L.A. Screenwriter's logline "competition" @ $10 per entry

[Pitchpatch]

http://la-screenwriter.com/logline-competition/

Angela Bourassa runs the L.A. Screenwriter site.  For $10 you submit your logline for a chance at these monthly prizes:

1. 6-month Citizen Membership to Talentville.com. Talentville is an online community specifically created to give a voice to screenwriters everywhere. Citizens can upload unlimited scripts for review by highly rated reviewers and are eligible for monthly prizes and awards.

2. 5-year membership to the Script Pipeline Writer’s Database. Membership includes access to Script Pipeline’s extensive agent and producer database, a query review service, and discounts on Script Pipeline notes. (Script Pipeline’s notes service is the best for the price in the business — we love them!)

3. 5 Pitch Package from Virtual Pitch Fest. Use your polished logline to pitch 5 industry professionals online with a guaranteed response in five days or less.*

4. Free Polish of your Logline. Done by Angela Bourassa, founder of LA Screenwriter.

5. Promotion on LA Screenwriter. We’ll write a post about you and your script (along with the two finalists) and feature it on LA Screenwriter. You’ll also be listed on this page as a past winner, and we’ll tweet your name and logline to our 14K+ Twitter followers, a large number of whom are Hollywood professionals.

* Not "5-pitch package" but a single opportunity to pitch to five industry pros -- as I understand it.


Talentville and Script Pipeline sponsor the prizes, apparently.  These are not terrible prizes -- if you happen to be the monthly winner.  But really, those prizes are there to induce you to hand over your $10 for a logline critique.

Is the logline critique worth $10?  Your call.  Here's a sample.

I have no reason to believe Angela's anything other than a nice lady.  But I can't help rolling my eyes at this clever approach to shaking the noob-writer money tree.

What we've got here is a capsule version of paid script reading -- a version that is so much easier for the reader.  Instead of reading 100 pages, there's just one or two sentences to consider.  Instead of five or more pages of thoughtfully crafted reader notes, just five short paragraphs need be penned in reply.  I'm guessing the "Ratings Feedback" section is boilerplate according to scores, so no time wasted there.  At most, 15 minutes work, maybe 10 if you hurry.  An easy 40 - 50 bucks an hour if the submissions flow regularly.

That sample feedback form looks professional and informative, doesn't it?  Six defined categories to score according to a finely graded 1 - 10 scale.  Yeah.  This is where my bullshit meter whips past the red zone and cracks the glass.  Let's pick just one category from the sample feedback form for SLIDE.  I'll pick "Compelling: 7.5" because no fucking way.  Just don't even. A reminder about what we're dealing with here: the logline for a screenplay called SLIDE:

After a devastating mudslide destroys a small town, the captain of the
volunteer fire department gathers the remaining citizens to help find
not only the missing but his own family.

Here's the stated criteria for the "compelling" category:

Is the logline attention-grabbing? Does it use emotionally charged language and avoid clichés? (By “emotional” words, we mean words that evoke an emotional response in the reader.)

Somehow, somebody figured out the logline for SLIDE was more than seven-tenths the way to compelling, but not quite eight-tenths compelling.  Somewhere in between.  This precisely calibrated 1-to-10 score gleaned from just 30 words.  And there are five more categories somehow adjudicated with the same inexplicable precision.

That, my friends, is some serious carny ballyhoo, some ballsy razzle-dazzle 'em.  There is zero freaking science in applying a 1 - 10 scale to a 30-word logline -- in any category!  That ridiculous and officious ratings scale is there to convince you that science was applied, that it wasn't just a couple of judges glancing at each other, shrugging, blurting out a number, then agreeing to split the difference.

As a pair of my favorite debunkers would say...



Had they implemented a less grandiose rating system, I wouldn't have batted an eye.  Needs work, adequate, good, impressive.  1 - 4.  Multiplied by six categories gives a perfect mark of 24.  Surely that's more indicative than the needlessly elongated perfect 60.

But...

