How to write a logline?
TDLR: If you’re a screenwriter, you probably don’t ever need to worry about it. Move on with your life. Shoo. Go back to screenwriting.
But if you’re a script analyst / script reader, knowing how to write a logline is, yes, important.
So what is a logline?
Wikipedia’s illustrious hive mind defines a screenplay logline like so:
A screenplay logline is a brief (usually one-sentence) summary …that states the central conflict of the story, often providing both a synopsis of the story’s plot and an emotional “hook” to stimulate interest.
Yeah, yeah, but what’s the purpose of a screenplay logline? What’s a screenplay logline supposed to do?
Loglines are 1-or-2 sentence summaries of a screenplay. That’s it.
But for me, a professional script consultant, I want the logline to do more: I want the logline to give me a reason to read the screenplay.
The main purpose of a logline
Sure, the folks on Wikipedia got it right: a logline states, briefly, the central conflict of the story, yadda, yadda. Absolutely.
But when you strip away all the abstraction, you end up with the original purpose of the logline, and that purpose is: to save a studio executive time.
It’s fair to suggest that the logline may have originated long before the advent of script coverage (its true primordial origin story is apocryphal at best) but it can’t easily be denied that the logline found its true calling — its main original use — in the script coverage documents they’d bandy about studio lots.
Script coverage, for the uninitiated, is the 1-2 page “book report” on the script. It’s the abstract written by the script reader, intended for the studio executive and other muckety-mucks. The idea being: the studio executive spends one hour to read 50 script coverages to find what he or she wants to produce, rather than two hours to read one entire screenplay.
And guess what? The logline is at the top of each of those script coverages. As such, the logline will either entice the studio executive to read the entire script coverage (and then perhaps the entire screenplay), or it will not.
So the main purpose of the logline — arguably its original purpose and its main purpose today, despite whatever you may read or learn through ye old abhorrent grapevine — is to entice.
Entice whom?
The studio executive.
Not the audience.
Let the marketing department use taglines and movie posters and collectible Burger King glasses to entice the audience. The logline is written for the studio executive. For the name director. For the A-list star or agent who needs to know if they should keep reading this damn coverage or even maybe take the entire script home and read it over the weekend.
How to write a logline
A logline for the movie Jaws might be: An island town is terrorized by a giant shark.
While, technically, the example functions as a logline in that it’s a one-sentence synopsis, the absence of an important element keeps it from achieving logline self-actualization. That missing element?
Tension.
But tension comes from knowing the stakes. Who’s in the film? What are they trying to do? What happens if they fail?
So how are you supposed to jam stakes into a logline, when you only have 1-2 sentences to work with? How do you jam tension into such a small bit of text?
Easy:
Tell us the who, tell us what they’re up against, and tell us what happens if they fail.
Like this:
A police chief with a fear of the ocean battles a gigantic shark terrorizing a beach community.
Who: The police chief. What he’s up against: giant shark. What happens if he fails: Shark eats beach community. (It’s implied.)
The bare minimum of a good logline: telling the audience what the movie’s about in a way that renders for the reader of the logline a good idea of what’s at stake.
But all really good loglines also contain irony as well, in my opinion.
For those of you who don’t know and for those of you who might be sharks, irony is the art of saying one thing but meaning the opposite.
Now, with that in mind, let’s spice up our previous lackluster Jaws logline with a dash of detail and a hearty dollop of irony:
A seaside town is terrorized by a giant shark.
It’s perfect, right? We covered everything in the movie. There’s a seaside town. There’s a giant shark. There’s terror. Yup, we got it, mission accomplished. Martini shot. It’s safe to go back into the water. Just kidding! Okay, so it’s not a perfect logline yet but we’re making solid improvements especially with the addition of irony, but why does irony matter?
Because narratives are about change, screenplays whose loglines contain a high amount of irony tend to offer the largest room for narrative growth. Irony plays into our sense of justice too. With great power, comes great responsibility for retaining franchise rights. Along with Spider-man, what every professional screenwriter knows is that the best movies aren’t about only good or only bad moments. Balance is essential. Rise and fall or fall and rise or fall and spring or winter and summer or construction season, you get the point.
But what if the hero in battling this shark WAS AFRAID OF THE OCEAN?
A police chief with a fear of the ocean battles a gigantic shark terrorizing a beach community.
Irony! See?
“I guess irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.” — Commander Buck Murdock (William Shatner), Airplane II: The Sequel.
Loglines are great when they hook you in
A logline can be a lot stronger if the script’s story is a concept has a great hook. Here’s one with a great hook, and some irony, but no follow-through:
A serial killer knocks on the door of another serial killer and tries to sell him knives.
And by the way, to have a logline that’s “hooky,” your story actually needs a hook, you need a hook. Tenet by Christopher Nolan is one such movie that doesn’t lend itself well to the concept of “hook,” as evidenced by one of its loglines:
Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.
Does that mean that a good logline can’t be written about a script without a strong hook? Not at all.
Loglines are also okay when they’re plain, too.
