How to Write a Logline for Your Screenplay: Five Examples — With Exercises!
The point of a good logline is to appeal to the reader as quickly as possible.
What you’re trying to do is to put enough information into the logline to present the hook of the film and make the reader ask to tell you more about the story.
The key to this is to introduce the elements of Irony, Conflict, and Change:
Irony: this is the element that makes the story unique. Why this story, and why at this point?
Conflict: what sort of fight or struggle would we anticipate from this ironic situation? Think about the payoff we would expect from examining this idea.
Change: what sort of emotional change could we expect the protagonist to go through? This doesn’t have to be spelled out entirely, but we need to understand the possibility for emotional growth that underlies the situation at hand.
Finding Examples of Loglines
When you’re wondering how to write a logline, I find the best thing to do is to find a film with a great concept and write the logline for that film.
It’s little good to write a logline for your own film if you’re not sure how a good logline is constructed in the first place. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five examples of very specific films with very strong concepts.
When creating a logline for these films, we will look at how Irony, Conflict, and Change are represented for each.
Once you’re comfortable creating loglines for films that you know to be good, you’ll be a lot more confident adjusting your own logline.
Remember that we’re working backward here, understanding that the film itself has a solid concept. At the end of the article, we will address you can improve your own concept using the same idea.
What the Robot Has to Say
Just for shits and giggles, I decided to run each of these films through ChatGPT after I wrote my own loglines. I just gave it a simple prompt, e.g. “Write a 25-30 word logline for the film The Terminator (1984).”
From experience, I know that ChatGPT isn’t particularly good at nailing the most appealing parts of films for the human reader. Fundamentally, the robot loves to assume we’ve seen the movie in the first place. That means that many references within the logline are written in a way that makes sense if we’re aware of context.
The problem, however, is that we have to put ourselves in the shoes of a reader who has no fucking clue what we’re talking about. That means that all of the nuts and bolts of the story have to come across to someone who’s hearing it with zero prior knowledge.
It’s hard to explain the core aspects of a film in 25-50 words. That means you have to distill everything to its very essence. That’s the appeal of an exercise such as this.
Fixing ChatGPT’s mistakes also provides us a good reflection of the process we might use to take a middling logline and whip it into better shape.
Let’s start with the example above…
The Terminator (1984)
My logline:
>A humanoid robot from a dystopian, machine-controlled future is sent to 1984 to kill a young woman whose as-yet-unconceived child will become the leader of the human resistance.
Notes:
What you’ll notice here is that this has to be approached from the perspective that the reader has no idea of the story itself.
We have to establish that the robot assassin is from the future and that the future sucks. We have to understand that there will be a human resistance and think about why there would need to be one.
One specific calling card for this film is that the robot itself is humanoid. That is, we’re not seeing Sarah Conner get stalked by a Roomba gone rogue.
We could expand on this if more room–”a cyborg that appears human,” for example, but be careful with words such as “cyborg” because they risk being specific enough to alienate certain readers.
One thing that was tricky here was the “as-yet-unconceived” part, because this is a big part of the plot. Of course it would work to kill Sarah after she’s already pregnant, but the science fiction aspect of the plot seems more frightening–the robots of the future want to eliminate the woman before she has a chance to get knocked up.
The fact that Kyle is John’s father doesn’t need to be in the logline, but the alternative is worse: “her unborn child” makes it sound like Sarah is already pregnant, which proves misleading.
ChatGPT’s logline:
>A relentless cyborg assassin is sent from the future to kill the mother of humanity’s last hope, but a soldier from the same future must protect her to preserve the fate of mankind.
Notes:
First, we can’t expect the reader to know what a cyborg is. Readers whose science fiction expertise extends only to Sally Rooney novels might struggle here.
“Kill the mother of humanity’s last hope.” You’ll note that the dystopian future is taken for granted. If not, you’re wondering why? What the fuck is going on that there even needs to be a last hope for humanity?
“A soldier from the same future,” sure–this introduces Kyle, but is that actually core to the irony of the plot? I would argue no. If we extended the logline to 50 words to include the plot engine, we might be able to squeeze this in but frankly it’s unnecessary for a short (ca. 25-word) logline.
“Preserve the fate of mankind” sounds not only chauvinistic, but it’s poetic at the expense of meaning.* Remember, we need to understand what’s at stake here and–to be fair–in the first film, it’s not as if the human resistance is doing much “preserving the fate” of anything. At best, they’re a thorn in the side of Skynet.
