While 25 words is ideal for a ‘hooky’ logline, our research found that the most effective ‘story’ loglines range in word count from 25 to … 55. On this site we honour both types of loglines, but we focus primarily on the longer versions as they work harder as a test of your story. Below are the top reviewers’ most frequent notes, and what industry pros focus on. Check the examples and fix your logline before you post.
6 Specificity
Name concrete things, not categories or stock phrases.
Specific nouns and actions make a premise feel like one particular story rather than a category of story. "A debt collector" lands where "a professional" does not, and marketing filler like "chaos ensues" tells a reader nothing they could not have guessed.
Test: Replace every category with the concrete thing it stands for, and cut any beat that would happen in most stories anyway.
What the Medic checks, in order of importance:
- Nouns and actions name a concrete, specific detail rather than a category (e.g. "a debt collector", not "a professional").
- The logline states actual story beats, not marketing-style commonplaces (e.g. "chaos ensues", "rising to the occasion").
- No element describes something that happens in most dramatic stories by default, and is therefore self-evident and non-specific.
Seen in 663 real reviews
One real review where a top reviewer raised this exact note:
1 Well-defined POV
Follow one protagonist, and give them one detail that matters.
One sentence holds one story, told from one point of view. Competing threads confuse readers about what the story actually is — and a generic label ("a woman", "a cop") wastes the one chance you have to make the lead particular, so the detail you choose should say something about the story that follows, not just about the character.
Test: Choose the primary throughline, give its protagonist one telling detail, and check that detail earns its place in the story, not just on the page.
What the Medic checks, in order of importance:
- The logline follows a single protagonist's perspective, even if the underlying story has two.
- That protagonist is described with a specific, character-defining detail, not a generic label.
- The detail given is relevant to the story that follows, not specificity for its own sake.
Seen in 324 real reviews
2 Clear, difficult goal
The ending is picturable — and worth a whole film.
Without a clear goal there is no story engine. Readers need to picture the ending the protagonist is driving towards, and that ending has to be big enough to justify two hours.
Test: State what the protagonist wants, and ask whether you can picture them getting it.
What the Medic checks, in order of importance:
- The ending is anticipated and picturable, not left open.
- The goal is substantial enough to be worth pursuing, and big enough to justify a film.
- Only where the logline uses a midpoint-reversal structure: it is the final goal, not just the first-half goal, that is anticipated.