So, I have this novel-type thing that I’ve been working on and it occurred to me over the weekend that I need to come up with the catchy pitch for it.
I kicked around The Player-style pitches (Hamlet meets Fight Club! Sex and the City meets The Wolfman!) but none of those seemed terribly promising.
So I tried this: A neurotic young widow struggles to master her newly discovered werewolf heritage.
And that sounded really boring to me, and I thought, “Ah-hah! If I discover the elevator pitch, I will have discovered how to fix those elements of the plot that I have been struggling with!”
This occurred to me: A young widow awakens from a suicide attempt as a werewolf.
Better. Punchier, anyway. But I just wasn’t sure that I wanted her to actually have killed herself in a direct fashion.
So I found myself writing a bunch of things like this: A young widow survives a murder attempt and awakens as a werewolf. A young widow has a fatal accident at an underground S&M club and awakens as a werewolf. A young widow sleeps with the wrong biker and awakens as a werewolf.
I realized I was doing Mad Libs.
A young widow [deadly activity] and awakens as a werewolf.
Dear Internet: what [deadly activity] would make you want to read this book?
Personally, I like the suicide attempt. Also, maybe put in something that clarifies the source of her werewolf-ism. Your note about discovering her heritage makes me think its a family thing, but the later pitches make it sound like something happens to her and someone causes/exploits that to turn her into a werewolf, which I’ve already seen a million, zillion times.
Hmm, maybe the suicide thing does work and I’m resisting it because I don’t want to go there, which in fiction terms, usually means you have to go there.
The werewolf thing is hereditary. But in her case she isn’t actively transforming until after something that would have killed her otherwise. My premise is that the act of transformation heals most otherwise deadly wounds.
A young widow awakens from a suicide attempt and confronts her newly discovered werewolf heritage.
How about, “A young widow’s suicide attempt awakens her werewolf heritage.”?
I’m going with it!
Now I can also use “Hamlet meets An American Werewolf in London” for the movie pitch.
You know, the “…suicide attempt awakens her werewolf heritage” part sounds groovy to me. The part that isn’t punching my buttons is the “young widow.” I think I want to hear something about her identity that sets up the conflict with being a werewolf. Like, “gnarly biker chick” might actually like waking up as a werewolf, which makes for a pretty boring story, whereas “Manhattan socialite” would have more of an issue with it, as would an “aspiring porn star.” All bad examples, but I’m sure you get the point. What is it about her that defines the conflict with being a werewolf, or why is being a werewolf such a problem for _her_?
Well, going at it from that angle,
“A former animal rights activist’s suicide attempt awakens her werewolf heritage.”
“A passionate vegetarian’s suicide attempt awakens her werewolf heritage.”
“A computer programmer’s suicide attempt awakens her werewolf heritage.”
I like the widow aspect, simply because I haven’t seen it much, if ever.
“A hardcore pot smoker awakens as a werewolf. She doesn’t really notice.”
That would be an awesome short story.
Hee. Somehow I’m guessing that none of those address whatever healing she ultimately needs to do in your conception of her or the actual conflict.
I’m revising my original opinion to say that she could actually want to be a werewolf, if your intent is to have the conflict be more external than internal. The real problem with your original loglines is that I don’t get what the conflict is. One way to define it in the logline is to put it into the way you identify her, but it could also be something in the setting or situation. She turns into a werewolf–so what? How is that threatening to her goals or her survival? Is the problem that she lives in cattle-ranching country? Is the problem that being reduced to the brainpower of a ravening beast gets in the way of actually solving her husband’s murder? Is that she wants to be a drugged-out clubber and being a werewolf gets in the way of going to raves? You mention below how being a werewolf doesn’t solve problems in modern society, so what problems does she need to solve?
She turns into a werewolf–so what?
Maybe that’s the issue here, because I tend to assume that turning into a werewolf is a pain in the ass for anyone who wants to live a normal life in a modern American city.