ChatGPT is, ironically enough, making more of the human beings than it ought to do. It’s just flattering us up so we’ll pay less attention to its imprecise bullshit–or maybe just before it cooks us and serves us with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
*That’s sort of funny for the robot to do, but remember this thing is just statistically cutting and pasting the most likely things written about the film by, you know, real human beings doing real thinking.
Terminator 2 (1991)
>A 13-year-old boy is hunted by a relentless robot assassin from a machine-controlled future; his only hope is to trust another robot–who claims to be sent to protect him.
Notes:
Note that I made a specific choice not to refer to the original film when writing the logline.
Yes, this is a sequel (the “2” in the title sort of gives that away), but if you’re like me you saw this long before you ever watched the 1984 original. Notably, in many ways, it’s a far better film than the original.
While the basic premise might not be quite as revolutionary as the original film (although Harlan Ellison might have something to say about how revolutionary the first film’s premise was…), it is the rare sequel that manages to build on the original world and make it more complex in character and emotion as well as story.
Given the complexity of the story, we have to get back to basics. What is the pitch and who is the main character, really? The film is told from John’s perspective so we want to focus in on John’s experience.
It’s all well and good that he will be the eventual leader of the resistance, but this becomes fluff and has little to do with the boots-on-the-ground impact of the fact that a very shiny Robert Patrick is trying to kill him.
The real meat of this story is that we have a good robot and a bad robot, but John would do well not to trust either of them–given that, after all, they are both assassin robots built by Skynet.
The rule here will be to get it down to the most basic impact: the triangulation of good robot, bad robot, and young boy.
A lot has to be cut, but it’s a really long film in any case. We gotta leave some stuff on the table: e.g., Sarah is super badass in this movie, but even she doesn’t warrant a mention because she’s not integral enough to the plot to get into such a hard distillation.
Speaking of robots, let’s see what our robot has to offeer–ChatGPT’s answer:
>A reprogrammed cyborg is sent back in time to protect a teenage boy—future leader of the resistance—while a deadlier, shape-shifting Terminator hunts them both to ensure humanity’s extinction.
Notes:
I’ll be honest: on first read I thought this was pretty good and made me rethink my own. That is a good use of the AI–if it sparks your own thinking, all the better. The key is not to assume that what it spits out is better than what you can create, regardless of what the AI PR machine would have you believe.
Just remember, this shit is basically a hopped-up Travelocity chatbot. Don’t give it more credit than it deserves. At no point soon will it mutate into Skynet.
Then on second read, I realized that there are some contextual flaws here:
–we’ve discussed the issue with the word “cyborg” already;
–the reprogrammed part might be interesting, but it’s fundamentally immaterial when we are dealing with limited wordspace;
–-we have no idea what “the resistance” is unless we have context of the battle in the future;
–perhaps the “shape-shifting” part is a good shout;
–the “ensure humanity’s extinction” gives interesting stakes, but it also raises a lot of questions
Remember, what we’re looking for is core details that will hook the reader who doesn’t know the first thing about the plot. How humanity’s extinction got involved is going to open a can of worms–but… this might be a good thing because it piques the reader’s interest.
So, hat in hand, I will revise my own:
>Original: A 13-year-old boy is hunted by a relentless robot assassin from a machine-controlled future; his only hope is to trust another robot–who claims to be sent to protect him.
Revised:
>A 13-year-old boy is hunted by a robot assassin from a machine-controlled future; to survive, he must trust a different killer robot–who claims the boy is humanity’s only hope against extinction.
Irony: If you’re being hunted by one robot killer, trusting another robot killer is probably low on your priorities list.
Conflict: Being hunted by a robot assassin would presumably count here.
Change: In this telling, John has to man the fuck up and become humanity’s only hope–despite the fact that he’s just a little ATM-scamming punk.
The greatest part of the film, for my money, is John teaching the T-800 how to be human, but there’s not really enough room to include that in a short logline. Nevertheless, we want some sense of the change that the protagonist would go through–and that comes from John accepting his fate as the leader of the human resistance.
All in all, with this finalized version, we get a better idea of the stakes but without contextual problems. It nails what presumably would be the key issue for John: trusting the fucking robot that killed his father and tried to kill his mother.* Furthermore, if we can shoehorn in the “extinction” part, we get an interesting “oh, why is this kid humanity’s only hope?” and this happens even if we don’t know the context of the first film.
