Loglining

I'm still learning to blog. It's a hard format. Just about the only thing that works consistently is a concrete example. So here goes.

I've blogged before about the script that is presently kicking my ass. The main character is more or less me as a teenager. I've found a very strong mediation and genre choice so I'm sufficiently distanced from the material to actually let me subconscious get involved. I'm not going to describe it too directly, but the basic set up is a shy 15-year-old in a stand off with the U.S. Army.

For a fresh reader, what's appealing about this set up is the apparent mismatch. What's intriguing to a fresh reader is how I might make that mismatch work. What's not appealing is that I've set my main character against the U.S. Army in a script targeted at a mass market. The army is supposed to be the good guys.

How do I think about this issue? Logline.

For a long time I tried finessing small details, trying to show how the kid defending his fantasy world is in the right, and the army is in the wrong (but it's still okay for the guy buying the popcorn). I thought about changing the market, but that would require making it a much lower budget film. Couldn't make that work.

Meanwhile, the main issue for me as a writer was that the main character, who's supposed to be a screwed up, closeted, crypto-Christian adolescent who spends his days drawing pictures, was actually turning all Spielberg on me. Boring. Standard. Too easy.

Loglining (did I just create a verb?) helped me figure out the sympathy issue. The U.S. Army can open up the big guns, even on a 15-year-old, if they're defending us. All I have to do to make this set up work: the kid's playing offense, not defense. How do I keep him sympathetic? I don't want to describe my script online. It's enough to say that no one actually controls their fantasy world.

Maybe loglining is just as important as the logline itself. I've written at least fifty loglines for this script. I'll write fifty more before I'm done. I have no doubt it will teach me something about the script every time.

Logline and Story

Back when I was still a wee scriptwrangler, I bristled at loglines. What's the point of trying to sell your script to someone too lazy to read it? I knew that my work was special and brilliant, and the only way they'd see that was to read the script itself. Then they'd see brilliance and complexity and all that jazz. But a logline -- it's like trying to capture an ocean in a teacup. Yup, I was full of it.

I paid for this, of course. Truth is I couldn't really explain most of my stuff even to my friends. It meant a lot to me. Some readers could pick out stuff they liked. But mostly they asked difficult questions I didn't have answers for. That's the thing about loglines. Sooner or later you're going to have to come up with one, even if it's just to stop your aunt from stumbling onto your story problems over Thanksgiving turkey.

Loglines are simple to create but endlessly difficult to perfect. To reiterate, a reader wants to see:

The main character.
The supporting character and opponent, where applicable.
The main on-screen action.
The genre.
The hook. The hook is basically the main selling point of your script -- what makes it unique.

Try it. Combining all these elements almost always leads to a skewed version of your story. I have a friend writing a story on the background of a wedding, and the wedding keeps pushing itself forward, for example. Or you can't balance the love story against the mob story. Or, well, it sounds like something we've already seen.

There are two valuable lessons here. First, the elements of a script rarely line up the way you expect. LISTEN to that. Say you're writing a script set in your hometown. But in the logline, suddenly it looks like it's ABOUT your hometown. Listen to that, because that may be how your audience will see it.

The second lesson is that the only way to make it compelling and clear is to think VISUALLY. What does the audience see on screen? Let's go back to "Walk the Line", the Johnny Cash script. It would be simple to say, "life of Johnny Cash." But the story starts when he isn't watching his older brother, who dies in a horrific saw accident. That guilt follows him through the rest of his life, and brings focus to a story or drug and alcohol problems, endless road shows, etc. The writer found the one moment that could drive all that.

In the wake of his brother's accidental death, a young man's struggle to find warmth and love drives him to become the greatest outlaw singer of all time -- Johnny Cash.

Now we know HOW the writer is attacking the story. (And we know what the writer is selling.)
Another writer might take a very different strategy on the same material. Usually, that strategy plays out in the opening actions. A story about what a great American Johnny Cash is might start with his time in the army, or a more idyllic vision of his rural childhood. An expose would start with him cheating on his wife AND his girlfriend, and destroying his own reputation on stage.

Think concrete. Think in terms of combining. And let that one event that typifies your script take shape on the page. Define your strategy in a single line. And then? Then you take that idea, and put it in your script, where it was meant to be all along.

More soon..

And Now for Something Useful

Loglines. What are they for? What's the point? What the hell is a logline? These are questions I hear all the time. I'm going to make a series of posts on loglines here. Try to break it down and demystify for the reader.

A logline, at its best, is a pithy, memorable sentence that tells the reader what the main character is like, what the main action is, the genre of the film, and the hook (what makes your script unique). It's very different from a tagline, which is the intriguing sentence at the bottom of the one-sheet (which is a movie poster). A logline might read:

A wizened old fisherman, an arrogant scientist and an earthy sheriff must protect a beachfront town after a giant shark starts feasting on its residents.

A tagline might read:

Just when you though it was safe to go back in the water..

The goal of both is to get the reader interested in the story. But the audiences are quite different. Looking at how a studio reader will typically approach a logline is a clue to how you might construct yours. A good way to learn about this is to find calls for queries. If you've ever read these, you know the frustration.

We're looking for a script involving motorcycles with a strong African-American female lead for a name actress. Budget $1-2M.

Studio looking for psychological style horror scripts (no zombies, please) similar to "Fracture" but without the law element.

Independent studio looking for character drama centering on women's relationships that can be shot in a Victorian. Do not send script unless it is one-location set in a Victorian. We aren't interested in scripts that can be "easily adapted" to a Victorian.

The calls seem way too specific for anyone's good. Don't they just want the best script they can find? No, I'm afraid they don't. They want to make the movie they can make. The reason that the first studio wants motorcycles and a black female lead is probably due to where the money comes from. They have a connection to Halle Berry, perhaps -- and getting her will secure X amount of money. They have a whiff of interest in a motorcycle movie from Halle, or the studio boss, or an investor.

Does your logline answer these questions? At this beginning stage, all a reader really wants is a ballpark sense of your script -- whether it fits his needs or not. Your main characters are a selling point. Your hook is a selling point. Your genre is a selling point. This is where you start to sell them.

Most of that selling means getting the logline worked into a single, well-thought-out idea. But more on that next time.