Hey fellow creatives,
A logline is more than just a two-sentence pitch to grab a producer's attention in 30 seconds—it is the very DNA of your story.
I strongly believe that the logline must be written first, way before typing the first word of your script. Put your concept into two tight sentences and ask yourself honestly: Is this convincing? Is the conflict strong enough? If yes, you now have your "roadmap." It sets your protagonist, goal, conflict, and stakes, keeping you from getting lost during the writing process.
However, this sparks a major debate among professionals:
The First School: Sees it as a compass written beforehand to anchor the dramatic structure.
The Second School: Sees it as a straitjacket, believing it should only be written after the script is finished, as stories evolve during development.
Let’s discuss in the comments:
Which school of thought do you belong to? Do you write your loglines as a roadmap or a final summary? Drop your thoughts (and current loglines) below, and let’s workshop them together!
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To practice what I preach, here is the roadmap logline for my upcoming feature film, "Not Seven" (ليس سبعة).
Genre: Psychological Thriller / Crime Drama
Logline: After being rejected by corporate giants for lacking a degree, a brilliant young man pawns his grandfather’s vintage watch to fund a sophisticated war against a corrupt system, transforming the city into seven controlled pathways that force the police into submission while exposing deep global human crises.
I’d love to hear your honest feedback on the stakes and structure! What do you think?
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Disagree, but we do that on here sometimes because we are all nice people anyway - and Sabri is a particularly nice person. NONETHELESS: How is it possible to write a logline before the script is finished. Theres a 90 percent probability it's nonsense. In what I call 'the last ten minutes' of script editing, amazing things happen.
To take a CONCEPT you have not fleshed out yet, put it in a Logline which reflects and locks down the drama, content, action, hero, quirks in the detail of the script - - - THEN write the script evolved from the concept which then enables a proper Logline to be written. To write the Logline beforehand is like Schrodinger's Cat who can never be saved because it didn't exist before you determined its fate - or if you did, and it did, your story and your script is WAY less good than it should be anyway because you delivered a Logline before you thought through the detail of the delivery of the concept. - - Yes, I know but it's fun.
Don't reply by saying but... but... but... then you re-write the Logline because as rural misogynistic sexist Americans might say in bad scripts for poor dramas - 'Honey, that dog just don't hunt'. Obviously if you are writer for hire, or in a room-room, and get paid the be manacled to a premise which damns the cat to banality - - you are noble, you are right, go for it - groceries cost money.
If it helps you as a writer get started - great - So Sabri can be right. If you think it delivers the end product - here be dragons - which might explain so many boring dramas.
I rest my case and look forward to complaints from people who didn't read the above all the way through.
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Depends on the writer. Depends on the script.
I'd say that, given a handful of different possible loglines written before the script is begun, and another handful of loglines written after the script is complete, the intersection of the two sets will be pretty significant, for most writers and most scripts. Ideas absolutely do tend to evolve during the writing process, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they evolve to make an initial logline truly inaccurate.
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A logline can be a starting point or a sort of guide, but I'm always willing to revamp it as the story unfolds or shifts direction.