The problem is you are using specifics we don’t know or care about. For instance, LOTR: :”A naive and innocent race who’s never left home must traverse a dangerous land teeming with enemies and destroy a magical ring (in the only volcano capable of destroying it) before the evil necromancer who created the ring ravages their world and kills or enslaves everyone they love.” LONG sentence but I don’t use “Hobbits” or “Mordor” or any specific terms to describe the plot problem. Someone who has never read LOTR can follow this plot concept.

Basically a team of untrained, unskilled and childlike “:heroes” have to make it through enemy lines to the other end of the world and not die before destroying an evil ring. We know the goal and we also wonder how the hell these guys got picked for the job and are fairly sure they are not up to the task…so we worry. This isn’t THOR carrying a ring. It’s basically Gilligan and the Captain. Thus, when juxtaposed against an evil necromancer, we already have huge stakes.

An unseasoned spirit adept is dumped into the city of Lionsgate to steal the Book of Pordicion, with the god Unnamed no longer bound in its pages she must find a way to bring it back to her home city Dentree to destroy the god before it destroys her.

It could use a rewrite that is one long sentence. 😛 Still it’s doing it’s job.

I think now I’ve got the know what’s going on part down it’s just getting there that’s the problem sometimes.

I never even heard of log lines until I read it in your last article (and promptly ran away.) this artile going into mor delail helped me see what it is more, so yay.

I better go save this log line so I ca refer back to it as needed. ^___^

I’m a plantser — with a single line ‘outline’ for each chapter, a goalpost, and the ability to ignore it all until I get stuck.

Sometimes it takes writing the whole thing before you realize the heart and soul of the story — the theme or whatever you want to call it.

Writing (or rewriting) the log-line after the rough draft can also be a super awesome tool for reorienting your story during your first round of revisions.