Loglines: The Screenwriter’s Most Dreaded Sentence

I’m tearing the traditional approach to writing a logline down to the studs to help you create one that is actually going to sell people on your story.

You spent months writing 100+ pages of intricately constructed screenplay: Characters who feel real, voices you can hear, conflict and stakes that tug at your emotions. All the time and effort has been worth it. Your screenplay is a masterpiece. Now, go ahead and just condense that all down into a single sentence. I’ll wait.

Loglines are as much a screenwriter’s job as writing scripts themselves. But writing one seems to be an enormous struggle for most. At least according to the thousands of articles offering “perfect” formulas, shortcuts and quick-fixes.

What I recently discovered upon really trying to bend my mind around this single-sentenced Everest is that the reason screenwriters struggle with writing loglines so much is that they are an entirely different area of expertise. These little lines are actually marketing material, and have little to do with writing an actual screenplay.

Asking a screenwriter to write a piece of marketing material is like asking a heart surgeon to operate on a brain. Sure, a cardiac surgeon and a neurosurgeon both work with the human body, but the anatomy and instruments are completely different. In order to create an effective logline, we need to approach the writing of one with the proper tools and knowledge.

The short history of the logline

The term “logline” was first attested in 1982, along with other industry words like “backstory”, “spoiler alert” and “imposter syndrome”¹. The word “logline” could not be more descriptive. It is defined as the single line in the TV program log that summarizes the plot of a program or film. A line in the log.

The logline always served a dual purpose:

1) to summarize the story, and
2) to generate interest and convince potential viewers to tune in

The logline had to be compelling enough to persuade an audience member to choose this movie over something else in the TV guide in the same time slot. A very practical and very powerful little sentence, indeed!

Why do we use loglines today?

The TV Guide may have lost its sway in the last couple decades, but loglines are still as useful as ever. What would IMDb, Letterboxd or Rotten Tomatoes be without these handy sentences that quickly present the core of the story. If you’ve ever applied for a competition, fellowship, grant, etc. you’ll have used one in the past. If you’re trying to get your movie made and you need collaborators, a logline is a quick intro to your story. If you’ve got a finished film and you need to start marketing it, the logline is essential, too.

For the TV movies that I write, I’m tasked with creating the logline at the end of the writing process, around the time the film starts going to production and the team is starting to think about marketing the finished film. It’s quite common to write it after your script is completely finished, but sometimes a logline can also be used as a pitch for a project that is yet-to-be-written.

Although it can often seem otherwise with all the noise around loglines online, the dual purpose of the logline has not changed since the word was attested. In my experience, however, most screenwriters are so focused on summarizing their story, they forget to generate interest with their logline.

I have been guilty of not being able to see my story for the trees. That’s why I started getting into it with loglines recently because I wanted to understand them on their deepest level.

How I used to write loglines

Let me tell you how I used to write these slippery bastards. The first thing I used to do was google “how to write a good logline”. This is because loglines will have you feeling like an awkward virgin even if you’ve written dozens of them before. The search results would bring up a wall of articles promising the perfect formula for writing the world’s greatest logline.

Usually those formulas looked something like this:

INCITING INCIDENT + MAIN CHARACTER + OBJECTIVE + STAKES²

or

INCITING INCIDENT + PROTAGONIST + ACTION + ANTAGONIST³

or

PROTAGONIST + GOAL + INCITING INCIDENT + CONFLICT⁴

or

INCITING INCIDENT + MAIN CHARACTER + CENTRAL CONFLICT + ANTAGONIST⁵

Basically any constellation of a few of the following elements: Protagonist, objective/goal, stakes, inciting incident, conflict, antagonist or action.

I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with those formulas. I actually do find them helpful since they are an easy way to help you crystallize your story in a clear and concise way.

Ok, back to how I used to write loglines… so now I’d have my neat formula picked out and, for a little inspiration and guidance, I’d turn to examples of the Best or Most Famous Loglines Ever Written. I would inevitably find countless long lists that included loglines like this:

A boy who communicates with spirits seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist.

Based on this, I’d think the boy was the protagonist and therefore his action (seeks help) does not drive the story. There is no specific goal. Certainly no stakes.

Or this:

Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.

