Logline Basics (Or, how to write the best logline)

LOGLINE BASICS

Brevity is an absolute necessity of creating a good logline. You should go through many drafts to make sure every adjective is the most perfect and evocative and above all accurate. Get out your thesaurus find the best words for the job. You can’t afford a single extra character.

Choose your focus carefully. You need to pinpoint the most important through-line of your story. What you pick must be dynamic: you need to describe action, conflict, challenge.

The easiest way to phrase your logline is to state the genre, an attribute of the main character, and what the character needs to achieve to meet a challenge. Of course, you may see your script as a slice of life or a series of vignettes or something else that doesn’t lend itself to a clear statement in this form, but attempt it.

For example:

“The Last Thing…