A logline briefly summarizes your story in one or two sentences. If you can’t create an interesting, compelling logline, chances are good you won’t be able to create an interesting, compelling screenplay.
The purpose of a logline is to condense your story while still making it appealing to others. That way when someone asks what your movie is about, you can tell them in one or two sentences to pique their interest.
Loglines are crucial, yet too many people focus solely on the physical aspect of the story. A logline for “Star Wars” might sound like this:
A farm boy must stop a terrifying weapon known as the Death Star, which can wipe out entire planets.
Notice that this logline describes the physical conflict but it lacks emotion. Who is this farm boy? Who controls the Death Star? Why does the farm boy want to stop this Death Star? Any logline that focuses solely on the physical conflict will likely be mildly interesting at best.
To make a logline more emotional, it’s important to understand your characters. Knowing who the characters are makes the logline far more interesting.
First, focus on the hero. Who is the hero and what is the hero’s motivation? In the above logline, the hero is the farm boy. Now we need to know more about the hero’s motivation to make this logline more emotional. A good way to do this is to highlight the hero’s motive:
A farm boy, desperate to leave his boring life, winds up as the only person who can stop a terrifying weapon known as the Death Star, which can wipe out entire planets.
Notice that this is a little better because now we’re starting to learn about the characters involved. The next step is to identify the villain’s motive like this:
A farm boy, desperate to leave his boring life, winds up as the only person who can stop a tyrant intent on wiping out rebels fighting for freedom by using a terrifying weapon known as the Death Star, which can wipe out entire planets.
See how adding the motive of the villain makes the logline seem far more important? The final tweak is to make the hero’s motivation stronger. Heroes aren’t motivated for themselves but for others. Toss this in and you get the following:
A farm boy, desperate to leave his boring life, tries to save a beautiful princess and winds up as the only person who can stop a tyrant intent on wiping out rebels fighting for freedom by using a terrifying weapon known as the Death Star, which can wipe out entire planets.
When creating a logline, focus on the following:
- The physical conflict of the story
- The hero’s motivation
- The villain’s motivation
- The hero’s noble effort to help someone else
Creating a logline is an art in itself, but the stronger you make your logline, the clearer your story will get so you can write the best screenplay possible.