There is no conflict. No antagonist. No stakes. No specific goal. Zero action. What’s the opposite of a ticking clock? ‘Over a number of years’ is certainly a possibility.

Or this:

A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against its controllers.

No stakes for the protagonist and no clear goal. Certainly no actual action, since “learning about his role from rebels” is passive. For a film that redefined action, there is no action to be found in this logline.

What we see here is that even the “greatest” logline examples don’t remotely adhere to the formulas that are constantly peddled.

Most of all, all of these examples only deal with the first part of the dual purpose of logline: To summarize the story. They miss the second and arguably more important part entirely: They must generate interest.

As a result, these “shining” examples of loglines end up being toxically boring. If these loglines were the only thing I had ever read about these incredible, award-winning films, they all would have been a hard pass for me.

The gap between how we are told to write loglines and the loglines that are promoted as the “best” is absolutely cavernous. That’s why…

I made it my mission to find a better way to write loglines.

Before we even write a single letter, we first need to change our entire perception and approach to loglines in order to serve the second part of why they were created in the first place: To sell people on our movies. The “selling” part is important. That is where my 13 years as a copywriter in a marketing department comes in handy.

As I mentioned above, the reason it’s so hard for screenwriters to write loglines is that they are a completely different kind of writing. Loglines align more closely with the realm of marketing. To write a great logline, you must think like a marketer.

Ceasing and desisting to think like a screenwriter is arguably the hardest part of this entire process. This is your BABY. I know, I know. I’m right there with you. But in order for your baby to see the light of day, you need to get a whole pile of people on board. Which is why we’re here agonizing over a single sentence.

Writing a Logline like a Marketer

OK, so now that we’re wearing our marketer hats (mine says “I’m with Stupid” and has an arrow pointing down), we can start approaching loglines like the sales tools that they are.

In Marketing terms, a logline can be equated with a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). For you non-marketing readers, a USP is defined as “a feature or characteristic that distinguishes a product/service from others of a similar nature and makes it more appealing”. In other words, we need to construct the logline in such a way that it makes your film stand out from the rest of the pack.

To do so, we’re going to apply some principles for creating a compelling USP to the process of writing a logline.

Step 1: Do some market research

Your first step to understanding what makes your film or story new and different is to understand what else is out there. This means watching a ton of films, which you’re probably doing anyway, and reading a ton of loglines too.

This research phase doesn’t have to be too exhaustive, but should just give you clarity on what else is out there. Your research is going to inform the next phase:

Step 2: Define your target audience

Defining your target audience may seem like a no-brainer, but I’m not talking about the audience that will watch your completed film. That comes later. Here I’m talking about your target audience for the logline: Producers, script competition readers, potential agents, film execs, collaborators, etc. In other words, the people you’re trying to get on board with your script or film.

Determine who is going to be reading this logline and what you want them to do after reading it. Some examples of audience/action would be:

• I want an agent/producer to ask to read the whole script

• I want a script competition reader to get excited before opening the file

• I want a potential collaborator to understand what I’m trying to achieve

• I want a film exec to get a taste of my vision

Come up with your list of readers and their desired actions after reading. If you have more than one, that’s totally fine. When we get to Step 5 (writing the logline), we’re going to address that.

Step 3: Analyze the competition

Now that you’ve gotten a broader sense of the market in Step 1, you’re now going to watch “the competition”, otherwise known as all the films you can find that feel similar to yours in genre, story, tone, etc.

If available, you’ll want to look at their loglines as well. If you can’t locate a logline for these particular films, look at their other marketing materials like posters and websites. You want to try and absorb the marketing language surrounding these similar films. Make note of the unique selling points they are using to market their films.

WRITING EXERCISE: This next part is optional, but I find writing loglines for other films really helps me in the creation of my own. Take a few of the films that are closest to your own and write loglines for these films. This is great practice and it helps you crystallize the story and understand what makes it special.

Step 4: Define your unique selling proposition (USP)

We’re going to use everything we’ve learned about the competition in Step 3 to define what makes our movie stand out from the rest. This will be our USP. In film talk, this may be referred to as a “twist” or a “fresh take”, but it doesn’t even have to be that.