If you hand over your $10 and get back your five short paragraphs of critique and you feel it was totally worth it, let me be the first to point out there's no crime here.  There's no victim.  You paid for a service, you got what you paid for, you're a happy camper.

However, I know which side of the deal I'd prefer to be on.

My god.  I can't believe I'm about to say this.  But here goes.

Maybe spending $3 on Script Shadow's ebook is a better proposition overall -- no matter the drubbing I gave it.  Or spending that whole $10 on some other screenwriting book.  Maybe that's going to help you more than a brief, lightweight logline appraisal?

Why don't we take a look at the January 2015 winner, Brittney Nuckoles, and her logline for TALL TALES:

After her main character goes missing in the whimsical yet precarious land she created, a malevolent writer casts an unassuming girl into the land where she must find the character within two days or remain trapped forever.

Here's my $10 worth:

- "goes missing" leaves a giant sucking hole where a glimmer of intrigue should be.  Does the main character flee -- from the author, maybe?  Was he (or she) kidnapped?  A hint about the circumstances would give our imaginations something to cling to.

- "whimsical yet precarious" is a huge boulder rolling straight at us as we drive along the highway of comprehension.  I had to throw the steering wheel hard right to narrowly avoid it.  Scary.  That monstrous bit of description was going to crush me.

- "a malevolent writer" tells us nothing.  Okay, so she's a "bad" writer.  An "evil" writer.  How exactly?  Give us a taste.  Telling us your antagonist is evil is as bland as telling us your protagonist is virtuous.  At least give us a tiny crumb of specificity to spark our imagination.

- "casts an unassuming girl" -- okay, the word choices are beginning to add up to "witch" for the Writer, which (nailed it!) is a good thing.  Malevolent/casts/trapped -- we're slowly building a fairy-tale tone here.  A very mild one, but a tone nonetheless.  I have the same gripe with "unassuming girl" that I had with "malevolent writer": the adjective is too vague to be effective.  Unassuming equals modest, unpretentious.  Choosing "modest" halves the syllable count.  What about "prim"?  Maybe that's not quite the same shade as "unassuming."  How about "meek"?  We need something that doesn't waste syllables on a long, bland adjective.  Every adjective must be sharp, bright, instantly emotive.

- "she must find the character" -- why?  Because the Writer wants the main character found.  WHY?

- "she must find the character within two days" -- why the rush?  Without a hint of reason for the urgency, it feels like an arbitrary deadline.  Why not one day?  Why not seven?  Why not two hours?

- "or remain trapped forever."  Why is this a bad thing?  We're told the Land is precarious, but also whimsical, so it's not all bad.  So, if the deadline passes without retrieving the main character, no misfortune befalls the Writer?

Let's try to unravel this.

Protag: unassuming girl
Antag: malevolent writer
Protag's Goal: find the main character
Antag's Goal: ?
Urgency: two days or stuck there forever
Obstacle: ? Character doesn't want to be found?  Land doesn't want to give up the main character?
Twist/surprise: ?

VERDICT: The logline gives off a vague whiff of Alice in Wonderland.  That's good.  What's not good is how the logline shies away from being specific.  Because of that vagueness, the logline fails to excite.

Here's my revision, where I take liberties and fill in the blanks.  This might not be the story Brittany's pitching, but hot damn, I'd pick this movie over her logline without hesitation.  Why?  It pitches specifics, not a vague template.  I'm being given rocks I can hold, not sand that slips through my fingers leaving me empty handed.

When a charming prince flees into the fairy tale created for him, the story's tyrannical author casts her dull-witted niece into the dangerously whimsical land to tease him out in time to meet the publisher's deadline: tomorrow midnight.

We add two extra words for 39 words total.  I think the slight expansion is well worth the fuller, more vivid movie it describes.

Now we've really played up  the fairy-tale elements: charming prince, tyrannical author (wicked witch/aunty), simple maiden, midnight deadline (Cinderella).  We lose the stakes for the protagonist ("remain trapped forever"), but we still get a sense the writer will punish her niece if that deadline isn't met.  I reckon it would be something like threatening to burn the manuscript with prince and maiden inside.

