Logline

A logline is a single sentence stating what a story is about — who wants what, what stands in the way, and what makes it urgent — used to pitch a script or to test whether the story holds together.

Loglines are hard to write whole and straightforward to assemble in parts. One standard breakdown gives four: the need, the desire, the inciting incident, and the antagonist. A longer version used in fiction teaching, sometimes shortened to SPOOC, adds the ending: situation (the backdrop), protagonist, objective (what they are after), opponent, climax.

Either way the value is diagnostic rather than promotional. If you cannot name the opponent, the story probably does not have one. If the objective changes halfway through the sentence, the throughline probably changes halfway through the book. Writers routinely discover a structural problem while trying to compress it, which is the argument for writing the logline at the outline stage rather than after the draft.

A logline is not a blurb. It does not withhold, tease or ask a rhetorical question — it states. And it is not the same as the pitch paragraph in a query letter, though a good logline usually becomes that paragraph's first line.

The workable length is one sentence. If yours needs a second, it is usually because the story has two protagonists, or because the first sentence has not committed to what the character wants.