A logline is a one or two sentence (maximum) description of a movie that hooks the reader through efficient and careful wording.

It’s a tool that’s used across the film industry, covering all genres of scripts. It can be used by screenwriters succinctly pitching their idea to potential producers, producers pitching to investors, directors pitching to actors, or marketing teams eventually advertising the film to audiences.

A logline’s purpose is not solely the brief summation of a movie. The real intention of a logline is to hook your audience (whether that audience is an agent, executive, producer, actor, or box-office patron). A logline needs to grab your audience’s attention through dynamic wording and engaging ideas. It needs to accurately capture the movie’s narrative while also pithily including language that will emotionally involve the listener.

The highwire act to walk here is to reveal the premise of the movie while not revealing too much of the plot – that’s the job of a synopsis, not a logline.  The key is creating a mystery or question your audience wants to know more about.

The building blocks of a logline can be broken down into [PROTAGONIST] + [PROTAGONIST’S GOAL] + [INCITING INCIDENT] + [CENTRAL CONFLICT]. It’s important to note that not all loglines need to follow this exact order. Get creative with it but bear in mind what matters is that the elements are all clear and present.

We can take a closer look at each of these elements…

The protagonist is the movie’s main character. Their actions and dialogue drive the film. This is the character the audience is most invested in (and the role typically taken on by a larger-than-life movie star).

This should be fairly obvious, but for the sake of being thorough, the protagonist’s goal is what they want to accomplish and pursue during the course of the movie. The goal essentially is what sets them on their journey.

Every movie’s got an inciting incident, which fundamentally is an event that occurs near the start of the film and sets the protagonist into action. The arrival of the villains in DIE HARD, Indiana Jones’ briefing about the lost ark in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and the stealing of the protagonist’s bicycle in THE BICYCLE THIEF are all examples of an inciting incident.

All good stories revolve around a conflict, which is in essence, the core struggle of the protagonist(s). Conflicts come in all different forms but typically can be divided up into Man vs Nature, Man vs. Society, Man vs. Supernatural, Man vs. Man and Man vs. Self.

Writing a good logline is easier said than done. A good logline should introduce a protagonist, contain a clear summation of the movie’s plot, contain active, engaging language and above all else, be brief.

There’s a multitude of ways to implement the aforementioned ideas and create a truly compelling logline. But before you put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard), the first thing you need to do is be able to do is clearly describe what your movie is about. In longform. This is sometimes a greater challenge than you’d initially think.

So pause for a moment and consider the exact story your film is telling and the journey your lead character will be undertaking. Once that’s been thought through and fully understood, you can start thinking about ways to grab someone’s attention with it…

The movie’s core conceit is one of the most important elements of a successful logline. Make sure the premise behind the film is clearly stated.  This will provide much needed narrative context and perhaps even touch on the movie’s genre.

In the best-case scenario, you’ll want your movie logline to be spoiler-free. The pitcher’s goal should be finding a balance between generating interest in the story and also keeping the best surprises out of the logline.

The film’s protagonist is the main character who drives the story. Plainly express who they are, but still keep it at a high-level. Adjectives are invaluable in modifying here (a brilliant scientist, a fierce warrior, a single mother, etc.) and can help you paint a vivid mental picture.

Since loglines are essentially overviews, make sure to keep away from specifics and details. Considering you’re introducing your audience into the world of your movie, it’s better to provide a general idea of a character’s identity rather than label them by name.

Remember your grade school grammar lessons about active vs. passive verbs? Time to break them out here. For a quick refresher, in the passive voice, the subject of the sentence receives the action of the verb (an example of that would be, “John was kissed by Ana”).

In the active voice, the subject performs the action of the verb (so that would read as, “Ana kissed John”). Note the differences in the sentences; not just in flow, but in feeling as well.

You’ll want to utilize energetic and dynamic verbs to highlight the tone and momentum of your film. And since you’re describing a conflict as part of your logline, finding the proper lively words should feel organic.

