Loglines are the haiku of popular fiction and perhaps the most essential tool a writer needs at the beginning of a new story.
Planning is not the most sexy part of writing, but try wrangling a 250 page novel without it. What planning usually requires is an outline of the entire plot. But even a outline needs to be set on a path, and that's where the logline, Holllywood's version of the elevator pitch, comes in. It's a summation of your book in 1 - 2 sentences.
Writing loglines for existing books and movies is a good exercise, but you really start learning when you do it for one of your own stories early in the writing process.
One of my favorite loglines, reverse engineered from a movie is for Pixar's Finding Nemo. It's easy because the engine of the story, the situation that drives the action, is beautifully constructed.
FINDNG NEMO: A father loses his entire family except for one child and becomes so over-protective of his remaing son that he drives him to do the very thing he's trying to protect him from.
When working as a development executive, this was a great exercise for me and the writer(s) to use. Even after a synopsis is written there are always things not fully worked out or in some way missing the mark. So you know you have a problem but you don't know quite what it is or how to fix it. Entire scripts are written when a problem that is known early on is allowed to live on hidden in a full draft. A logline pares everything down to essentials. If you can't find a strong story core in 1 - 2 sentences things won't get better with pages and pages of detail.
So, back to Nemo. The story engine is smart because the parenting mission of the dad, Marlin, is the worst choice he can make, however well-intentioned. It's beautifully and plausibly connected to his shame and guilt (unfounded) that he was unable to save his wife and many babies from a shark attack in the first five mintues of the movie. Marlin's fear make a happy resolution possible, so he must learn to trust a lessong he learns from Dory his companion on the quest.
As long as the screenwriters stick to the logline they have a map to the very end of the story. Loglines are not just economical story soundbites. A logline is great good when it presents a clear problem that is not easily solved. A logline is great when the unsolvable problem is connected to the core of a character, the thing that makes them tick.
The Hunger Games logline would be something like:
When an impoverished teen huntress is forced to kill in government established gladatorial games between teens, she is pitted against a boy who has loved her from afar.
Not bad, but the story engine is not as strong as Nemo. That's because the story is not driven by the protagonist's psychology as much as by circumstance. However, the plotting and situation is very strong and so the story still works. The relationship between Katniss and Peeta is a strong story engine, but is not the main theme of the story.
Writing loglines for existing books and movies is a good exercise, but you really start learning when you do it for one of your own stories early in the writing process. I have written as many as 20 loglines for an idea over several days trying to find the core of a story. Throughout the writing process I go back to a logline type analysis as the story shifts in the writing and believe me, it always changes. Frequently I write developmental notes as though I was working with a writer rather than myself. These are generally based on or informed by the logline. Usually it's the underlying emotional complexity that a logline can't detail that is covered in the notes. Very few loglines are perfect and so while it's your story compass and can point you North, the writing is still a long hike with dead ends, steep climbs and missed paths. That's why analytical tools like outlines, loglines and objective notes about the story are essential throughout the process.
Deep in the writing process when I get stuck for an idea, I analyze. Better than a nap. I tend to describe character emotions and behavior to get unstuck. We've all heard that character is king, and it is. Typically, I keep asking why a character is behaving in a particular way, basically psychoanalysis without Freud. I analyze and write it down without censoring myself. Sometimes I ask myself a question and answer it over and over through story analysis. Then I go back and find the best observations that are worth exploring. Like a logline, some of these succinct ideas yield story nuggets or small breakthroughs simply by rewording the observation.
Practicing loglines is fun and really exercises the story muscles. And if you want a different take on story analysis look for Judith Weston's classic work Directing Actors and The Film Director's Intuition: Script Analysis and Rehearsal techniques. These books are written for directors and screenwriters, but Judith's rigourous approach has almost as much value for novelists.
תגובות