Tangled loglines

I am updating the loglines for my plays. This is a task that very few script writers enjoy, and even fewer do well. I am not among the few.

Loglines started out as a little summary for busy film executives. They were pasted along the edge of the bound manuscript and the executive--always with many more scripts submitted than time or money to produce them--could browse a stack of scripts and grab the one with most enticing logline.

a logline tries to tell you, Mr Short Attention Span, what this complex, rich tale that the screenwriter has slaved over for months--the screenwriter's baby--is "about". It tries to tell you before your eyes flick away in search of something more interesting.

So there's a real art to writing a logline. Richard Polito imagined a logline gone bad for The Wizard of Oz:

Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to do it again.

As you can see, there's even artistry in doing it badly :). Patrick Kirkland says it's an art the scriptwriter has to master unless he or she is relying entirely on luck to get produced, "Because if you can’t get people on your side in one sentence, then you’re not going to get them in a hundred pages."

Kirkland provides examples of loglines that would encourage him to look at the actual, you know, script, like this one for Titanic:

A young man and woman from different social classes fall in love aboard the ill-fated voyage of the Titanic.

You have to tell enough, but at the same time you can't tell too much. You don't have time in maybe 25 words; and anyhow if you tell the producer how it comes out, he won't have an itch to find out how it comes out by reading the damn script.

I am thinking about loglines because I have added a page to this blog listing some of my recent plays. These are all (mercifully) short plays. If one of these loglines makes you say, "So what happens?" click the link to see the first page of the script. 

And if that makes you say, "But what happens next?", and if you are connected with a theatre, contact me and I'll send you the whole thing. I may even hand-deliver it.