LOGLINE VS SYNOPSIS PROFESSIONAL
It is used as a tool on posters and advertisements and is always written by the marketing staff of the producing studio, or a professional copywriter from an ad agency.Īnother way to think of taglines is as the slogan for a film. A tagline is short (three to ten words) and can be multiple sentences. While a logline is a selling tool for your screenplay, it is not a selling tool for the film. What would happen if you were a young boy tired of being small who wanted to be big and your wish came true?Īfter making a wish at a fortune teller machine, a young boy becomes a grown man overnight and must cope with finding a place to live, finding a job, and adult relationships, with only the help of his ten-year-old friend. Did I mention never? This is not a logline: Never, ever, write a rhetorical question as part of your logline. The art of writing an effective query letter can be found in ScreenCraft's Writing the Perfect Query Letter for Your Scripts, but you must know that your logline will be the spine of this letter so you had better learn to write a strong one. After you introduce yourself - your experience and awards, if any - the next paragraph should be your logline.
When you have an opportunity to communicate with a producer through a query letter, brevity is key. Your logline can be the difference between an Oscar or living on Oscar Mayer for the rest of your life. Thirty-five words to capture their attention.
Loglines can be used to pitch your screenplay to producers and agents within a query letter. Hopefully, after reading your logline, the reader is intrigued and excited to read more that’s the whole point! A strong logline should tell the reader what the inciting event is that sets up the story and what the protagonist has to do to succeed (shark is eating swimmers and the police chief has to stop it). (26 words)Īn effective logline establishes the protagonist (the police chief), antagonist (the shark and the greedy town council), the location (open water and beach) and the genre (horror/thriller). (29 words)Ī lawyer who loses his ability to lie for 24 hours clashes with his ex-wife for the affection of their son and the healing of their family. (35 words)Ī Parisian rat teams up with a wannabe chef with no talent to battle convention and the critics to prove that anyone can cook and open their own restaurant.
Can you name these films? ( Answers can be found the end of the post)Ī police chief with a phobia of open water battles a gigantic shark with an appetite for swimmers and boat captains, in spite of a greedy town council who demands that the beach stay open. Notice how you understand immediately what the story is. Here are effective examples of loglines from films you may recognize. The logline should not be editorial as in, “My heartwarming tale of two kittens searching for their mommy will be an entertaining and funny film for audiences of all ages.” Rather, it needs to illustrate the story and entice the reader. The focus of this post is to establish the difference between a logline, tagline and synopsis so that you can find greater success with your writing.Ī logline is a one-sentence outline of your film using only 35-45 words.
LOGLINE VS SYNOPSIS FREE
If you do, please feel free to stop reading now.
LOGLINE VS SYNOPSIS HOW TO
If you do not know what a logline is - or how to write one - you could find yourself alone with a lot of scripts that are never read. Most, if not all, screenwriting contests now require writers to submit a logline with their script and contests specifically for loglines have popped up. So many writers neither understand the importance of a logline, nor take the time to learn how to effectively write one. For more instruction on how to write loglines along with hundreds of examples, check out Douglas King’s book, “Loglines: the Long and Short of Writing a Strong Logline” available on Amazon! You can also read daily loglines on King’s blog and is imperative for today’s screenwriter to understand the difference between a logline, tagline, and synopsis and to be able to write an effective logline that will ensure that their spec screenplay sees the light of day and not the darkness of the filing cabinet or the digital dustbin of a hard drive. Douglas King has been writing professionally for 25 years in film, television and print.