TITLE: STARBREAK
GENRE: science fiction
Trapped in a dead-end job with a husband married to his career, scientist and mother Chrissy King joins the interstellar peace keepers, The Knights of Mourning, to stop a murderer from rampaging on Earth; when the killer starts destroying stars and no one believes there’s a connection between Earth and the killer, Chrissy must stop the murderer before he adds the sun to his collection of celestial corpses.
Love this concept but I think the log line is a bit too long and too detailed.
ReplyDeleteTrapped in a dead-end job with a husband married to his career, scientist and mother Chrissy King joins the interstellar peace keepers. When the killer she's chasing starts destroying stars, Chrissy must stop the murderer before he adds the sun to his collection of celestial corpses.
Boom - fast. short. grabby. Enough details for us to get a snapshot of the story. Just my thought - feel free to disregard if this doesn't resonate with you.
I don't think you need to name the peace keepers. And I would split it into two sentences instead of using a semi-colon. Also, "when the killer starts destroying stars and no one believes there’s a connection [to] Earth" might make things less convoluted. I loved the "collection of celestial corpses" by the way.
ReplyDeleteLOVE Celestial Corpses! You absolutely have to keep that no mater what kind of revision you do. I mean, i'd probably read the pages based on that alone.
ReplyDeleteI do like Writefully So's revision, but otherwise i think this logline is strong and really conveys everything we need
Writefully So gave a good solution--I was going to suggest dropping the qualifiers and starting with scientist and mother, but I think her solution is better.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds interesting. As a logline, it's a bit complex. If Chrissy is trapped in a dead end job with her husband, how does she manage to join the interstellar peace keepers? Can you *murder* a star? Simplify so that the focus is on the main character, the villain and the stakes. Using pretty much your words: Scientist and mother Chrissy King, an interstellar peace keeper, must stop a [star killer?] before he adds Earth's sun to his collection of celestial corpses.
ReplyDeleteOr not! :-) Good luck with the story!
Count this as another vote for Writefully So's revision. I got a little bit lost in the original, but this seems to make the salient points clear. (Although only the author knows whether it represents the book accurately.)
ReplyDeleteOne other thing: "trapped in a dead-end job with a husband..." makes it sound like the MC works for her husband. If that's not the case, you might want to rephrase.
Very cool premise. It took me several tries to get through the first sentence though, and some of the second sentence felt like it duplicated the same information. I think the changes suggested by Writefully So are headed in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteI definitely would consider writerlly's rewrite. The way you have it is too clumped together.
ReplyDeleteThis is not the proper use of a semi-colon. Please change it to a period. Now that we have that out of the way, you need to explain Chrissy's motivation better. She is risking her life because she's bored? We're going to need a better reason than that. And why must it be HER who does this? This is her personal journey so you need to connect everything to her own stakes.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
Holly