Now that we’re into concocting our USP, let’s revisit the definition so we don’t get blown off course: A feature or characteristic that distinguishes a product/service from others of a similar nature and makes it more appealing.

The last part here is important. We’re not just striving to differentiate our film from similar films, we’re trying to make it seem even more enticing.

If you’re writing a zombie movie, what makes your film different from the other 100 zombie movies you just watched in Step 3? What about your story would make people want to see it above any other in the genre? Or any other film in general, for that matter?

Here are some examples of zombie movies with a fresh take on the genre:

• Train to Busan = Cooped up with zombies on a speeding train

• Shaun of the Dead = Zombies but funny

• 28 Days Later = This is what happens after those other zombie movies end

Maybe your film is wholly original and there is nothing out there like it? Even better. Make sure your USP tells us how it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

A USP doesn’t even necessarily have to be part of the story itself. It could be a unique approach to storytelling, like the non-linear timeline of Memento. Or Guido convincing his son that the concentration camp they are in is merely a game in Life is Beautiful. Or even the commentary on the racist underpinning of American society in Get Out. These are the things that make you stop and say “I need to see that movie!” There is no formula for a USP, which is why it can be hard to nail down.

There is so much to say about the human psychology behind the need for a “fresh take”, but at its core, it’s about our insatiable curiosity as a species. As children, this curiosity pushes us toward things that are novel, sensational and startling. When we morph into adults, this curiosity matures with us, but the promise of an unanswered question still makes our brains light up (You can read more about human curiosity here).

This same curiosity is why every act of a 9 act TV movie ends with a cliffhanger or unanswered question: The anticipation of discovering what will happen next (after a word from our sponsors) keeps us glued to our screens.

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Writing a TV Movie with 9 Act Structure

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It is this curiosity that is also at the heart of the USP. I wish there was a clearcut formula for tapping into that natural curiosity and presenting a USP, but it really depends on your story. Here are some ideas with examples from loglines.

• Pose a stimulating question, like the end of the logline for Open Grave (2013): “A man wakes up with no memory in a pit full of dead bodies in the wilderness and must determine if the murderer is one of the strangers who rescued him, or if he himself is the killer.”

• Show us that the stakes are sky-high, like the logline for Wall-E (2008)
  “In the distant future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.”

• Promise an emotional rollercoaster, like mentioning the reason for their heroics in Saving Private Ryan (1998): “Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers goes behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.”

• Add an element of surprise to get their imagination going, like the disarmingly simple logline for The Truman Show (1998): “An insurance salesman discovers his whole life is actually a reality TV show.”

• Share an element of the story that begs the question “but why?”, like the serial killer’s MO in the logline for Se7en (1995): “Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives.”

• Add a ticking clock to make them wonder if the protagonist is gonna make it, like the logline for Run Lola Run: “After a botched money delivery, Lola has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks [to save her boyfriend’s life].” (I added the square brackets because the very high stakes were missing from this logline!)

Your script may not be as high-concept as these above examples, but every story has something that sets it apart. Otherwise it’s just a retelling of something we’ve already seen before, and nobody wants that (sorry live-action remakes). Find whatever that is for your story, however small, and write it down because we’re going to infuse that into the logline right NOW:

Step 5: Write your logline

Now that we know everything we need to know about the market, our target audience, the competition and what sets our movie apart, it’s time to start actually constructing the logline.

A great logline should grab you. It should compel you to open the PDF and start reading. It should make you want to add the film immediately to your watchlist or, better yet, drop what you’re doing and go see it.

First, take your first target audience member and their desired action that you defined in Step 2. With whoever/whatever that is in mind, we’re going to start constructing your logline.

You will write one logline for each of your target audiences, tweaking it to best compel your targeted reader. Even if you just have one target audience defined, you’re still going to write at least two different versions. More on that in Step 6…

A note on tone…

Tone is as important for your logline as it is for your script. You need to make sure you hit the correct tone to communicate to your audience what kind of story you’re selling. With only one sentence, you need to make every word count, so choosing words that align with your tone will have each one working double-time.

Example: Here’s the logline of live-action The Lion King (2019):

After the murder of his father, a young lion prince flees his kingdom only to learn the true meaning of responsibility and bravery.

