I was just recently at ScriptDC, a Women in Film and Video conference in Washington, DC, where actors did readings of screenwriters’ first four script pages out loud. During that experience, I shared this advice. The first performance was from a script with a great premise but the reading was interminable because it was excruciatingly overwritten. The actor reading the narration went on and on while the actual dialogue was minimal. When there was dialogue, most of it seemed repetitive. I told the writer to go back and revise with this ten-dollar rule in mind. I was convinced that what took four pages originally could actually be told in only one, perhaps less. To me, it’s like having a big red pen as you read, only better, because, in theory, it affects your pocketbook so you are more apt to use the pen liberally.
Why is it important to have this frugal perspective? Because attention spans and time are both extremely short these days. No editor, agent, publisher, or executive wants to slog through a lengthy logline. No matter how long the manuscript is, it can always be successfully broken down into one strong, tight sentence. Here’s an example I received from a content creator trying to cram the entire plot into one sentence, thinking that would be the logline:
ORIGINAL
When two prominent doctors suddenly die, they leave their daughter Christiana with nasty enemies to wage war against, a valuable piece of priceless art to find, a 100-year-old curse to deal with, and a deep dark secret regarding her real identity to discover—and as a naive sixteen-year-old, Christiana Chelsey only has a handful of homeless people to help her find out who really murdered her parents before she too is killed for the same unique painting that they were killed for.
This could be a great story and an amazing literary work but, sadly, no one would read past this supposed logline to find that out. It rambles on, so you assume the whole written work will be more of the same. It’s also just plain painful: a run-on with way too much unnecessary information that’s vague and general, and tells us almost nothing of import. It’s what I kindly refer to as a hot mess. If we cut it down and add vocabulary to turn it into one strong sentence, we can see the difference a good logline makes. Here’s the rough draft redo:
REDO
When two prominent doctors suddenly die, they leave their daughter Christiana with nasty enemies to wage war against, a valuable piece of priceless art to find, a 100-year-old curse to deal with, and a deep dark secret regarding her real identity to discover—and as a naive GIRL sixteen year old, Christiana Chelsey only has a handful of RECRUITS THE homeless people to help her find out DISCOVER who really murdered her parents FOR A PIECE OF ARTWORK before she too is killed for the same unique painting that they were killed for.
Here it is, clean:
A girl recruits the homeless to help discover who murdered her parents for a piece of artwork before she is killed for the same unique painting.
While it is much shorter, this version of the logline gives out the most pertinent and distinctive story information in a way that is clear and easy to follow. More important, from this version I know who the protagonist is, what she wants, and what is at stake if she doesn’t succeed. Now, with this redone logline, I might actually consider reading the manuscript; with homeless folks as allies, it sounds like an interesting and different kind of journey.
Many times, writers tell me their property cannot possibly be broken down into only a sentence, that there are too many important elements, characters, and plot twists to fit it into such a tight structure. My answer is always the same: You are absolutely right—you cannot possibly fit your entire story into only one sentence. However, you are not being asked to do so. Instead, figure out what specifically makes your story unique. That is the heart and soul of your logline, not your plot.
One of my favorite examples has to do with a memoir about a woman who was incarcerated for dealing cocaine. The logline was very generic, as I recall, and had something to do with her getting caught with a pile of drugs. Uninspired but curious, I read all of her chapters about her life, her druggie boyfriend, and her journey through the prison system, but ultimately thought that overall it just wasn’t unique. I had seen the movie Traffic, and this tale didn’t seem all that different. The fact that she happened to be a real person with a true life story was definitely helpful, but I’ve read so many pieces about people who went through a similar journey that I kept asking myself my favorite question: How can I sell this?
I asked the content creator to take me through all the details that weren’t in her pages. Slowly, the truly unique part of this story came through. Here’s the final logline that I generated:
This is the true story of a girl who, at only 19, became one of the biggest drug dealers in US history.
Now, isn’t that a story you want to read? And, as you can see, it’s not a recitation of her complicated plot. Note, too, that what is at stake isn’t spelled out here either, because it’s implied by the fact that she’s a drug kingpin. I’m focusing solely on the most unique parts of the tale, her young age and the huge scope of what she became involved in, in order to create a logline that would help the story be incredibly marketable.
While there is often a great deal of hemming and hawing initially about my one-sentence-only format, I find that after accepting and adopting this principle, many writers begin to get inspired by the challenge of trying to learn to focus only on what is truly unique. By cutting out bits or rephrasing to make the logline shorter, they soon find that the overall impact of the sentence comes from using fewer words and choosing more powerful vocabulary. Here’s an example of small adjustments to make a logline more compelling:
ORIGINAL
A woman in love with a bad boy who is actually the devil finds out that if she makes him her husband she won’t be able to be with her family ever again.
While this actually isn’t bad for a first pass, look what changing the number of words, shifting their order, and adjusting the vocabulary does to the power of the logline:
REDO
A woman in love with the devil learns that if she marries him, she will lose her family forever.
