THE PERFECT LOGLINE: Before You Write Word One

Source: @storypros

#screenwriting #logline #screenplay

“All too often, we see writers struggle to come up with a logline after they have written (and sometimes after they have even filmed) their screenplays.

You got it backwards! we scream in our minds, whilst tearing out our hair. 

It’s understandable — you’ve written, changed, modified, riffed…and you want to maximize your logline for marketing purposes. 

But the thing you want to do is have the logline perfected before you start writing. 

Your premise is the seed which grows the mighty oak of your script. A flowery cliché, true, but think about it — within any seed are the components to create the entire plant the seed will become. They are perhaps in microscopic form, and surely the seed relies on additional elements like water and soil nutrients… but the analogy holds. The seed contains all the plant needs to become a potato, a flower, a giant spreading tree. 

The key is to hold off on beginning until you have a premise that actually forms a logline — to develop your premise, the simple idea which gets you going, until it is a logline. 

Some screenwriting gurus suggest that a logline only gives you about two or three good scenes, and that may be true. But the elements of a well-written logline will contain, latent within them, the power to create many more scenes, not just the obvious ones……..”