(Her werewolf kin live an insular existence in a private nature preserve in the middle of the Louisiana bayou, kind of like the Amish. One of the central conflicts is that once her kin locate her they start to pressure her to come back to the bayou with them.)
“young Seattle widow”?
Ok, that helps. Just saying “young widow” and “werewolf heritage” doesn’t let me know that you’re envisioning a modern urbanite trying to live a normal life (whatever that means to her). She could just as well have been in the bayou, in which case, her werewolfishness wouldn’t have been a problem.
I’m thinking suicide is not right either, then. Because is what she wants is to _live_ a normal life, she doesn’t want to die. Maybe what you want, since the conflict is kinda urban/modern vs. nature-ish/instinctive, is to have her be wounded by some danger of modern urban life. Maybe a car crash? Or maybe she gets mugged and being in that situation is what calls up her werewolfishness?
“When a street thug shoots her and kills her husband during a mugging gone wrong, a young Seattle-ite’s rage and grief call up her long-suppressed werewolf nature, which then threatens the life she and her husband had carefully built.”
I’m actually trying for something a lot shorter than your suggestion — the recommendation I’m following calls for something about 15 words long. Then you scale up from there. So maybe it’s just impossible to convey the level of conflict you’re looking for in something that short.
Her husband was killed in a car crash, with her driving, and survivor guilt is one of the themes. I did at one point try starting it immediately after the car crash, but it didn’t work. It ended up being about funeral arrangements and people coming over to offer condolences and it just had the wrong emotional texture.
Most of the versions have involved her attempting to save the last remnants of her life with her husband, trying to hang onto the house, that sort of thing, but those weren’t working. I think it’s because somebody trying to hang onto a house kept getting really boring for me to write about. So I already know that won’t work.
But she really feels strongly about staying in Seattle, not moving to some other city, and not moving out to the suburbs, or the wilds of Louisiana, or anything like that. Writing about a deep connection to a particular city was one of the things that was working for me.
I did kick around various crime scenarios for the initial werewolf-triggering, but all of them ended up feeling kind of arbitrary and contrived. Which is why I am starting to be fairly sure that suicide is the correct choice. It kept occurring to me and I kept rejecting it because I just didn’t want to go there.
So the story starts at a point where she thinks she has already lost everything there is to lose, but as the story unfolds she realizes that she has more to lose than she thinks.
The biggest threat posed by the inner wolf is to her sense of self. Pretty much every idea that she has about what kind of person she is, what she likes, how she is, does a 180 when the wolf starts waking up.
So we are basically talking about this mostly being an inner conflict. Which means we can go back to the beginning. When you say the inner wolf threatens her sense of self, what identity does she have about herself? I mean, is she defining herself as a young widow and the wolf threatens that self-image? Because I’m still not sure that’s what you’re talking about. I’m just not seeing “young widow vs. inner wolf” as a compelling contrast, I guess. (Unless it’s about the widow wanting to die being opposed by the wolf’s instinctive will to live and savor life, in which case “suicidal widow vs. inner wolf” would be more accurate.) “Cultured urbanite vs. inner wolf” are more opposite and tells more of the connection to the city that’s being threatened.
(I’m also wondering why, if she’s willing to kill herself before the inner wolf turns up, she isn’t more determined to off herself after the wolf causes more problems.)
“Suicidal Seattle-ite struggles to slay her inner werewolf”?
I should probably stop “helping” as I am horrible at trying to define these loglines in my own stories and always end up confusing myself even more.
Well… one more time. I keep feeling like if I can figure out what I need to make clear to you, that will establish some of the things I need to make clear to the readers.
First, the thing that got me started on this is the snowflake plotting method. I ran into it and some of the ideas resonated, because I tend to see stories as fractal. His example of a starting point was “A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul” which describes his first novel. So I was trying for something like that. I’m not sure the book I’m writing suggests something quite that intriguing, but I’ll keep working on it.
(For the record, I am now at “A young Seattle widow’s suicide attempt awakens her werewolf heritage.” It flows a little better without the “Seattle” but I think it conveys more of the sense of the story that way. It also literally says “urban fantasy” which this technically is, and if a genre market exists, why not use it?)
