The 3 Essential Elements of a Great Logline

A 3-lesson mini-course from Erik Bork

Part of his 35-lesson full course THE IDEA:

The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage, or Fiction

Learn more here

A great logline focuses on a problem and a sense of active mission to resolve it for a
main character who is easy for an audience to identify with. Its three essential
elements are:

1. High life stakes for people the audience cares about.

2. A clear rootable outcome that will be very difficult to reach.
3. A fun-to-watch emotional entertainment experience.

Of course, the underlying story idea needs to have these elements for a logline to be
able to summarize them honestly. Thus, most challenges with creating such a logline
stem from larger issues with the story idea itself.

LESSON 1

“Stakes” – make sure they’re big enough and clear in the logline.

8 types of story problems

1. “Someone or something is trying to kill me (or us).” (Apollo 13, Saving Private
Ryan)

2. “Someone or something is trying to destroy my life as I know it.” (Bridesmaids,

Wayne’s World)

3. “I have a once-in-a-lifetime but incredibly difficult opportunity to rise up and

be somebody, in a big way, that could forever change my sense of self.”
(Working Girl, The King’s Speech)
 4. “I have to rescue someone from a potentially terrible fate.” (Silence of the
Lambs, Erin Brockovich)

5. “I have to reach a distant and life-changing “prize,” which seems nearly

impossible to do.” (The Sting, Parasite)

6. “I have to defeat powerful ‘bad guys’ who have hurt and/or are threatening
innocents.” (Black Panther, Spotlight)

7. “I have to escape a terrible situation, which prevents me from living freely and
happily.” (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Get Out)

8. “I have to win over and/or hang on to a desired life partner, with whom I have
a chance at my best life. But something is hugely in the way of that.”
(Brokeback Mountain, Wedding Crashers)

LESSON 2

Suggest a clear “rootable outcome” for the audience, where its opposite – the
“negative stakes” – are looming. Because the forces/people opposing the main
character are more powerful than they are, and “punch back” at the main character so
that things build and complicate for them.

Focus on the difficulty!

LESSON 3

Suggest the fun/escapist emotional entertainment experience by implying or stating a

genre that your concept will clearly fulfill – as well as genre “modifiers” and your
unique spin on the genre.

6 basic genres

1. Horror
2. Thriller
3. Action-Adventure
4. Mystery
5. Comedy
 6. Drama

11 Elements to add to drama

1. Life and death stakes (Boyz n the Hood, Schindler’s List)

2. Comedy (Rain Man, Almost Famous)
3. Rich, beautiful, possibly famous people (Citizen Kane, A Star is Born)
4. High-spectacle period settings (The King’s Speech, Lawrence of Arabia)
5. Major betrayals, backstabbing, hidden agendas (The Sting, The Social Network)
6. Music as an integral element (The Sound of Music, Bohemian Rhapsody)
7. Entertaining-to-watch activities with lots of spectacle, conflict, emotion ( The
Wizard of Oz, Rocky)
8. Major amounts of sex, romance, and conflicts/rivalries over same ( Twilight,
Boogie Nights)
9. Outrageous people (A Beautiful Mind, Wall Street)
10. Intriguing foreign worlds (The Favourite, Casablanca)
11. Inspiring depictions of love shining through, even something spiritual (Good
Will Hunting, Field of Dreams)

50 genre modifiers (added to the 6 basic genres, can mix and match)

1. African-American
2. Alien
3. Animal
4. Animated
5. Arts/Entertainment
6. Business
7. College
8. Creature
9. Detective
10. Domestic
11. Drugs
12. Ensemble
13. Family
14. Fantasy
15. Friendship
16. Gangster
17. Ghost
18. Holiday
19. Immigrant
20. Kids
 21. LGBTQ+
22. Legal
23. Media/Publishing
24. Medical
25. Mental health
26. Mentor
27. Musical
28. Period
29. Police
30. Political
31. Prostitution
32. Road
33. Romantic
34. Science
35. Sci-fi
36. Serial killer
37. Sexual
38. Space
39. Spoof
40. Sports
41. Spy
42. Superhero
43. Supernatural
44. Teen
45. True Story
46. Vampire
47. War
48. Western
49. Witchcraft
50. Zombie

LESSON 4 – BONUS LESSON

The core of a good logline: A difficult, high-stakes problem/goal the main character is
actively focused on – a central mission powering the story that sounds entertaining to
watch.

