Maybe someone’s asked you what your novel-in-progress is about. Excited to share your pet project, you launched into an explanation of the plot, the characters, the deeper meaning of the book, even your inspiration for the story. As you talk, you notice that the kindhearted inquirer’s eyes have started to glaze over. And honestly, so have yours.
Do you know how to make a reduction? In cooking, you boil or simmer ingredients down to their essence. The goal is an intense, condensed, and memorable flavor.
What if, the next time someone asks about your novel-in-progress, you served them not a buffet, but a simple, tasty reduction?
In writing, that’s called a logline. If a plot equals a protagonist confronting an antagonist, which causes them to undergo a journey or a change that results in a forward-moving resolution (whew! That needs a reduction!), then a logline boils that down to one simple sentence. To mix metaphors between cooking and algebra, that sentence reads like this:
X (protagonist) wants to Y (goal), but Z (antagonist or antagonistic force) gets in their way, so X decides to A (action/journey that changes them) which results in B (forward-moving ending.)
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