*Yes, not the same robot, but the same model at least.
The Professional (1994)
My logline:
>A lonely hitman shelters his 12-year-old neighbor after her family is murdered by a rogue police officer; seeking revenge, she convinces him to train her as an assassin.
Notes:
This is a strange movie to begin with, and it just gets weirder when you try to package it like this. That said, it is certainly high concept, and we can easily squeeze out a solid Irony, Conflict, and Change.
Irony: how can a hitman be a good support figure for a freshly-orphaned young girl?
Conflict: the girl is obviously in trouble via her family or they wouldn’t have been murdered in the first place; it only ramps up when she’s bent on revenge.
Change: this could be either character, really–she learns about life and grief through the process of training as an assassin, or the hitman learns from being her mentor and support figure during this crisis. There’s enough of a hint of something going on that we want to know more.
ChatGPT’s logline:
When her family is murdered, a twelve-year-old girl is taken in by a lonely hitman, and the two form an unlikely bond as he teaches her the art of assassination.
Notes:
I’m going to hand it to ChatGPT here–this logline ain’t bad. The real place for improvement is in the corners.
In terms of stress testing loglines, it’s vital to think of objections that might arise. Primary among these, to me, would be “why doesn’t she just go to the cops?” It’s a fairly unlikely situation to end up sheltering with a hitman; we need to squeeze her into that situation rather than letting her arrive by random chance.
That’s why it’s important to mention that her family was murdered by a police officer; that makes one realize that it’s perhaps not the greatest idea to appeal to the police for help.
The next problem is “why on earth would a hitman teach a 12-year-old girl to be an assassin?” We need to understand both his and her motivation here. He’s not teaching her fly fishing or some shit; he’s teaching her how to kill people.
If we understand that she leans into the scenario willingly–almost forcefully–and effectively twists his arm so that she might learn how to be a hit-person herself, then it gives us a much better idea of the dynamic between the two.
As for the weird grooming overtones, noted; there is no place for this in the logline. Also–do not research the relationship between Besson and Maïwenn. I have warned you.
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
My logline:
>A down-on-his-luck screenwriter convinces a has-been silent film star to let him write her comeback film, only to find himself trapped in her twisted fantasy world.
Notes:
There’s so much more to this film, but we’re trying to keep things short.
Irony: Joe does the convincing to get the job, but gets trapped in Norma’s world.
Conflict: Joe took a simple ghostwriting job, but ended up trapped–how can he escape?
Change: This one’s harder–Joe’s own cleverness got him into this situation, but he’ll have to grow some other way (or not, as the case may be) to get out.
This makes us wonder what sort of twisted fantasy world a has-been silent film star might have. It makes use wonder why that would even be so bad. It makes us wonder what Joe could do to get out of it–or, for that matter, how he got trapped in the first place. A screenwriting gig, even a demeaning one, sounds pretty good given today’s climate.
If you haven’t seen the film, of course, watch it.
ChatGPT’s logline:
>A struggling screenwriter stumbles into the decaying mansion of a forgotten silent film star, becoming trapped in her delusions of a comeback—and in a twisted relationship that leads to tragedy.
Notes:
Again, this isn’t too bad. It will be useful as a reflection and to see whether we need to add anything else.
What I don’t like on the surface is that it removes Joe’s agency. The real conflict is the fact that Joe thinks he’s pulling a fast one on Norma, but his cleverness gets the better of him because she’s a hell of a lot nuttier than he gave her credit for. I mean this is basically what Joe says in the first scene’s VO!
That, unfortunately, is missing here. We don’t understand the push-pull between Joe and Norma and don’t have a good way to figure out who’s playing whom.
We also don’t need to play this out until the end–we don’t really need to know that Joe and Norma form a cringe romantic relationship, or that there is tragedy at the end. I mean if you’ve watched the first scene it’s not like Wilder is hiding it.
The “decaying mansion” part is pretty slick. It gives a nice feel to things. Let’s see how easily we can integrate that.
Revision:
>A down-on-his-luck screenwriter convinces a has-been silent film star to let him write her comeback film, only to find himself trapped in her decaying mansion–and her twisted fantasy world.
