How to Write a Great Logline….and stopping once you’ve found it.
Well, if you’re read my previous post you know that I was heading on over to Blake Snyders website to post this logline:
After discovering a cover-up, a detached auditor becomes the unwilling test subject for an experiment that has him retrace Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hades, where he must struggle between saving the very world he loathes or letting all Hell break lose.
I’ve gotten a few replies on the post (which you can find here) and I think I’ve gotten something I can work with. What to hear it? Of course you do, that’s why you’ve come here.
When a disillusioned auditor unearths a cover-up at a military research facility, he is forced to participate as the next test subject in an experiment that propels him into the nine circles of Hell… unaware his return could lead to the freeing of an evil older then the world itself.
It’s about the same length of my original logline but I think it’s a lot better. The protagonist is better described…using the word ‘disillusioned’ which I think better conveys his apathy and perhaps a little bit of disgust with the world around him.
I’ve also added more information about the forces he’s up against, which in this case is an ancient evil and the military research team that started the whole thing.
One of the replies at the forum did mention Black Snyder’s Double Mumbo Jumbo rule and that I was breaking it. For those not familiar with the rule, it basically states that audiences will accept one piece of magic in a script but not two. In my case, I was mixing the supernatural realm of Hell with the more concrete idea of technology capable of sending someone there.
It’s something I wasn’t even thinking of when I was writing the script and I can see the truth to this rule. That’s not to say that movies that break the rule can’t be successful, but that you’ve got to be very careful in laying these things out.
Just as an aside, Spider-Man is used as an example of this rule being broken which I’m not sure I agree with. The rule is invoked because two different people (Spider-Man and the Green Goblin) got superpowers from two different methods (radiation and chemicals). The reason I don’t agree that this is Double Mumbo Jumbo is that the whole universe that Spider-Man inhabits, and indeed all superhero movies, is a world where people can gain superpowers at all. Some by radiation, some by alien technology, some by supernatural means. I think if Spider-Man failed in this regard it was that it didn’t establish this over-arching rule to begin with. Perhaps if the movie made mention of other superheros earlier on?
Ok..back to my own logline journey. I don’t want to break the DMJ rule, but I think what I have now works and I’ll tell you why. In my script, the supernatural realm will be given a scientific explanation for it’s existence. I will not use some scientific experiment, governed by the laws of nature, to propel the protagonist into a realm where the laws of nature do not apply. By cloaking Hell in a pseudo-scientific cloak, I believe the reader will accept Hell as simply an extension of our own universe that science has yet to discover.
Am I making sense? I hope so, though I am very tired:)
I’ve read that the best protagonist for a story is the one that has to take the longest journey to reach the end. When I read that last sentence, the first thing that comes to mind is the television show Seinfeld. In pretty much every episode, the whole thing could be resolved in the first couple minutes if any of the main characters were mature, emotionally responsible adults. They aren’t..and so they inevitably make some minor mistake or situation a hundred times worse by their immature attempts to avoid dealing with it.
I think this is what I need to make sure is the case with my own logline. If the end of the script results in the protagonist having to decide whether to sacrifice himself to save countless others, the best person to have to make that choice is someone who is completely wrapped up in their own pain/life/world and could care less about everyone else.
This is something I have to focus on as I continue. For now though, I will post the logline I’ve got (with the help of the fine posters over at Blake Snyder’s forum) on my monitor and move on to the next step….The Beat Sheet!
June 10, 2008 at 8:35 am
I’m 100% confident in the direction you’re going. Whether the DMJ rule was going to be a legitimate problem in your screenplay or not, I think you arrived at stronger storytelling because it was brought up.