A reader e-mailed me yesterday and asked a good question: Do you write a logline before you write the script or do you only write it afterwards? The question stemmed from an idea that “Save The Cat’s” Blake Snyder promoted, which is that he would never write a script until he had the logline figured out.
The reason he gave for this proclamation is that unless you can conceptualize your screenplay in a single sentence, then the idea doesn’t work as a movie. His theory boiled down to good movies have a “point.” They have a “goal.” And as long as you have one of those two things, you should be able to convey it in one sentence.
Parasite is about a poor family that tries to take over a rich family’s home. Invisible Man is about a woman trying to take down her abusive dead boyfriend. Knives Out is about solving a murder. Tenet is about… oooooh, wait a minute. We may have something to discuss here.
What is Tenet about? Tenet is a movie you cannot summarize well in a logline. Is it a coincidence, then, that the movie is unwieldy and difficult to understand? There’s no way to prove it for sure but I just shook my magic 8-ball and it came up with “Signs point to yes.” Christopher Nolan would probably shoot us for saying so but had he sat down and distilled his concept into a logline, he may have discovered its weaknesses and changed some elements around until Tenet became stronger.
One of the biggest enemies of screenwriting is vagueness. Wherever there’s vagueness, there is a story unsure of where to go. So if you’re vague before you’ve written your script, there’s a good chance portions of the script itself are going to be vague. Now in a logline, those portions may amount to a word or two. But in a screenplay, they may amount to 10 to 25 pages at a time.
Let’s take this further and think of a good movie that covers a lot of ground and therefore, theoretically, shouldn’t be able to fit into a single logline. Can The Godfather be summarized in a logline? I did a google search and found this: “The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.”
This would seem to say “no.” It’s too vague and doesn’t convey any direction in the story. But I’ll give you a logline tip. Always try and write the logline from the point of view of the character driving the story (which is almost always the hero).
Therefore we’d get something like this: “A reluctant son is forced to take over his father’s organized crime dynasty while fending off the other mob families in town who are determined to eliminate his family for good.” This clearly conveys what The Godfather is about without any trickery or vagueness. So I say it passes Blake Snyder’s logline test.
Let’s challenge ourselves further, though. What about Joker? That’s a good movie. But, on first glance, it wouldn’t pass the Blake Snyder logline test. There isn’t a clear goal in the movie. I’m not even sure there’s a clear point. It’s more about a man’s descent into madness and the things that come about due to that madness. It’s also sort of a “divided in two” movie where the first half of the film is about Arthur Fleck trying to make a living as a comedian and the second half is about him fighting back against the city and losing his mind. It’s not easy to write a logline where the direction of the film changes midway through.
We’re getting into a complicated area here that necessitates a nuanced discussion. But, generally speaking, character pieces are harder to confine to a logline because the journey happens inside the character as opposed to outside. And that never reads well in logline form. “A man with mental health problems attempts to deal with his demons in an increasingly violent New York City while trying to become a stand up comedian.” It’s okay. But notice the main thrust of the logline is “deals with his demons.” That’s an internal battle. The logline still lacks plot clarity, which, 99% of the time, means the script is going to wander. It just so happens that Todd Phillips is aware of this pitfall and made sure to troubleshoot it so that the script still worked.
Which is to say, YES, it’s possible to write a good script without having a good logline, but there are mitigating factors. It’s usually a character piece. The writer inherently understands the weakness of his narrative and gameplans a way to counter that weakness.
The writers who I deal with aren’t even aware that there’s a pitfall in their concept in the first place so, of course, they can’t troubleshoot it. Which results in a messy unfocused screenplay.
Which is a long way of me saying, “Yes, you should try to write a logline BEFORE you write your script. Because not only does doing so force you to learn what your script is really about (distilling anything down to its essence will achieve this). But you may be able to identify holes in the story that you wouldn’t have otherwise noticed.
I received a logline recently that went something like this (I’m going to change some things around to protect the writer’s idea): “An older woman gets a call that the baby who was taken from her 30 years ago wants to meet her.” At first glance, this logline sounds like a movie. There’s definitely something interesting about your baby being stolen from you and never meeting them until they’re an adult. But where is the story? Or, a clearer way to put it: “And then what?” Does her daughter show up, say how much she missed her, and then leave? Where does the movie go? Cause all that you’ve given me is the first act.
Here’s a better logline. I’m writing this literally off the top of my head so I’ll be the first to admit it’s not perfect. But it’s an example of how figuring out the logline can help you discover what your movie is really about. “After an older woman is reunited with her daughter, who was stolen from her 30 years ago as a baby, she begins to suspect that the visitor is not who she says she is, and that her ultimate plan is to harm her.”
Let me reiterate. Not a movie that’s going to be made any time soon. But you can see more of a movie in this version than the previous version. We get the “and then what” part of the story that was missing from the initial logline. Too many writers start writing their screenplays without figuring out the “and then what” part. So when they get to that moment in the screenplay, it’s no coincidence why they run out of ideas.
Now, to answer the original writer’s question, just because you’re basing your movie on the logline you wrote ahead of time, that doesn’t mean you won’t discover a better movie along the way. And, if that happens, you should go back to your logline and write it again. And if your story improves again while you’re writing it, go change your logline again. And when you’re finally done, you’ll write the big final logline that reflects what the script became. This will be the logline you send out to people.
I know lots of screenwriters think loglines are evil. But they can help you write a good movie if you let them. The more vagaries your concept includes, the more you should turn to your logline as a way to figure out the script’s problems.
So go forth and write those loglines, my friends! And if you’re having trouble, I offer two services that can help. One is a quick-and-dirty rating and analysis of your logline that goes for $25. The other is a more involved process where we can e-mail back and forth, collectively working on your logline until we get it right. That’s $40. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line “logline help.”