The extra words give a little bit of a sense-based kick. It may or may not be worthwhile. You be the judge.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
>A man pays to have all memories of his ex-girlfriend erased; during the procedure, he changes his mind and must fight to keep alive his memories of their time together.
Notes:
This was surprisingly hard. The concept of the film is so strange that I really wanted to start explaining in more detail.
At the end, much like focusing on John for T:2, I had to focus on Joel here. The film is really all done from Joel’s perspective, where we functionally consider Clementine the antagonist (as is the case for almost all romantic comedies).
Then it comes back to Joel’s story: he learns that Clementine has erased him, so he goes and does the same–but regrets it and fights back. That’s really the core of the story. However, we can trim it down even to Joel erasing Clementine. Looking at it, it is his story. Again, it becomes basically immaterial that she did it first; we just need to know that he eventually tried.
Then we understand that we get trapped in his mind during the procedure.
Irony: the science fiction concept of erasing memories is interesting, but the irony is that he paid to erase the memories but suddenly wants to keep them.
Conflict: if the company is supposed to be erasing memories, then it’ll be a bit awkward for him to save them, I’d suspect.
Change: this is either wrong or too obvious–Joel realizes how much he treasures the time with Clementine even if the relationship ended up in the shitter.
ChatGPT’s logline:
>After a painful breakup, a man undergoes a procedure to erase memories of his ex—only to rediscover, as his memories fade, that love and loss are deeply intertwined.
What the fuck is this?
It got the first part correct, but the second part just attempts to be poetic at the expense of any reasonable meaning. Slop.
So I credit the first part of the sentence.
We can sort of assume that “as his memories fade” is because of the procedure, but that’s not totally clear. I wouldn’t take it as 100% that this is the reason. That language needs to be tighter.
I just really have no idea what the “love and loss are deeply intertwined” part is meant to conjure for the reader. It could play out in a million different ways, which means it’s not specific enough.
We need to have a clear action line for what’s going on. This is actually a pretty crap logline. We’ll stick with my original.
How to Write a Logline: Applying These Ideas
Now that you have a better idea how a good logline is constructed, let’s figure out how you can apply this to your own idea.
The point of looking at a logline is to figure out what’s weak not only about how you’re pitching the film (the logline itself) but even whether the concept of the film as it stands in your mind might be ripe for improvement.
You’re still writing/editing the screenplay, naturally, so it’s subject to change. What happens if you figure out the story isn’t solid enough to appeal to the reader? That’s a good thing, actually–even if it means some serious rewriting, you’re better off having a film that actually appeals at first glance.
Trust me, if it doesn’t, it’s unlikely to get a second or third glance. Most agents and contests are looking for reasons to disqualify you and you’ll be lucky to get two minutes of a reader’s attention.
So make it as compelling as possible–make sure you focus in on the hook.
Now let’s get into how you can apply this to your own work.
Exercise 1: Reverse-Engineer the Logline
Prompt:
Choose a film with a high-concept premise. Write a 25-30 word logline for it without referencing the title, character names, or assuming prior knowledge of the story.
Identify the following:
- Irony – What makes this situation unexpected or unique?
- Conflict – What’s the core struggle or threat the protagonist faces?
- Change – What kind of transformation might the protagonist undergo?
Goal:
Train your ability to isolate what’s structurally compelling about existing films—without leaning on shorthand or assumed context.
Exercise 2: Fix an AI Logline
Prompt:
Get ChatGPT or your AI of choice to generate a few 25-30 word loglines.
Identify where it fails to clarify the hook, lacks specificity, or uses poetic generalities instead of plot-driven cause and effect.
Rewrite it using no more than 30 words and ensure:
- The stakes are clear.
- The situation is unusual (ironic).
- The protagonist’s role is active.
Exercise 3: Stress-Test Your Own Logline
Prompt:
Write the logline for your current script or story idea. Then stress-test it by answering the following:
- Would this make sense to someone who’s never heard of the project?
- Does it make the reader want to ask “what happens next?”
- Could you simplify the language without losing meaning?
- Does it include Irony, Conflict, and Change—even subtly?
- Would you watch this if you saw it as the MUBI (or, dog help me, Netflix) blurb?
Let’s be real–would your concept survive a 30-second glance from a bored, dyspeptic gatekeeper?
If the answer is no, fix the logline and consider whether this means the concept of the film itself needs a thorough revision.
For get I asked how to write a logline–I’m just saying this again to appease the overlords.
