What Is a Logline? Examples, Formula & Free Generator

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What is a logline?

A logline is one sentence that states the engine of a screenplay: who the story is about, what they want, what stands in the way, and what it costs them to fail. It is written in the present tense, as if the film already exists, and it is addressed to a reader who is deciding whether to spend two hours on your script.

You meet loglines in four places: at the top of a coverage report, in the first paragraph of a query letter, in the logline field on a contest entry form, and in the first thirty seconds of a pitch meeting. In all four the reader is asking the same question, and the logline has one job — give them a reason to ask what happens next.

Logline, tagline, premise, synopsis: the four things people mix up

Logline

One sentence describing the dramatic engine of the story: protagonist, goal, obstacle, stakes. Written by the writer, in the present tense, before the film exists.

Tagline

A marketing line printed on a poster or in a trailer. It sells mood and theme, rarely names a character, and has no goal or obstacle because it is not describing a story — it is selling a finished product.

Premise

The situation before it has a story attached. A premise sets up a world; a logline sets up a choice. Add a protagonist, a want and an opposing force to a premise and it becomes a logline.

Synopsis

One to two pages of prose covering the whole plot, ending included. The logline is the first line of the synopsis, not an abbreviated version of it.

The practical difference between a premise and a logline is causation. Compare the same idea at both stages:

PREMISE:  A hotel where every guest who checks out dies.

LOGLINE: When a grieving night porter finds his own name in tomorrow's
         checkout ledger, he must identify the guest doing the killing
         before his shift ends.

The second version adds everything the premise was missing: a protagonist with a personal reason to act, a goal with a physical object, a deadline, and an ironic stake. It also tells you what kind of film you are writing — a contained thriller, not an ensemble horror — which is exactly the information a producer wants on a first read.

The logline formula

Almost every working logline is assembled from the same five slots, filled in the same order. Learn the order and you can repair a broken logline by asking which slot is missing rather than rewriting the whole sentence.

When [INCITING INCIDENT], a [ADJECTIVE] [PROTAGONIST]
must [GOAL WITH A PHYSICAL OBJECT] before [DEADLINE],
or [WHAT THEY LOSE].

Character comedies and dramas often get more from a second shape, which leads with the contradiction inside the protagonist instead of the plot event:

A [ADJECTIVE] [PROTAGONIST] who [CONTRADICTION]
must [GOAL] after [INCITING INCIDENT],
which means [THE ONE THING THEY HAVE AVOIDED ALL THEIR LIFE].

Here is the same logline broken down by slot. Every line of the sentence is doing one visible job:

Assembled, it reads like this:

When his old crew is arrested for a wreck he caused, a disgraced
harbour pilot must clear their names against a shipping magnate who
needs a scapegoat, before the inquiry closes on Friday.

Two tests tell you whether the slots are filled honestly. First, say the logline out loud and check that all four questions have an answer: who wants what, who is stopping them, why now, and what it costs to lose. Second, check whether filling a slot required you to invent something that is not in the script. If it did, the hole is in the screenplay, not in the logline — that is the real value of writing this sentence early.

What makes a logline good

A good logline is one sentence, in the present tense, about a single protagonist pursuing one concrete goal against one opposing force with real power — and it contains a contradiction that makes the reader ask a question they cannot answer from the sentence alone.