Notice there's a relationship now between the antagonist and the protagonist: aunt and niece.  It's personal now.  And I have a suspicion there will be a midpoint reversal where suddenly the Writer will have good reason to change her mind and conspire to trap dim-witted niece and prince both in the story.  The duo will have to fight and scheme their way OUT of the story for their own survival.

The other budding relationship is, of course, prince and maiden/niece.  Him: handsome, witty, intelligent, swift of sword.  Her: simple, klutzy, naive, trusting, taking everything at face value.  Complimentary opposites.  A fairy-tale rom-com in the making!

Did I earn your $10?  Good.  Please donate some or all of it to a children's charity of your ch-ch-choosing.

[scriptwrecked]

First of all, I'd say your logline is definitely better (even if it may differ from the actual story). I'd say that's the best $10 Brittany never spent.

Second, I have a bigger question...

Is the logline being evaluated as a great logline unto itself, or is it being evaluated as a compelling movie premise?

It's one thing to hit all of the beats and strike the right tone in a logline, but it's another to come up with a logline that actually interests someone enough that they want to take a gander at your script. I'd say Brittany's logline falls more into the first camp.

I have a real problem simply comprehending the story. So this writer has a character go missing inside this fictitious world. How does (s)he know this? Does (s)he wake up one morning to find the book completely changed? So in that case, is the book writing itself? If not, can't the writer just change the book? Is it a mystical book that the writer has to present to his agent in physical form? Is this a magical Word Document/PDF file?

How is this unassuming girl going into the fictitious world? Is it a real person that somehow gets transported there? Is it simply another character that the writer has created to go on this journey? And if the writer has that much control over the book/story world, can't they just write the main character back?

I truly do not understand the dynamics of this story from the logline, and that frustrates me to the point where it would be an immediate pass.

The logline is also hella long -- an immediate red flag. I always aim for 30 words or less. It forces me to streamline things and get to the crux of the story, while making the pitch more powerful.

[Pitchpatch]

> I truly do not understand the dynamics of this story from the logline, and that frustrates me to the point where it would be an immediate pass.

Scriptwrecked, revisiting this topic 10 months later, the lack of story-rules clarity bothers me too.

I can only guess what the logline author imagined these to be, so instead I'll rework my own revision, see if I can plug some of those holes.  We begin with:

"When a charming prince flees into the fairy tale created for him, the story's tyrannical author casts her dull-witted niece into the dangerously whimsical land to tease him out in time to meet the publisher's deadline: tomorrow midnight."

Much of the confusion takes root in the confounding question: How can an author not be in total control of the story world and the fictional characters inhabiting it?  Let's tackle this one first, because it will likely topple the remaining issues like dominoes.

We can answer the question if we accept as a first principle the author is NOT in control -- obviously, or we could not evolve the story premise.  What we need, then, is a story framework where this is not your typical case of literary authorship.  So, in what circumstances would a book author's story not be under their control?

The author needs to be atypical.  This isn't a regular author writing a regular book.  There's something highly unusual in this instance.

We've got a clue in this story element: “... the story's tyrannical author casts her dull-witted niece into the dangerously whimsical land...”  Ah-ha!  The author somehow has the power to project real people into fictional worlds.  The “somehow” of it we won't investigate.  Pick one.  Deal with the devil for bestseller supremacy, struck by lightning, bitten by a werewolf, chipped her immaculate nail polish – whatever.  She's got that power.  And that's how she's writing these fantasy bestsellers.  She's projecting real people into fictional worlds.

Oh, oh, oh!  Hold it right there!  You know that  dull-witted niece we've pegged as our protagonist?  Dull-witted, huh?  What if dull-wittedism – and put down your dictionary, because where we're going we don't need dictionaries – is a family trait?  What if Auntie Author carries the family dullard gene?  All her life a singular lack of imagination thwarted her desire to be a famous author.  Everything she wrote was tedious, boring, spiritless.  Until...

