The Logline

A logline is a writer’s tool for story development.

I didn’t know what a logline was until I was forty-one. 

Forty-one!

Yeah. I wish I’d known. You have no idea. My god. All those years I spent toiling away, struggling, weeping, yearning, trying again and again, flailing and failing, giving up, starting again, banging my head against the wall, drinking the blood of innoce — 

 Aaaaanyhoo.

Today, I love using loglines as tools to develop my novels.

I try not to get uptight about any particular logline template. There are so, so many versions, and you will find the ones that work for you. 

In fact, you’ll write your own versions!

I collect logline templates. I grab them all. I have a Google doc of dozens of logline templates. I use different ones at different stages of story development. 

I develop my story ideas by rewriting loglines over and over again. It’s easier to rewrite 7 words in a logline than 17,000 words of an entire act.

A logline is a technical term for basically cramming the big foot of your story into the glass slipper of a sentence or two.

A logline is not the pitch for your story. It’s not the quote on the poster. It’s not the synopsis in your query to agents, and it’s not the promo copy on the book cover. It’s not the blurb on the Netflix screen telling you what the movie’s about. It’s not the cute card on the bookshelf of the indie bookstore inviting you to try a staff pick.

People who are not writers don’t care about loglines and don’t understand them and don’t know how to appreciate them.

This is because a logline is best understood as the behind-the-scenes tool of a writer taking a crazy idea and playing with it to see if it can be made into a story.

A logline is best used by writers to develop a story rather than by marketers to promote a finished product.

This is mainly because loglines are very dense. One clause can refer to an entire act. One phrase can suggest an entire character’s arc. 

If you know how to read a logline, you can visualize an entire story. If you don’t know how to read a logline, you might be put off by the stilted density of all that compressed information, or else you might be disappointed by the cavalier simplicity of a single, breezy sentence.

I learned about loglines from reading the Save the Cat series of books on screenwriting, but writers (well, screenwriters) discuss loglines and offer various templates in just about every how-to writing book and podcast and website and Instagram feed you’ll find. 

There are many, many versions.

Google “logline template,” and be amazed.

For this entry, I’m sharing a few logline templates. 

Keep in mind that you’re about to see many terms of the screenwriting art in these loglines, like catalyst, inciting incident, theme stated, midpoint, death moment, etc. I’ll talk about all of them soon. They are all (almost all) useful for the novelist as well. Hang in there.

Logline from Save the Cat:

On the verge of [a Stasis=Death Moment], a [flawed hero] has a [Catalyst] and [Breaks into Two with the B Story]; but when [the Midpoint] happens, [the hero] must learn [the Theme Stated], before [All Is Lost], to stop [the flawed antagonist] from getting away with their plan to [whatever their plan is].

Logline from Screencraft

When a [catalyst/inciting incident] occurs, a [hero with a flaw] must [achieve their objective] before [the bad guy wins].

Example (Free Guy): When special glasses reveal his world to be a video game, a self-aware NPC named Guy has to help Molotov Girl complete her mission before the bad guy deletes the game forever.

Other Logline Templates

A hero risks something huge when they struggle against the bad guy to achieve the same goal.

Example (The Dark Knight): Batman risks breaking his one rule when he struggles against the Joker for the soul of Gotham.

After the catalyst, the hero must avoid a really bad thing by pursuing their goal against the bad guy.

Example (Unforgiven): When a reward goes out for vengeance against a cowboy who cut a woman, William Munny has to avoid becoming the evil mercenary he used to be as he seeks justice for the woman and the reward money for his kids.

In a world where the catalyst happens, the flawed hero has to achieve the goal of their setup desire; otherwise the bad guy will make bad things happen. [NoFilmSchool]

Example (The Bourne Identity): When a young man with amnesia finds that he owns a safety-deposit box with guns, money, and passports, he has to find out who he really is, before he’s killed by his own handlers.

The Primal Dilemma: I came up with a logline template for myself. 

I call it “The Primal Dilemma” because it focuses on the transformation of the hero.

How can a [flawed hero in Act 1] learn to [synthesize their Act 4 lesson] if their [Act 2 setup desire to achieve their goal the Act 2 way] threatens to [end in the death moment of Act 3 and a reversal of their setup desire]?

The Primal Dilemma can also be a statement. And just FYI, I refer to four acts when most screenwriters only refer to three. I’ll talk about this in the next several entries. Three acts or four acts: it’s the same story structure.

A [flawed hero in Act 1] must learn to [synthesize their Act 4 lesson] before their [Act 2 setup desire to achieve their goal the Act 2 way] threatens to [end in the death moment of Act 3 and a reversal of their setup desire].

Example (SmartHome Rebel): A rebellious young test subject must learn the true meaning of freedom before her decision to grow up according to the rules of an insidious AI smarthome results in hundreds of other children being imprisoned in their own smarthomes.

Here’s a fun fact: I edited the above logline, for a novel I wrote in 2015, as I was typing it in!

I’ve edited the logline for SmartHome dozens of times . . . including just now! That’s how crazy loglines can be.

So keep it light. Keep it fun. Collect all the logline templates you can. Then make your own! 

It’s not about nailing the perfect logline. It’s all a process of developing your story.

In the next several entries, I’ll be going over what acts are and helpful ways to think about them.

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PHOTO: I took a photo of a section of Diego Rivera’s mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I messed with the color and such.