And remember: a logline is not a “teasing tagline” for the audience like you’d see in
TV Guide or the synopsis of a movie on a streaming service. It’s a clear explanation
of your story concept to film industry professionals, in a short form.
10 movie examples with “bad and good” loglines

Erin Brockovich

NO: After a California utility company negligently poison the water supply of a small
town, which starts sickening the residents there, a law firm takes up their cause in a
class action suit.

YES: A bold and brassy single mother with minimal job prospects or education
convinces a lawyer to support her pursuing an unlikely class action investigation
against a powerful utility company that might be responsible for many deaths and
illnesses in a small California town.

The Sting

NO: A Chicago crime boss gets sucked into a scheme by two petty grifters promising
to make him a lot of money through illegal horse wagering.

YES: Two frustrated low-level grifters decide to partner in a complicated and risky
“long con” against the most powerful and violent mobster in town, hoping to take his
money without him knowing the truth, while dodging corrupt local cops and the FBI
in the process.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

NO: A group of electronics store employees try to get their co-worker laid when they
learn he’s still a virgin at 40, which leads to a series of hilarious situations.

YES: When a boyishly innocent 40-year-old’s co-workers learn he’s a virgin, he’s
subjected to their hands-on advice and assistance in trying to fix that, just as he meets
a woman who could be the one and who doesn’t know his “terrible secret” – which
he fears will ruin his chances with her.

Saving Private Ryan

NO: When several brothers are killed on the same day in World War 2, the U.S.
government decides to pull their only surviving brother out of action.
YES: A small squad of soldiers who were part of the D-day invasion are tasked with
moving deep behind enemy lines to try to find and bring home a soldier because all of
his brothers were just killed in action.

The Godfather

NO: A mob family fights off a number of threats from rivals during a protracted war
in which several family members are killed, and some have to take on new roles.

YES: The youngest son of a mafia boss – a war hero with plans to steer clear of a
criminal lifestyle – steps up when his father is attacked, and tries to fight back against
the rival mob families trying to destroy them.

Spotlight

NO: The Catholic Church in Boston transfers and hides a number of pedophile
priests to avoid a scandal which threatens to envelop the city when a newspaper starts
sniffing around.

YES: A team of reporters for the Boston Globe investigate and try to break the first
significant stories about claims of sexual abuse by priests, in a city and at a time where
the Catholic Church is an extremely powerful and trusted institution.

Get Out

NO: The rich older residents of a white community scheme to take over the bodies of
young healthy black people and have their eye on a new target who is brought in by
one of their daughters, who has done this many times before.

YES: An African-American man warily accepts an invitation to his white girlfriend’s

parents’ house, where he encounters bizarre behavior by the few black people he
meets there, and tries to avoid getting trapped in a weird situation where he is the
target of something sinister.

Bridesmaids

NO: A group of bridesmaids get into crazy situations as they prepare for a wedding of
their friend, where everything seems to go wrong.

YES: A down-on-her-luck single woman whose most important relationship is with

her best friend learns the friend is getting married and has a new female friend who is
her superior in every way, launching her on a mission to try to defeat this woman and
be successful as her friend’s maid of honor.

Coming to America

NO: Eddie Murphy plays a variety of characters in this comedy about a Queens
neighborhood where nobody knows that an African prince is living among them.

YES: An African prince, dissatisfied with the submissive wife candidates in his home
country, travels to Queens, New York where he starts an undercover life as a lowly
fast food worker in order to try to woo the more independent woman whose father is
the owner.

Star Wars: A New Hope

NO: A variety of bizarre creatures, androids and humans team up and go on a journey
to fight Darth Vader and the rest of the empire aboard the Death Star.

YES: A farm boy is invited by an eccentric local man to join him on a mission to try
to rescue a princess from the evil galactic empire who the boy’s father died fighting
against – and which is testing a super-weapon that destroys planets.

Learn more about the full 35-lesson course THE IDEA: The Seven Elements of a
Viable Story for Screen, Stage, or Fiction by clicking here.

Space is limited and there is a deadline for enrollment, so check it out now!