When you say the inner wolf threatens her sense of self, what identity does she have about herself?
1. She is a geek. Her husband was a geek. The wolf is a jock.
2. She is an extremely committed vegetarian with a history of animal rights activism. Her husband was a committed vegetarian, without the activism side. The wolf is a carnivore and a predator.
3. She is very much a city person in general and a Seattle person in specific. The wolf seeks natural areas. And also causes trouble in an urban setting just by existing. You know, if the wolf goes for a walk around Greenlake, and people see it, that causes a stir even if all it does is eat a couple of squirrels.
4. the widow wanting to die being opposed by the wolf’s instinctive will to live A bit of that. She wants the pain to stop. But she’s not ready to move on. The wolf is ready to move on. The wolf is capable of feeling joy, and she is still at a stage of grief where feeling joy, or just forgetting to feel pain, seems like a betrayal.
5. She ends up as the temporary guardian of a 12-year-old boy. She is not sure if she can trust the wolf around him. Or around anybody.
As far as the actual suicide goes, I intend to make it clear that she is one of those werewolves who experiences very black depressive moods going into the new moon. As I was researching dates of moon phases just to get them right, it occurred to me that the moon has a whole month-long cycle, and it seems like most werewolf stories act like it’s “neutral neutral neutral FULL MOON neutral neutral neutral.” So I think the actual story won’t leave anybody wondering why she was willing to kill herself at the beginning but doesn’t keep trying it.
I also intend to make it clear that the car accident seven months ago awakened the wolf partially, so that she has not been actively transforming, but she has been more influenced by the phases of the moon and things like that.
So, here’s my breakdown:
A young Seattle widow’s — A young widow can be assumed to have a lot of emotional turmoil anyway. Seattle defines urban, and implies a specificity of setting, including implications of geekiness, which matters thematically.
suicide attempt — Drama, death, and emotional turmoil.
awakens her werewolf heritage — Establishes that werewolfism is not transmitted, but inherited. And implies that we are going to do some fun anthropology with werewolf culture, which we do. (Like, they have a zillion names for the different phases and aspects of the moon.)
The place where I think that we simply have an impasse, is that I believe “werewolf” already sets up sufficient expectation of conflict. The expected value of werewolf is additional inner turmoil, plus the occasional evisceration.*
You don’t seem willing to accept that “werewolf” is, in itself, a problem, and are asking for something in the summary that explains why it is a problem in this particular case. Which I don’t think I can do, since those aspects exist, but are a little too complex to be expressed smoothly in just one or two words. And I am not convinced it’s necessary for the typical audience.
However, I now know they would be necessary if I were pitching the novel to you :)
*Footnote: the comment got too long, so I forgot to mention a little side note: one of the peculiar things about Twilight (my god, when am I going to stop talking about that stupid book?) is that I believe “vampire” acts the same way — expected value = conflict — and that Ms. Meyer uses that in order to make a book that doesn’t actually have any conflict in it feel like it has enough conflict to drive a story.
So on pitch, that book would be “Teenage girl moves to isolated lumber town and falls in love with a vampire.”
Which sounds more interesting than the actual book. Because it leaves out something important:
“Teenage girl moves to isolated lumber town and falls in love with a sparkly vampire.”
Hmm…
To me one thing implicit in the pitch is that most people who survive a suicide attempt feel at least a temporarily renewed desire to live. That isn’t explicitly expressed though. I’m not sure how you would say it in a catchy way.
I do think that the 15-word formula is a little short for my tastes… but experimenting with a slightly longer pitch, not based necessarily on all the exact details you give above:
“Devastated by guilt and grief, a young widow attempts suicide. Her near-death experience triggers her werewolf heritage and saves her life. She finds a renewed desire to live – if only she can deal with“
Ugh, that actually sounds horribly cheezy. Ah well, it was a fun exercise.