The actual changes made were fairly small, but the difference to the logline was big and definitely worth it. Even though I’ve been writing and rewriting loglines for years, I am still always thrilled and impressed by the difference slight adjustments can make to the overall impact. You only have a single sentence for your logline, so why not make that sentence the most powerful it can possibly be, right?
I’ve gone to meetings that were supposed to be half an hour, but the executive was running late and suddenly it’s almost lunchtime. This happened when I was going in to try to sell Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft to ABC Family. Without warning, my pitch had to be condensed into ten minutes or suffer by being rescheduled to a later date. When this happens, as it does quite often, I usually choose to keep the appointment because (1) with the exec feeling bad about what’s happened, he or she is usually in a more positive state of mind to receive and possibly buy my story and (2) with my final logline for the project firmly in my mind, I know I can literally sell it in a sentence. Whatever time I get after that is just gravy.
We know now that a logline should be only a sentence, but how can that be achieved? What should get cut out in the process of streamlining the logline?
Chapter 10
What’s in a Name?
WHILE WRITING AND REWRITING THE LOGLINE, WHAT exactly can be taken out and what should be left in? These are the hardest questions, and when I look to hire screenwriters for adaptation, being able to answer these questions well is part of the skill set I require. It’s important that screenwriters have the ability to know how to separate the wheat from the chaff in a novel during the process of adjusting it to become a feature film, movie of the week, or TV series. What needs to be left in so that fans of the literary material won’t be disappointed? And what can be taken out because it’s not visual enough for screen? There’s a fine line to walk on both sides. With regard to what to cut
to create a tight logline, there are, of course, rules that I’ve discovered through the trial and error process. But rules were also meant to be broken.
It’s kind of like when you are learning to edit film. My favorite teacher at USC film school, Arnold Baker, taught us all the basics of starting with the master shot, cutting to the two-shot, then to the single and then to the opposing single shot. However, the next week he started the class by telling us to throw out all the editing knowledge we had just learned. When asked about this odd teaching method, he said that we had to solidly learn the rules first before we could begin to break them by trying something new and different. He was a smart man, and I use this method to this day. If you learn the rules first, then you know how and when it’s worthwhile to break them. But how do you start?
As far as I’m concerned, the first information to cut is always the character names. Why? Because if the logline is at the top of your query letter (as it should be) or, alternately, the first thing you say to an agent or potential reader or viewer, there is no reference for who the character is yet—so the name has no meaning. Stephanie, George, Jack, Jane, and Terry don’t have any value until the full story itself is read. Additionally, at ten dollars per word, why use up precious page space with something that does not help you sell? No use of proper names will ever help you to market your material. Here’s an example of a logline I received for which cutting character names greatly streamlined the sentence, even in its infancy:
ORIGINAL
Life begins to unravel for a husband and wife, Andrew and Lilah Kenworth, after Andrew rediscovers an old letter he never told his wife, Lilah, about, and it threatens to reveal a betrayal toward Lilah from over twenty years ago. It turns out that Andrew hid the only correspondence her deceased fiancé, Mark Trent, sent her before he was killed, and the concealment ultimately ruins their marriage.
REDO
Life begins to unravel for a husband and wife, Andrew and Lilah Kenworth, after Andrew HE rediscovers an old letter he never told his wife, Lilah, about, and it threatens to reveal a betrayal toward Lilah from over twenty years ago. It turns out that Andrew HE hid the only correspondence her deceased fiancé, Mark Trent, sent her before he was killed, and the concealment ultimately ruins their marriage.
CLEAN
Life begins to unravel for a husband and wife after he rediscovers an old letter he never told his wife about and it threatens to reveal a betrayal from over twenty years ago—that he hid the only correspondence her deceased fiancé sent before he was killed—and the concealment ultimately ruins their marriage.
By cutting out Andrew and Lilah Kenworth’s names, something wonderfully helpful is revealed. It suddenly becomes clear that the real protagonist is Andrew and not Lilah—an insight created solely by cutting the names out of the logline.
Taking out Mark Trent’s name also helps tighten the sentence, because it prevents the break in pacing created by including it. Chopping out all three names helps drastically shorten the length without losing anything important, since the reader has yet to discover who these folks are. There were a few additional cuts needed before arriving at the final, solid logline, but deleting the names already helped immensely. Then I continued to distill the logline even further. Remember, at ten dollars per word it’s important to streamline as much as possible in order to highlight the important elements. Here’s the next redo:
REDO
Life begins to unravel for a husband and wife after he rediscovers A an old letter he never told his wife about and it threatens to reveal a betrayal from over twenty years ago—that he hid the only correspondence her deceased fiancé sent before he was killed—and the concealment ultimately ruins their marriage.
CLEAN
A husband rediscovers a letter he never told his wife about, the only correspondence her deceased fiancé sent before he was killed, and the concealment ruins the marriage.