• One protagonist, one want. Two protagonists means two films, and readers cannot hold two engines in one sentence.
• A want you can photograph. A goal is an event: win the race, reach the daughter, get the signature. Internal goals are results of the story, not the fuel — 'must learn to trust again' is a theme wearing a goal's clothes.
• An obstacle with intent. The strongest opposition is a person with a plan, because a plan escalates. A blizzard, a deadline or an illness can work, but it does not want anything, so it cannot surprise the reader.
• A reason it has to be now. Deadlines and ticking clocks convert a situation into a story. 'Before the season ends', 'before the audit', 'by sunrise' are all doing scheduling work that keeps tension in the sentence.
• Stakes stated or implied. The reader should be able to finish the sentence 'and if they fail, ...'.
• A contradiction. A pacifist locksmith. A divorce lawyer who still believes in marriage. A cartographer mapping a place that redraws itself. The contradiction is what makes a logline memorable rather than merely clear.
• Genre signalled through nouns. 'Spaceship', 'subpoena', 'cattle ranch', 'choir rehearsal' tell the reader what they are holding. 'Hilarious' and 'terrifying' tell them nothing, because they are claims about quality, not content.
• Active voice and present tense. The protagonist is the subject of the sentence and is doing the verb. Anything else hides who is driving the story.
• Specific nouns. 'The flooded market in Kottayam' beats 'a foreign city'. Precision reads as authority even to a reader who has never been there.

Two points are genuinely contested between working writers, so it is worth knowing the dominant practice rather than treating either as a rule.

Names. Some coverage readers prefer a descriptive tag instead of a name — 'a forensic accountant' rather than 'Meera Rao' — because the tag carries information the name does not. Others want the name, since it fixes the protagonist in the reader's mind and is essential when two characters share a role. The dominant practice in query and contest loglines is one name at most, introduced once, with a tag attached the first time. Never spend a second proper name in the same sentence.

Spoilers. The convention for written loglines — queries, contests, coverage, marketplaces — is to stop at the central conflict and not reveal how the story resolves. In a verbal pitch, a producer may ask for the ending and you should give it. In writing, the logline is a door, not a summary; the reader who wants the ending asks for the script.

Good loglines and bad loglines, side by side

Each pair below is one premise written twice: once the way it usually comes out of a first draft, once with the specific problem fixed. Read the third column as the note a good reader would give you — it is the only part worth imitating.

Notice what the strong versions have in common: they are longer than the weak ones but tighter, because every clause is carrying information. Length is not the problem. Vagueness is the problem, and vagueness is what makes a logline feel long.

Movie-style logline examples across genres

The loglines below were written for this page to show the form in different genres. They are inventions written as illustrations, not the loglines of any released film, and word counts are included so you can see how tightly a working logline is packed.

Thriller

A disgraced coast guard captain must guide a smuggler's boat through a hurricane to reach the daughter he lost custody of, unaware that the cargo below deck is the reason she is on the island.

Thirty-five words. The protagonist arrives with history, the goal has an object and a deadline in the weather, and the hidden obstacle makes the rescue itself the trap.

Romantic comedy

After a data breach exposes every love letter her late grandmother ever wrote, a cynical archivist must deliver all nine in person, including the one addressed to her own fiance.

Thirty words. The collision is between the protagonist's stated attitude ('cynical') and the task she is forced into, and the final clause is the comic turn the whole film hangs on.

Horror

When the relief keeper finds the lighthouse still lit but every ship it guided arrived empty, she must keep the lamp burning one more night to learn what the light is calling in.

Thirty-three words. Horror loglines usually hand the protagonist a rule and a finite amount of time to break it. The threat is the thing that is supposed to be safe.

Science fiction

The last human cartographer must finish one honest map of a colony that edits its own terrain, or the next ship of settlers will land on ground that has been rewritten to kill them.

Thirty-four words. The stakes arrive in an 'or' clause — a useful shape when the obstacle is a place rather than a person, because it converts the environment into a consequence.

Family adventure

Stranded on the wrong side of a mountain pass, a nine-year-old chess prodigy must trade her way home across four villages using nothing but the games she wins.

Twenty-eight words. The noun phrase carries the irony: a child whose only skill is a board game, in a world that runs on barter. Countable structure — four villages — gives the reader a shape for the second act.

Western

A retired marshal who put forty men in the ground must escort the last of them to a trial in the one town that will not let her through the gates.

Thirty-one words. 'Retired' and 'put forty men in the ground' contradict each other inside the first clause, and the obstacle is a whole town with a grudge rather than a single gunman.

Sports drama

Barred from the sport for a drug she never took, a marathon runner must win an unsanctioned desert race to expose the coach who sold her out, on a course he designed.