Hmm…
To me one thing implicit in the pitch is that most people who survive a suicide attempt feel at least a temporarily renewed desire to live. That isn’t explicitly expressed though. I’m not sure how you would say it in a catchy way.
I do think that the 15-word formula is a little short for my tastes… but experimenting with a slightly longer pitch, not based necessarily on all the exact details you give above:
“Devastated by guilt and grief, a young widow attempts suicide. Her near-death experience triggers her werewolf heritage and saves her life. She finds a renewed desire to live – if only she can deal with (insert issues here.)”
Ugh, that actually sounds horribly cheezy. Ah well, it was a fun exercise.
You see why this sort of thing is difficult.
Ha! I was going to use Twilight to explain my side as well. Not that I’ve either read or seen it, but just based on what I’ve picked up through cultural osmosis… “Sheltered teenage girl falls in love with vampire” has a natural conflict built in: “teenage girl” = innocence/purity VS. “vampire” = evil/darkness. (The “sparkly” part is just a twist to differentiate it from other similar stories, but not essential to the main conflict.) To me, pairing “widow” and “werewolf” doesn’t bring up any innate tension in the same way.
I’ve been thinking about how different sources I’ve read talk about The Sentence to figure out what’s not working for me. Let’s try another tack. In “Inside Story” by Dara Marks, she talks about the plotline of a book, which is parallel to the Sentence that you’re starting from for Snowflake. For her a plotline needs to define the overall Conflict, Action, and Goal for the protagonist, and it defines _the main line of action_ for the story. What we’re missing from the current pitch/sentence/logline is that Action. Something happens _to_ her–her wolfiness is awakening–but I don’t know what she actively doing through the story. As the protagonist, what “protagging” is she doing? What external goal is she working towards that is driving the plot? Because as the protagonist, that’s her job–to drive the plot forward because of action she is taking toward a goal. She needs to be trying to achieve/get/win/stop/kill/discover/uncover something for there to be a plot.
I’m wondering if part of the problem has to do with your moving the story away from her trying to hang on to her life with her husband to where the focus is more on her and her other relationships (with the boy, the city, her self) but you’re still in that previous story mindset in some ways. It seems to me that her being widowed is the catalyst that sets the story in motion by awakening the wolf, but it isn’t actually the main story. (Like in Star Wars, Luke’s aunt and uncle being murdered is what propels him into joining Obiwan, but the main line of action is “idealistic farmboy tries to rescue a captured princess from an evil overlord.”) So it seems to me that this whole widowhood and awakening wolf thing is just the set-up to the actual story. We both know that the sentence is going to leave out a lot–and maybe part of what gets left out in that first sentence is the widow and awakening set-up.
Related to the above, this whole “inner wolf awakening” is kinda by definition an internal struggle, and plots are driven by struggles towards external goals. And generally the internal struggle must be resolved in order for the protag to achieve the external goal. All stories with a good character arc feature a protag who has to overcome some conflict between two parts of herself, but the main story plot is about how she has to do that while working toward some goal outside herself. So maybe instead of defining the protagonist primarily as a widow, think about defining her as a werewolf. Not this but just as an example: “A recently-awakened werewolf must stop the call of her blood from destroying her life as a Seattle geek.”
It might also be helpful to get away from thinking about the Sentence as being the same as a pitch. For a pitch you want to emphasize what’s different and interesting about a story, but you don’t necessarily need to explain the plot. (Starship battles in Space! Knights with magical powers! Aliens!) But for your internal purposes of developing the story, your One Sentence for the Snowflake needs to encapsulate the actual story plot. We all know that, when reduced to a one-sentence summary, a lot of stories sound the same and don’t necessarily have the kind of high-concept excitement that characterizes pitches. So, maybe you come up with a Sentence that doesn’t sound like it’s that interesting pitch-wise, but is useful to you in moving your story development forward and keeping it on track. I mean, “teenage girl falls in love with vampire” = yawn, right? But that would be close to the One-Sentence for Twilight. (Still “yawn,” but at least a commercially successful one.)
I hadn’t seen the word “logline” before.