While (also) not adhering to most of the “must-have” formula elements, this logline at least contains words that indicate the lofty and aspirational tone of the film: “prince”, “kingdom”, “true meaning”, “responsibility” and “bravery”.

Now let’s switch up the tone to turn The Lion King into an action movie:

After his uncle murders his father in cold-blood, a lion cub with untapped powers trains his skills in exile so he can one day slay his father’s killer.

The plot is the same, but the tone tells two different stories.

Back to writing the logline…

Now we’re going to plug all of this into the brand new formula that I developed just for this Substack post based on all of this thought, research and marketing experience.

The focus of my formula is not just to summarize the story and set the tone, but more importantly, to create interest by adding in the USP.

Lauren’s Patented New Logline Formula:

Summary + correct tone + USP (not necessarily in that order)

By summary, I mean any constellation of the typical logline formula elements above (protagonist, objective/goal, stakes, inciting incident, conflict, antagonist, action). It’s up to you to choose whichever ones makes the most sense for your story. The USP is going to be the overarching idea that the entire logline hinges on.

Let’s look at an example to show you what I mean. Here is the logline for Stranger than Fiction (2006):

I.R.S. auditor Harold Crick suddenly finds his mundane Chicago life to be the subject of narration only he can hear: narration that begins to affect his entire existence, from his work to his love life to his death.

This logline is fine enough, but it also suffers from making the film seem less extraordinary than it actually is. The summary elements include protagonist, the inciting incident… and that’s pretty much it. There’s no goal… what does he want as a result of this voice? No stakes, despite his sheer existence literally hanging in the balance in the film! “The narration begins to affect” sounds like it wants to be conflict, but it’s utterly passive, which points to the fact that there is also no action in this logline.

For me, the USP of the story is Harold Crick finding Karen Eiffel, his author, and how her moral conundrum perfectly plays off of his newfound lust for life. This utterly unique relationship and the stakes associated with it are what sells the film.

If I were to rewrite the logline with my formula, it would look something like this:

When an unseen author starts narrating his mundane existence, a risk-averse IRS auditor must embrace life and all its messiness before the stroke of her pen strikes him down.

Here we have the summary (Protagonist + Antagonist + conflict + stakes + inciting incident + goal) + USP (the unique relationship between Karen and Harold) + tone (dramatic comedy).

WRITING EXERCISE: Much like in Step 3, I’d recommend a writing exercise here. Rewrite as many loglines of similar films as you can with my formula and see if it makes the film seem more compelling.

Now write two versions of your logline that are significantly different from each other using my formula. You can even try choosing another USP for the second logline. Since USPs are subjective (what draws me to a film may not be what draws someone else to it), there may be multiple aspects of your film that could function as USPs.

Step 6: Test and refine your logline

Since you wrote two versions of your logline in Step 5, we will now do what we call in marketing “A/B testing”. The nature of the A/B test is to determine which of two options performs better. Usually, this type of testing is done for something like two different headlines of an e-newsletter or two versions of pages of a website. It’s a good test to use because the results are measurable.

Your test will be simple. Show both loglines to as many people as you care to (friends, family, colleagues, Substack subscribers) and ask them which movie they’d rather see. Record their responses and let the data speak for itself.

You can then take the winning logline and do the same again: Write two variations of it and do another A/B test. At the end, you’ll have a logline that you know is working.

Be sure to ask your respondents what they like about one over the other. This will help you to further refine your logline.

A logline should never be set in stone. Treat it as a living document. It should be revisited often to make sure it’s still working hard to sell your script!

Give my approach a try and see if it works for you. I’d love to read some of the loglines you cook up with it in the comments below!

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1. Time Traveler by Merriam-Webster: Words from 1982. Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/1982?src=defrecirc-timetraveler-etycard

2. The Simple Guide to Writing a Logline: https://screencraft.org/blog/the-simple-guide-to-writing-a-logline/

3. How to Write a Logline Producers Won’t Pass On [with Logline Examples]: www.studiobinder.com/blog/write-compelling-logline-examples/

4. What is a Logline? [with FREE Logline Formula Template]: www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-logline/

5. How to Write a Logline: https://boords.com/blog/write-logline