How to write a TV show logline (with examples)

 

How to write a TV show logline (with examples)

There are a lot of ways to approach TV logline writing, and our team has uncovered the two best paths for writing the best logline possible for your script.

TV SHOW LOGLINE FORMULA #1

Our first formula identifies four key elements that your logline must have:

  1. Inciting Incident
  2. Protagonist
  3. Action
  4. Antagonist

Let's take a look at a tv show logline example from Stranger Things:

When a young boy disappears (inciting incident), his mother, a police chief, and his friends (protagonists) must confront (action) terrifying forces (antagonists) in order to get him back.

TV SHOW LOGLINE FORMULA #2

Our second formula is similar, but adds two new elements: "goal" and "stake" to further identify a character's core desires:

  1. Protagonist
  2. Action
  3. Antagonist
  4. Goal
  5. Stake

Let's look at a tv show logline example from award-winning series Arrested Development:

A young man (protagonist) leads (action) his oddball family (antagonists) and their real-estate-development business (goal) following a securities-fraud fiasco that put the father in jail (stake).


Logline Formula

Now that you have a basic understanding of writing loglines...

...it's time to write your own.

Use our  formula below to create a logline that stands-out from the crowd...

...and sells your project for you.

As always, cheers and happy writing!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Writing A Treatment For A TV Series

Image
  Writing A Treatment For A TV Series You are a writer with great ideas. You’ve had a brilliant one which has to be for television – there’s a series here you know it, but the sheer weight of the story, the abundance of characters, the complexity of this world you are creating is overwhelming. There’s so much going on here: the characters, the world they live in, the story itself and are you actually saying something that people will want to engage with? How do you highlight the bits that are working in your tv idea and those that aren’t? Is there enough story? What are you actually trying to say? How do you control all these elements? I have worked with many, many writers throughout my career, as a Script Editor on EastEnders, amongst other great long runners and then as a Producer of Holby City and other popular series formats. Now, I work with writers one on one via my  Script Consultancy.  Writers come to me not only to help fix the script they’re stuck on, but ...
Read more

The Ultimate Guide To Brainstorming Your Web Series

Image
  The Ultimate Guide To Brainstorming Your Web Series 6 tips to get your brain juices flowing Join our  filmmaker forum , sign up for our  newsletter  to receive more great articles like this one, and remember to recommend  👏   this post on Medium! We spend a lot of time in the Stareable Film School talking about how to make your script or idea a reality. But what if you don’t have a script or idea? How do you capitalize on  all this great advice ? Presenting the Ultimate Stareable Guide To Brainstorming, aimed to make it as easy as possible to come up with the next great web series idea. What you freewrite Freewriting is a brainstorming technique where you sit down (or stand at your fancy standing desk) with a blank document, piece of paper, or journal page, set a timer, and write nonstop until the timer goes off. Even if halfway through you start writing things like “I don’t know what to write I’m out of ideas,” keep going. It’s amazing what tumbles...
Read more

Cracking the Sitcom Code

  Cracking the Sitcom Code After signing up to write a script for Croatian television, I learned that virtually all TV comedies, from  Seinfeld  to  South Park , follow a simple formula. As happens to so many of us, I was asked to write a sitcom for Croatian television. I’m an American ex-pat living in Slovenia, and I know next to nothing about Croatia, besides the fact that it’s Slovenia’s southern neighbor, a fellow ex-Yugoslav republic, and that the language resembles Slovene except with a lot more “js” in it. I am a writer of books and articles, and I used to write a lot of plays, but I’ve never written for television. So I immediately said, “Sure, of course I can do that,” before rushing off to Google “How to write a sitcom.” In addition to much Googling, I spent a good deal of time watching sitcoms. I was after tips on how they are constructed, and watched actively, looking to crack open their laugh-tracked shiny exterior to get at the goopy mechanism wit...
Read more