedies God turns his back on the man. Leaving the man to realize" - the MC is a passive recipient here), and when the logline doesn't reveal a character arc, that's often a sign that character hasn't been the focus. So far there hasn't been a lightbulb moment - with the synopsis and logline quickly being flipped round by the OP to put a character arc to the forefront. But once it's that way round, standard creative writing approaches become far more effective.
