- WHAT
- Some call it the Inciting Incident, or the Call To Adventure. In any case, it should be a major event happening to the main character. This is critically important, because it provides the motivation of the main character’s actions throughout the story. In a way, this is the reason why the story happens in the first place! It better be something significant in the life of your character.
- HOW
- Loglines can take many shapes, but to facilitate the process and to help you understand the components better, we ask you to write this event as a proper sentence. For Jaws, it could be “A shark kills a tourist.” For Inception, it could be “A business man offers him to see his children again.” In this last example, ‘him’ refers back to the main character you named in the previous step. Sometimes it also works for TV shows. For Breaking Bad, you can say the event is “he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.”
- WHAT
DON’T FORGET
Whatever you write now doesn’t have to be perfect.
You can play around with it later, and edit the logline generator’s outcome.
These notes complement the Logline Generator, developed in partnership with Story Architect.
Our thanks also go to Peter Boot, who coded the very first Logline Generator.
When drafting your logline using the Logline Generator, click the relevant section for more info on each.