Jumping right in! Our first logline critique round will be open for submissions on Monday, September 24 (one week from today).
For the uninitiated: I hold 3 critique rounds for loglines only (no story text), in preparation for the Baker's Dozen Agent Auction. Each critique round will host 40 entries, so a total of 120 folks will get a chance for public critique of their loglines.
To avoid confusion (there have been a few questions): These logline critique rounds are NOT a part of the auction. They are simply an optional opportunity to get some feedback as you craft and fine-tune your logline. You don't have to participate in the logline critique rounds in order to submit to the actual auction.
A logline should be as brief as possible. The word count for these rounds will be set at 150, but that's actually TOO MANY WORDS. I've padded it for stress-lowering purposes.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR ROUND ONE:
The submission window will be open from 9 am to 5 pm EDT on Monday, September 24. This is a lottery, which means the bot will randomly choose 40 entries at the close of the window. These entries will post on Tuesday, September 25, for critique.
WEB FORM SUBMISSIONS (preferred/easiest method):
GO HERE. Please remember to proofread before hitting "submit".
EMAIL SUBMISSIONS:
As always, send your submission to authoress.submissions(at)gmail.com. Format as follows:
SCREEN NAME: (type it here)
TITLE: (type it here)
GENRE: (type it here)
(type your 150-word logline here)
If there's ANYTHING you don't understand, please post your question below!
Yay! I love reading loglines. These are so much fun and good for all, whether you enter or not.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for doing the bot thing, so us west coasters don't have to get up at the crack of dark!
Thanks so much for offering this!
ReplyDeleteI'm grateful for the lengthy word-count in this case, but what do folks suggest as a good 'target' length?
Lately I've been working on a super-short <15-word single sentence - practically just phrase! - but I'm thinking 60-75 words in two punchy sentences would be better for this type of critiques.
Sorry to ask a pesky question, but is a specific subject line for email submissions required? :}
ReplyDeleteThanks!
I second Catherine's question about a good target length; I've seen advice that "the world should be fleshed out; aim for 30-50 words" to "don't even give the reader the chance to be bored--25 words or less!"
ReplyDeleteI've come up with a few different log line variations, and the best--I think--clocks in at 43 words.
(Then again, I also have the issue of trying to sum up my characters because my book is written with different POVs per chapter. :-P)