Script

Logline

What is logline in film production?

A logline is a one- or two-sentence summary of a screenplay that names the protagonist, what they want, and what stands in the way. It is the first thing a producer, agent or competition reader sees, and it has to make them want to read the script before they have read a page of it.

A working logline usually carries four things: a specific protagonist (not just "a man"), the inciting incident, the goal, and the stakes or obstacle. Irony helps — the trait that makes the hero the worst person for this problem.

Writers often draft the logline before the script, because a story that cannot be summarised in two sentences frequently has a structural problem the logline exposes early.

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Reviewed 2026-10-09

Related terms

Treatment: A treatment is a prose summary of a film or episode, written in present tense, that tells the whole story scene by scene without dialogue formatting. Treatments run from two to around twenty pages and are used to pitch a story, or to agree its shape, before the screenplay is written.
Spec script: A spec script is a screenplay written without being commissioned or paid for, on speculation that it will sell or win the writer work. Specs are how most screenwriters break in: as samples that show their voice, and occasionally as scripts a studio buys outright.
Inciting incident: An inciting incident is the event that disrupts the protagonist's ordinary world and sets the main story in motion. In a feature screenplay it usually lands in the first ten to fifteen pages, and the story that follows is the protagonist's response to it.