Really standout loglines tend to have a sense of irony. This element can draw an audience in and let them know they’re in for something different and surprising. Irony is great for comedies, but also works on the dramatic level simply by upending circumstances against the protagonist. Opposing personalities also can also create a clear sense of the movie’s direction and delineate lines of irony as well.

As we’ve already discussed, brevity and the efficiency of words is essential when it comes to constructing a resonating outline. Don’t overexplain or deep-dive into detail. It’s a matter of being precise in both how much of your story and character(s) you want to mention coupled with keeping the logline itself as succinct as possible.

So now let’s take a look at some well-crafted loglines from some truly amazing films. In fact, rather than spell things out, we’re gonna do this as a quiz (answers are at the bottom of the article)…

1. When his son is swept out to sea, an anxious clownfish embarks on a perilous journey across a treacherous ocean to bring him back.
2. The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.
3. A Las Vegas-set comedy centered around three groomsmen lose their about-to-be-wed buddy during their drunken misadventures, then must retrace their steps in order to find him.
4. A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against its controllers.
5. The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster’s wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.
6. In order to catch a killer who skins his victims, a young FBI cadet must seek help from an incarcerated and manipulative killer.
7. Two detectives, a rookie, and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as a motive.
8. During World War II, a vain and greedy German businessman becomes an unlikely humanitarian amid the barbaric German Nazi reign when he feels compelled to turn his factory into a refuge for Jews.
9. A police officer must prevent a bomb exploding aboard a city bus by keeping its speed above 50 mph.
10. A teenage boy time travels to the past, where he must reunite his parents before he and his future cease to exist.
11. A mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge for violent action, attempting to save a preadolescent prostitute in the process.
12. A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.
13. A group of seven former college friends gathers for a weekend reunion at a South Carolina winter house after the funeral of one of their friends.
14. A fast-track lawyer can’t lie for 24 hours due to his son’s birthday wish after the lawyer turns his son down for the last time.
15. During a preview tour, a theme park experiences a major power breakdown that allows its cloned dinosaur exhibits to run amok.
16. A Christmas Elf goes to New York City in search of his biological father, knowing nothing about life outside of the North Pole.
17. The morning after a bachelor party in Las Vegas, three friends with no memory of the previous night wake up to find the bachelor missing. They need to find him before the wedding.
18. A teenager moves from Africa to the suburbs of Illinois, where she’s thrown into the harsh, cruel world of high school cliques.
19. A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and believes he witnesses one of them committing a murder.
20. A retired CIA agenttravels across Europe and uses his old skillset to find and rescue his daughter, who has been kidnapped while on a trip to Paris.
21. In the summer of 1989, a group of bullied kids unite to destroy a shape-shifting monster, which disguises itself as a clown and preys on the children of Derry, Maine.
22. In 1954, a U.S. marshal has troubling visions which impede his investigation into the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane.
23. During the Vietnam War, a battle-scarred captain takes on a perilous mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade colonel who has established himself as a god among a local tribe.
24. A pair of star-crossed lovers fall in love on the maiden voyage of the Titanic and struggle to survive as the doomed ship sinks into the Atlantic Ocean.
25. An eight-year-old troublemaker must protect his house from a pair of burglars when he is accidentally left home alone by his family during Christmas vacation.
26. A boy’s favorite cowboy doll is threatened when a new action figure supplants him – a spaceman who believes he is real and not a toy.
27. A family of superheroes, undercover and trying to live a quiet suburban life for many years, are forced back into their true selves so they can save the world.
28. When a pair of kids find and play a magical board game, they release a man trapped in it for decades – and a find dangers that can only be stopped by finishing the game.
29. A high school student is bitten by a genetically-altered spider and gains superhuman strength and spider-like ability, vowing to use his abilities to fight crime.
30. An insurance salesman discovers his whole life is actually a reality TV show.

Writing loglines is an art unto itself. It requires an intimate understanding of the source material, along with a method of execution that’s catchy, informative, engaging and most of all, the skill to pull it off concisely.