How to Write a Logline: Idea, Premise and a 4-Part Template

0:04Before structure, before scenes, you need to know what your story is, and you should be able to say it in one sentence. That sentence is the logline, and it's the most useful sentence you'll ever write.

0:19It starts with an idea. An idea is a spark. An image, a feeling, a what -if. Mine was an image. A small ferry at night, a lamp swinging in the rain, and someone running down the jetty too late. It's beautiful, but it's not a story yet.

0:38The premise turns the idea into a situation with a conflict. What if a ferryman who never takes passengers after midnight broke his rule for one stranger? And what if that stranger wasn't a stranger at all? Now there's a character, a choice, and a question.

0:57The logline is the premise, written like a promise to the audience. A useful template has four parts. A protagonist, with a detail that makes them specific. An inciting incident, the event that starts the story. A goal or a decision. And the stakes, or the twist, that makes it unique.

1:18Here's ours. A lonely ferryman who never takes passengers after midnight breaks his rule for a soaked young woman. And halfway across the lake, she knows things no stranger could know. Protagonist, a lonely ferryman. Incident, a young woman after midnight. Decision, he breaks his rule. Twist, she knows things no stranger could know.

1:43Test your logline with three questions. Can I see it? A logline should create an image in the listener's mind. Is there a conflict? Someone wants something, and something stands in the way. And is there irony? A twist? Something unexpected? A ferryman who refuses passengers, forced to take the one passenger who matters most?

2:07Write ten loglines, not one. The first one is usually the most obvious. By the sixth or seventh, you start to find your story. In section four, we'll use the AI assistant to explore loglines even faster.

2:22Here are a few loglines in other genres, so you can hear the pattern. A thriller. A night nurse discovers that the patient she's been caring for for months is the man who killed her brother, and he's about to wake up. A comedy? A wedding planner, who has never been in love, must organise the wedding of her ex, and he wants her as the maid of honour. A horror short? A little girl's imaginary friend starts leaving real footprints in the snow. Protagonist. Incident. Decision. Twist. In one breath each.

2:57And the most common mistakes? Too vague. A story about love and loss. That's a theme, not a logline. Too long. If you need a second sentence, the story isn't clear yet. And no conflict. A ferryman crosses a lake at night. Beautiful, but nothing is at stake until someone runs down the jetty.

3:17Where does it go in ScreenWeaver? Write under your title block in the first outline line. It's the sentence that sits above your whole story and the first thing a collaborator reads when they open the project.

3:29Your exercise? Write ten loglines for your idea using the template in the resources, test them with the three questions, and keep the best one in your first outline line. Next, what is an outline, and why do professionals never write without one? What is an outline?