Obviously, this needs quite a bit more work, but let’s review: The start was to remove all proper names. From making those edits, it became clear that the next step was to cut the wife’s perspective, since the husband is the protagonist. He is the one with something to conceal, which is the element pushing the story forward, propelling him on his journey. Finally, a few additional cuts were made to tighten and focus. We’ll further discuss this finessing step later.
Another reason I like to cut out proper names first is that it gives me somewhere to start. When I’m stumped on how to fix a logline, I always appreciate having the ability to at least cut it down a bit in this fashion so I feel like I’ve made some progress. Here’s another example where chopping out names helped a great deal:
ORIGINAL
Miranda and her five brothers, Andrew, Kevin, Donny, Chuck, and Steven, all lived at the parsonage until that fateful day when their mother, Annie, died, thanks to her lover, Sam, which forced them all to figure out new lives for themselves.
While there’s a great deal of work to be done to the logline itself, check out the difference simply cutting out the names makes:
REDO
Miranda A GIRL and her five brothers, Andrew, Kevin, Donny, Chuck and Steven, all lived at the parsonage until that fateful day when their mother, Annie, died, thanks to her lover, Sam, which forced them all to figure out new lives for themselves.
CLEAN
A girl and her five brothers all lived at the parsonage until that fateful day when their mother died, thanks to her lover, which forced them all to figure out new lives for themselves.
Of course there is much more to be done, but just cutting out proper names gives us a much better base to work from. If nothing else, it’s a fresh way to start. I then tightened this logline a bit more and made it more active.
REDO
A girl and her five brothers are kicked out of the parsonage when their mother dies, forcing them into a harsh life on the streets.
Then I had to call the writer to find out further details of her story (which was still being written) so that I could replace “harsh life on the streets.” That is, of course, too general. Only then could I continue through the process.
REDO
A girl and her brothers are kicked out of the parsonage when their mother dies, forcing them into prostitution and pickpocketing to survive.
Note that I also removed “five,” because at this point, we really don’t care how many brothers she has, only that she has them.
REDO
A girl is evicted from her safe parsonage to the hell of prostitution and pickpocketing for survival.
You can see that I ultimately removed all reference to their mother dying: For the logline, it’s only important that they got evicted from the parsonage (because of its complete opposition to life on the streets), not why they got kicked out. I also removed her brothers, because the girl is actually the sole protagonist. While these unfortunate events happened to everyone in the family, it is her journey that is keeping the story in motion. I also decided not to specifically state what is at stake, because this is a case in which the risk is inherent in the circumstances; if she’s prostituting and pickpocketing to survive, then her life is what is at stake if she isn’t successful at those things. I went through quite a few extensively rewritten drafts of this particular logline, but what got me going at the very start was removing all the proper names so I’d have a decent foundation to work from.
As you might imagine, the exception to this rule is any instance where the name is integral to the story itself, like Queen Elizabeth or Adolf Hitler. Usually these exceptions come from memoirs and/or true stories, but they can also be intrinsic to fiction: Superman, for example. You could certainly start your logline with something like “A man with super-human abilities …” instead, but that’s quite a lot of words (at ten dollars per word) when just “Superman” will do. More important, however, the character of Superman is already highly recognizable, and therefore helps the story to stand out in a crowded marketplace. It also indicates a built-in audience—
two big pluses in marketing your material to the masses.
Cutting out names is step number one to cutting down your sentence into something focused and tight, but that’s only a beginning. Here are a few logline samples you can try, to practice this skill. After you’ve mastered them, we’ll move on to the next step in streamlining your logline.
Chapter 10 Sample Loglines
1.When Amanda secretly reveals to her boyfriend Josh that she’s a lesbian, he tells his brother Charles and the entire school, causing her best friends, Charity and Jessica, to help her get revenge by making him appear naked at graduation.
2.In 1943, Oliver begs his sister Diane for an intro to her hot best friend and his crush, Jean-Jean, but his pals Eddie and Irwin tell him that if he dates Jean-Jean, who’s an African American girl, his chances of becoming a draft pick will be ruined.
3.Asia Harlin and her friends Gigi, Iliana, and Tammy take the drugs Meryl Sanchez provides to keep thin for modeling, but when she is diagnosed by Dr. Moore with body dysmorphia, it’s a life-and-death struggle to get back to looking “normal.”
4.Antonia Snow, a librarian, receives a children’s book collection from an unknown Aunt Eleanor and discovers there’s magic inside the volumes which must be protected or Cinderella, Glinda the Good Witch, Hansel and Gretel, and all the other “imaginary characters” will die.
5.Tikka the Toucan and her zoo buddies, Martin the Monkey, Ferdinand the Frog, and Egrid the Elephant are accidentally swapped with animals destined for a wilderness camp and must find a way back to their safe enclosures before Mr. Kretch, their trainer, discovers they are missing.
Answers to Chapter 10 Samples
1.
ORIGINAL
When Amanda secretly reveals to her boyfriend Josh that she’s a lesbian, he tells his brother Charles and the entire school, causing her best friends, Charity and Jessica, to help her get revenge by making him appear naked at graduation.
Sell Your Story in Single Sentence Page 5
