Once you have the basics, consider what additional context may be needed. the main conflict on which the story is built) An antagonistic force or core obstacle (i.e.(That’s not a hard and fast rule you can use more than one sentence if absolutely necessary.) To write your logline, take the essential components of the story and craft the catchiest sentence you can. It is the story boiled down to its base.”Ī logline is the briefest possible description of the story contained in your screenplay. It presents the major throughline of the dramatic narrative without character intricacies and sub-plots. “A logline conveys the dramatic story of a screenplay in the most abbreviated manner possible. If you shore up your screenplay logline to begin with, you can save yourself a lot of agony (and rewriting) later on.Īs longtime story analyst Christopher Lockhart says: To do that, we’ll need to look at the story in one sentence, aka the logline. Zoom out and see the shape of the thing as a whole. To examine the idea itself, we’ll need to get out of the treeline and look at the forest. And whether you do it now or later, at some point you’ll need to revisit square one – the idea – to make sure there’s enough there for a screenplay at all. (After all, that’s what rewriting is for.)īut other times, the problem is really in the foundation. Sometimes the only way is to grind through, knowing you’ll come back and fix any weak spots later. There are many reasons writers find themselves stuck in Act 2. What happened to your momentum? This script was supposed to practically write itself! Launching into Act 2… only to hit a standstill. You have a brilliant idea for a screenplay.

Writing a good logline