This Video Helps Take the Guess Work out of Writing Loglines
How can something so short be so difficult to write?
Loglines are essentially simplified explanations of a story, but many times they're anything but simple to actually write. The problem with that is that in order to sell their ideas to anyone, screenwriters have to be extremely skilled at coming up with loglines that not only give an accurate picture of what the story's about, but also pique their reader's interest. To help you learn how to write better loglines for your own screenplays, check out this video from RocketJump Film School.
The first thing you have to understand about loglines is what their purpose is—and they have a couple. The first is to make it easier to quickly pitch your ideas to potential collaborators, be they producers, directors, or anyone else who you want to get excited about your story. The second is to make it easier for you to stay on track with what your story is about, because if you've ever written a screenplay before, you know how easy it is to forget what the hell you're even writing about.
Now that you know what loglines are for, the next step is to learn how to write one. Which elements of the story should be included? How log is it supposed to be? How detailed should you make it?
Well, loglines are typically a single sentence that, as you saw in the video, answers four main questions:
- Who's the main character?
- What do they want?
- What's in their way?
- How do they overcome it?
If you're a star and can just pull a logline right out of your head, lucky you, but for the rest of us Will Campos, Head Writer at RocketJump Film School, shows you a pretty straightforward way of collecting the necessary information from your screenplay in order to put your logline together. Simply jot down details about your screenplay that answer the four questions above. Take a look at your protagonist and answer the most important aspects of their personality, work, or whatever is specifically pertinent to the story, then repeat until you answer each question.
After that, it's just a matter of putting all of those elements together into a cohesive summary of your story, which at this point should be a hell of a lot easier to do.
Source: RocketJump Film School