If a logline is needed for a script without a clear or strong hook/concept, you could a lot worse than a plain and simple one. For example, the IMDB logline for the 2020 Tom Hanks film, Greyhound:
Several months after the U.S. entry into World War II, an inexperienced U.S. Navy commander must lead an Allied convoy being stalked by a German submarine wolf pack.
Or even 2020’s Pixar film, Soul:
After landing the gig of a lifetime, a New York jazz pianist suddenly finds himself trapped in a strange land between Earth and the afterlife.
Do they grab you by the neck? No. Do they have mind-blowing hooks? No.
But they do their jobs.
Notice, these loglines still give us three key things: an idea of what the story is, what conflict the protagonists may face, and what kind of tone to expect.
Now, for illustrative contrast, let’s let’s dive into what a logline shouldn’t be, and the way I see it, there are four main bad logline types that fit that particular bill.
Let’s say the screenplay we’re writing a logline for is a short film about a serial killer who’s a door-to-door salesman. And that salesman/serial killer happens to knock on the door of another serial killer. And then they try to kill each other. And then hilarity ensues. Or Hillary Swank ensues. Whatever you like. Here are a few bad ways to write a logline for it:
The Low-Information Logline
The Low-Information type of bad logline is one where the writer opts for maximum brevity (yay!), at the expense of actual, you know, information about the story (booooo!). For example, using our serial killer short we mentioned above:
When a man knocks on the door of another man, it’s a situation of do-or-die.
Points for being succinct, but this logline tells the reader of the logline nothing about the story. Remember: the story we’re talking about here is about two serial killers going mano y mano. The logline should probably mention the fact that they’re serial killers, instead of referring to the two characters as just “man” and “man.” After all, a movie about two serial killers, well that’s a lot different than a movie about just two boring regular men.
The “Teaser” Logline
Using a pet metaphor here, pun intended, a writer composing the Teaser type of bad logline imagines you, the reader of the bad logline, as a cat. Yes, a cat.
Then that writer of the logline, seeing you as a metaphorical cat, metaphorically cracks open a can of smelly, delicious metaphorical cat food, then throws the metaphorical can of cat food in the metaphorical trash, never allowing the cat to eat the smelly, delicious metaphorical cat food. Like so:
A door-to-door salesman, who may or may not have a penchant for murder, knocks on the door of someone else who may or may not have a penchant for murder.
If that’s your best logline, you may as well write instead:
And for all you Capricorns, there’s change in the air. Maybe postpone that important business trip and get cozy with loved ones this week.
or even
Will they? Won’t They? You’ll have to read to find out! Tee-hee!
The “Yawner” Logline
The Yawner type of bad logline does exactly what you’d expect to do: it puts you on a morphine drip and lulls you into snoozeville.
A young, dedicated door-to-door salesman is selling his wares and then happens upon a house where the occupant of the house is not as he seems. Then a cascading series of events unfold, revealing a murderous outcome.
Reading something like that for our example short story, we’re compelled to ask the fictional writer of this fictional bad screenplay logline: Could you, O could you, make a script about two serial killers trying to kill each other sound more boring?
The Yawner takes what could be a fresh or popping or neat story idea and turns it into mush. Keep in mind though: if the story is already mush, it’s the story that’s the Yawner, not necessarily the logline.
In other words, it’s not easy to write a good logline for a story that has nothing inherently interesting about it, either conceptually or with regards to execution.
For extra points, say the word “mush” five times right now. It’s a fun word.
The “Marketeer” Logline
It’s probably safe to say that screenwriters writing loglines are writing loglines because they opted to not pursue marketing. If we operate from that assumption, then we must ask ourselves “WHY?” when we read loglines like this:
Two serial killers. One crazy summer. What could go wrong?
Door-to-door salesman? More like door-to-door MURDER!
Hold on to your seats. The serial killers are in the house!
Stab stab! You’re dead!
All of these are exaggerated for effect.
If you’re writing anything like these examples, that’s wonderful, but please go work in the marketing department with Larry. Loglines like these— they aren’t loglines. They’re taglines. They belong on movie posters and DVD boxes.
If a logline is selling you like this — i.e. carnival barker vocabulary/telling you nothing about the story/you feel like you’re being sold a product more than told what the script is about — you’re probably reading a Marketeer Logline.
To sum it up
If you’re fretting over your logline, keep it simple: tell us who, tell us what they’re up against, tell us what happens if they fail. If your script doesn’t lend well to answering these questions, that’s okay. Not all great scripts or great movies started with great loglines.
When all else fails, just remember two things:
(1) Like I said at the top, if you’re a writer, you don’t need to worry about writing loglines, typically. A logline isn’t all that important in the scheme of things, and you’ll probably never write one for your own screenplay. But if a script reader writes one for your screenplay, you want your script to be conducive to the composition of a great logline.
(2) It’s show business. Your script, ideally, gets made into a movie that puts butts in seats at the local theater, or in front of their tv. The more your logline can grab the gatekeepers, whether you wrote the logline or not (chances are, not) the better your chances of your screenplay getting made.