Until she did the thing that earned her the power to transport real people into her fictional worlds, where the stories create themselves.  All she had to do was write down events as they unspooled from Chapter 1 through to The End.

Which leads us to the question: where are these “fictional worlds” located?  In her head?  Not very visual, and we need a method that can express itself in easily understandable rules and procedures.

In her computer?  Does she watch the story play out on one computer screen while she types it up on another?  That could work.  Let's roll with it.  So...

Auntie Author gets her umpteenth rejection by a major publisher.  She's ready to throw in the towel.  Years spent writing terrible books nobody will read.  A life wasted.  Then she finds out the man romancing her online is a con artist.  The moment he received the money she sent for a plane ticket to join her: poof, gone.  Adios dwindling but much needed net worth.  She exacts revenge on her poor PC.  Her bitter frustration leaves it a pile of smoking carnage.

Having no cash to purchase a new PC, Auntie Author visits a swap-meet.  Discovers a dusty old secondhand PC.  Not too shabby and the low, low price is right.  Dual monitors, so it's not all bad.  Keyboard looks kinda funky, with a weird layout.  But she can make this work.  She figures she has one last shot at being the successful author she desperately needs to be.

She sets up the PC at her desk.  Vacuums the cobwebs, wipes it down, plugs it in, turns it on...

The screens come to life.  Auntie Author relaxes.  At least she didn't get ripped off twice this week. Things are looking up.  She sits there waiting for the operating system to kick in, but the screens display only a simple blinking message: PRESS ANY KEY...

She presses the ENTER key.

Nothing.  She hammers it.  Still nothing.

She makes sure the keyboard is connected.  It is.  Hitting random keys now, and – “Ouch!”  Pricked her finger.  How the...?  Suspiciously inspecting the keyboard.  There's blood in between the keys.  Fresh blood.  Her blood.  Goddammit.

Sucking her finger, she goes to find her old keyboard.  Pulls it from the trash.  It's missing a few keys, but she trusts it more than the bloodthirsty newcomer.  She tries to plug it into the bizarro PC but the plug won't fit.  She has no choice but swap back to the vampire keyboard.

Now when she hits ENTER, the OS starts up.  Immediately both screens scroll at near light speed through a long Terms of Service screed, arriving at the bottom in an eye-blink-and-a-half.  Auntie Author peers at the tiny words and the flashing red message asking her “DO YOU AGREE?  PRESS ANY KEY TO ACCEPT.”  Expecting to meet with something sharp, she finds the least vicious-looking key and presses it with extreme caution.  No blood this time.  Just the OS booting up to a normal-ish desktop.  Everything seems in order.  Now she can work.
 
Ahem.  So much for me not getting into the nitty gritty of story mechanics.  Anyway, from here she discovers she can banish real people into her computer, where they take up a new fictional life in a fictional kingdom, which she watches on her second screen while recording the “story” in her word-processor positioned on the first screen.  And of course the events she witnesses are far more romantic, far more dramatic, far more exciting than anything she could conceive herself.

Auntie Author will need some way of keeping her immigrant characters in line, to make sure they keep going all the way to THE END, and with the story done she can turn in her new bestseller manuscript.

Thinking about all this in page count, we're looking at, say, ten pages to do all of the above.  No problem there, even though we have other work to do early in Act One, like establish our dim-witted niece.  At about page 12 we'll get the inciting incident, which will be her “Prince” character, star of her latest manuscript, absconding deep into the story.  Whatever Auntie Author normally does to keep a leash on her characters has, for the first time, utterly and shockingly failed.

Auntie will get the idea to project Niece into the story, directed to retrieve the Prince at all costs.  Maybe simple-minded Niece goes willingly, maybe unwillingly.  Maybe she gets tricked.  However it goes down, she enters the fictional world and we dive into Act Two somewhere around p.20-25.

I'll stop there, having taken far too long to fetch the shovels and wheelbarrow leaving no time to fill any actual holes.  That's how it works around here: I toss a firecracker and run, leaving you nice people to deal with the chaos and noise.  Laters!