Nobody has time to read a full-length screenplay. Instead, most people read a summary of a screenplay known as a logline. The purpose of the logline is to condense what the story is about so that way someone can judge whether the story is interesting or not.
A good logline needs to intrigue a reader to want to know more about a story. If a logline is weak, vague, or too ordinary, a reader will know even the best screenwriting won’t save it. So therefore it’s crucial to know how to write loglines for your own story. That way if you test your logline on others and most people yawn, then you know your story isn’t strong enough. Here are some examples of loglines to study:
- “Ready Or Not” – On her honeymoon night, a young bride must play hide and seek with her in-laws in a huge mansion. Unknown to her, her in-laws plan to kill and sacrifice her to the devil.
- “Rocky” – A down and out, over the hill boxer gets a chance to prove himself to the world when he’s chosen to fight the current heavyweight champion of the world.
- “Top Gun: Maverick” – A hot shot pilot gets a chance to train the best Top Gun pilots for a dangerous mission, unaware that one of his students is the son of his former navigator who died in an accident that Maverick still feels guilty about.
- “The Littler Mermaid” – After falling in love with a human prince, a mermaid makes a deal to lose her soul in three days after she’s turned into a human and must get the prince to fall in love with her without hearing her voice.
The basic idea behind a logline is to summarize what heppens. Yet nobody watches their favorite movies because of the plot. Instead, people watch their favorite movies because of the emotional experience they feel. Therefore after you create the ordinary plot logline to help summarize your story, you should also create an emotional logline as well.
The plot logline defines what happens.
The emotional logline defines why it happens.
The combination of the plot logline with the emotional logline shapes and creates a unique story.
The emotional logline defines the one dilemma the hero faces throughout the story. By forcing the hero to keep facing the same dilemma, the emotional logline helps you focus on telling a unified and focused story. Without an emotional logline, you risk writing a lot of action that may look and feel exciting, but fails to focus on the hero’s emotional problems.
The emotional logline helps shape your story in these ways:
- Defines the hero’s initial state
- Defines the hero’s ending state
- Forces the hero to face their worst fears about themselves
- Defines the dilemma the hero must face in all action scenes
One common emotional logline involves “The hero must learn to trust themselves to become a stronger and better person”. This is the basic emotional logline used in “Star Wars” and “Legally Blonde” so let’s see how it works for “Legally Blonde”:
- Hero’s initial state – Thinks she must be dependent on a man
- Hero’s ending state – Realizes she’s strong enough to be independent from a man
- Worst fears – That the world will see her as nothing but a dumb blonde and a sex object
- Dilemma – Every scene forces the hero to choose between being dependent on others or independent
Now study every scene in “Legally Blonde” and you’ll see how the hero, Elle, constantly bounces back and forth between the two extremes of her dilemma. Initially, Elle embraces dependence by preparing for dinner with her boyfriend, who she thinks will propose that night.
Yet while preparing, Elle goes to a clothes store to pick out a new dress. There we get a glimpse of Elle as a strong, independent woman when a dishonest saleswoman tries to take advantage of Elle and Elle exposes her as the sleaze bag that she is.
After Elle’s boyfriend dumps her instead of proposing, Elle exhibits her strong, independent side once again in her determination to get into law school to follow her boyfriend and win him back.
Notice that great movies stay focused on the dilemma of their emotional logline while weak movies often lose focus and get distracted by multiple ideas instead. The best stories stay focused on a single dilemma that remains unresolved until the very end.
After Elle gets into law school, she tries to make friends with her classmates (being dependent) but they ostracize her and force her to study alone (independent). Elle tries to go to a party and make friends but nobody wants to be with her, forcing Elle to face her dilemma from a new perspective.
Should she keep trying to become friends with her classmates? Or should she become stronger and independent on her own? This dilemma forces Elle to make a decision, which leads to action.
Elle’s boyfriend tells Elle to her face that she’s not smart enough. That makes Elle mad so she makes the decision to study harder on her own, which leads her to becoming a stronger, independent woman. Now Elle starts excelling in her law school classes to the surprise of everyone. In one class, Elle does so well that her professor compliments her by saying she just won her first court case.
Now Elle gets picked to help her law professor on an actual court case. Her first task is to get the defendant’s alibi, who has been accused of murdering her husband. Elle gets the alibi, but refuses to share it since it would hurt the reputation of the defendant. This decision not to share the alibi increases the defendant’s chances of being found guilty, yet Elle refuses to tell, revealing another side of her strong, independent personality.
As part of helping her professor, Elle finally works with her classmates (dependence), but Elle still proves more useful. To discredit one witness, Elle learns that he’s gay. With the help of a friendly lawyer, Elle shares this information and the lawyer uses is to discredit the witness. This shows Elle is slowly growing into a strong, independent woman.
Just as Elle feels comfortable being part of her law professor’s internship, the law professor propositions Elle for sex, telling her that the only reason he picked her was because he wanted to sleep with her. Feeling that all her knowledge of law went to waste, Elle realizes people still see her as a dumb blonde and a sex object, which is her worst-case scenario.
That’s when Elle decides to quit law school and go home. Yet while saying good-bye to her hairdresser, Elle runs into a female law professor who tells Elle not to let a single jerk ruin her life. This inspires Elle not to worry what others think of her.
As the relationship between the defendant and Elle’s law professor deteriorates, the defendant decides to fire the law professor and hire Elle as her lawyer instead. Using loopholes in the law, Elle now takes over the defense and questions a key witness. After realizing the key witness is lying, Elle discredits her in front of the whole court, forcing the key witness to admit that she actually killed her own father after thinking she was shooting the defendant instead.
Elle wins her first court case by becoming a strong, independent woman. To prove that she no longer feels she needs to be dependent on a man, Elle’s ex-boyfriend tries to take her back, but Elle refuses, making her transition complete.
Notice that every scene constantly tugs Elle towards either becoming dependent on others or forcing her to become strong and independent? That’s the purpose of the emotional logline to keep a story’s major decision focused on resolving a single issue. That way all action also works towards resolving this single issue, which creates a unified story.
With “the hero must learn to trust themselves to become a stronger and better person”, all action works towards pulling the hero towards taking the easy way out and avoiding problems, or taking action to become a stronger and better person. Obviously for your story to keep moving forward, the hero should struggle to keep taking action to become a stronger and better person.
If you’re writing a scene where the hero does not face this dilemma of being weak vs. becoming a stronger and better person, that scene does no belong in your story. The emotional logline simply acts as a guideline and filter that keeps your story moving forward while blocking any scenes that fail to support your emotional logline’s dilemma.
So make sure your story has an emotional logline. We’ll look at other types of emotional loglines later, but without an emotional logline, your risk writing irrelevant scenes and thus a weak and ineffective story.
Remember, nobody watches a favorite movie for the plot. They always watch a favorite movie for the emotional experience and that experience will be nearly impossible to achieve without knowing your story’s emotional logline first.