Thirty-two words. The last four words detonate the sentence: the one person who can clear her name has already prepared the ground she has to cross.

Heist comedy

Four retirees who have never broken a law must rob the pension fund that robbed them first, using a mobility scooter, a church choir and the world's most trusting bank manager.

Thirty-one words. Comedy loglines survive on specific absurd detail, and this one carries no deadline at all — in comedy, tone can do work the structure would otherwise have to earn. In a thriller, the missing deadline would be a real fault.

Six of these eight use 'must', and that is not a coincidence: 'must' is the shortest way to make a protagonist the driver of the sentence. It should be the dominant verb in your first draft, not because it is elegant but because it forces you to name what your character is doing about their problem.

Common logline mistakes

These are the faults that show up in almost every logline a reader sends back. Each one has a specific fix, and none of them is about writing prettier prose.

1. Writing a premise instead of a story. 'In a world where memories can be traded...' describes a setting. Add the person, the want and the opposition, or you have pitched a rulebook.
2. Opening with 'a story about' or 'we follow'. Both phrases pay for words that carry no information. 'We follow a nurse' is three words of throat-clearing before the sentence begins; make the nurse the grammatical subject instead.
3. Two protagonists. If your logline contains two people each with their own goal, you have written two loglines. Choose the one whose want creates the plot and describe the other as an obstacle or a stake.
4. A passive protagonist. 'Is forced to', 'finds himself', 'gets drawn into' — all of them hide the choice the story is about. Ask what the character actively does about their problem and make that the verb.
5. No obstacle, or an obstacle with no plan. A vague threat cannot escalate, so the sentence has no second half. Give the opposition an intention and at least one thing they are willing to do.
6. Theme instead of event. 'A meditation on grief' tells the reader what the film means, not what happens in it. Theme is the argument the story makes; it belongs in the script, not the pitch.
7. Adjectives standing in for genre. 'A hilarious, heartwarming, edge-of-your-seat ride' is four claims and zero content. Naming a pension fund, a mobility scooter and a church choir is what actually says comedy.
8. The rhetorical question. 'Will she find the truth before it is too late?' asks the reader to do the writer's work, and it reveals no goal. Answer the question inside the sentence.
9. Vagueness dressed as mystery. 'A man must confront his past' cannot be pictured, so it cannot be wanted. Replace the abstraction with the specific thing in the past and the specific thing he has to do now.
10. Trying to include the second act. Loglines that summarise the plot through the midpoint read like synopses. Keep the inciting incident and the central conflict; leave the turns for the script.

How long should a logline be?

Twenty-five to fifty words, in a single sentence, printed across one to three lines. Most loglines that get a script requested land between thirty and forty words, which is roughly the amount of story a reader can absorb in one breath.

The same invented story at three lengths shows where the weight is:

11 words — too thin to sell
A night porter must stop a hotel that kills its guests.

28 words — the working range
A grieving night porter finds his own name in tomorrow's checkout
ledger and must identify the guest doing the killing before his
shift ends, or he is next.

66 words — synopsis creep
Working the desk of a hotel where every guest who checks out dies,
a grieving night porter has learned not to ask questions, until the
ledger for tomorrow shows his own name and the only way to break the
pattern is to identify a murderer among the guests he has already
served, a search that will end either in an arrest or in his own
checkout.

The middle version is the logline: it names the protagonist, the inciting discovery, the goal, the obstacle and the deadline, and it stops. The long version has not added information that helps a reader decide — it has added rhythm, which is the business of the script.

Two habits keep you inside the range. Read the sentence aloud and count the commas; more than two usually means a clause has to go. Then check every adjective: if it is describing quality rather than content, cut it and the sentence will lose nothing.

One format note: in development documents, slates and internal pitch lists, loglines are conventionally written with the title first, as TITLE: logline. In a query letter the title sits on its own line and the logline follows as its own paragraph. Do not run the two together in a letter; the reader is looking for both at a glance.

Frequently asked questions

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