I found this:
http://www.lifeformz.com/cgi-bin/idea/idea.fcgi
And got this:
A tribe of vegetarian housekeepers hides from the police.
A farmhand and a vegetarian poacher form a hockey team in a hospital waiting room.
A guardian angel steals the clothes of a manic-depressive Navy seal in the time of the Dinosaurs.
A cartoonist and two hopelessly boring math tutors go on a quest to destroy an evil ring.
Logline is more a screenwriting term.
I look forward to reading your finished draft of any of the stories above, at which time I will swap you for my story based on this:
A horde of carpenters plots to take over the world in a theatre.
Or this:
A homeopath, a pyromaniac spy, and a psychic steelworker form a bowling league in a dangerous alley.
A famous manicurist and a mutant idiot-savant compete in a wrestling match.
And, I’m not even sure what this means:
A humorous nanny learns his grandfather is an incredulous maid form a basketball team.
Yeah, sometimes they’re sentence construction template doesn’t work so well.
And which of those stories will we be seeing from you?
I noticed that some of them ended up a little… ungrammatical.
So the story starts at a point where she thinks she has already lost everything there is to lose, but as the story unfolds she realizes that she has more to lose than she thinks… The biggest threat posed by the inner wolf is to her sense of self. Pretty much every idea that she has about what kind of person she is, what she likes, how she is, does a 180 when the wolf starts waking up.
This sounds to me like a story about disability.
Because I am a sick, sick person, my vote is for:
“A young widow attempts to kill herself and her three young children in her grief after losing her husband, only to awaken as a werewolf – and not sure what happened to her children.”
Heh.
I thought about giving her kids, but that just didn’t seem to work for the character.
For some reason, drowning. I think it’s because it’s a deadly activity in which a wolf also would be pretty much screwed. I’ve read a bunch of werewolf stories in which the wolf form is super-competent at taking down whatever problem needs killing. It seems like a cliche to me now. But a drowning wolf would be be terrified, and only the werewolf toughness would really be useful.
Also, it seems to me that drowning might be an okay metaphor for transformation. My experience last year of full-on severe pain was a sort of drowning/transforming experience.
Interesting thought. I don’t think it works for the original suicide attempt, but it might make an interesting threat later.
One of the things that I am playing with is the fact that most modern human problems are not, actually, effectively solved by the ability to turn into a wolf and kill something. The opposite, rather.
Excellent! Yeah, I’m hard put to think of many modern human problems that are solved by turning into a killer wolf. Which is probably why when I think of what a standard werewolf coming of age story is like, it goes something like this:
A slender woman walking alone at night, peering into the shadows… footsteps in the dark… a knife flashes… omigod I am a werewolf!… GRARR NOM NOM NOM AARROOOOOOOOOO
In fact, when I started putting it together, I was trying to think of problems that actually were solved by turning into a killer wolf. You know, rapes and muggings and whatnots. But that got tedious, I realized I was forcing the issue, inventing things that were unlikely.
Story satisfaction dictates that it happen once at the climax, but only after it has already messed things up several times.
And the idea of a werewolf going “NOM NOM NOM” made me laugh out loud.
A young widow [is raped] and awakens as a werewolf next to her rapists dead mauled, gored out body.
A young widow [is jogging in a park, gets accosted by a group of ill-willed gentlemen] and awakens as a werewolf [and mauls/damages them].
A young widow [is camping when a bear comes rummaging for food] and awakens as a werewolf.
A young widow [is hunting wolves from a chopper] and awakens as a werewolf. (My odds on Sarah Palin favorite- feel free to ignore)
A young widow [and her lover are dallying in a fairy ring] and awakens as a werewolf.
My thinking is either traumatic event or semi-mystical place like a fairy ring, haunted cave etc.
Ah, I think it would feel a bit forced to have Sarah Palin get eaten by a werewolf in this book, but it sounds like fun.
She thought it was a lark to shoot wolves from a helicopter — until one day she shot the wrong wolf and left her silver bullets at home…