Sabriya of Shanghai

A Martial Arts Thriller

The specially skilled and statuesque wife of a British diplomat to China risks revealing her past in the sex industry and scandalizing Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service when she launches a daring night-time rescue of her secret son from ruthless organ harvesters.

Log Lines, Tags, & Hooks

I recently received the following question from a reader.

Hey Dr. Stan, 

Can I get your reaction to my tagline for the script I'm currently working on (and constantly re-working).  It is: 

After defying incredible odds to become the first African-American female rescue swimmer for the U.S. Coast Guard, Susan Carville is asked to embark on a mission that will require her to choose who will live and who will die.

Any feedback from you would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you,   

Lady Writer

Lt. j.g. Lashanda Holmes, the first female
African-American helicopter pilot in the Coast Guard.

Dear Lady Writer,

Well, that’s not a tag line, but it’s a pretty good log line. A tag line suggests the emotional arc. For your story a “tag” might be: “Hope that Transcends Desperation.” or “Called to Save, Forced to Let Die.”

But as a story and a log line... you have several layers of outer conflict or potential story hooks:

• Becoming a person who saves lives in desperate situations
• Becoming a rescue swimmer
• Being a female
• Being African-American

Any ONE of those engenders social conflict and potential difficulties. Any ONE of them can become the basis of a movie's hook, because each has a perceived disadvantage.

A person that wants to become a rescue swimmer is prejudice against by her friends for being an a physical fitness junkie and courageous. That bias is not very different from how society’s patriarchal majority at times dismiss women, and white racism marginalizes blacks.

Putting all four together creates greater interest (and greater jeopardy) but also creates a bigger problem for the story. Significantly dealing with ONE of those issues, or perhaps TWO is enough for a screenplay. Dealing with all four suggests to me a novel. Dealing with all four in a screenplay will be difficult, and that difficulty is evident in what you have to do with the log line. (see below)

MULTIPLE HOOKS SOLUTION

But there is a solution. PICK ONE to be the spine of the story, and dramatically reduce the importance of the others to subplots. My recommendation is to pick the spine that has the broadcast audience appeal, and let the others tag along—their very presence will reinforce their validity. For instance, of those four story sub-plots, which do you think will appear to the most people? That then becomes the focus of your story, and the focus of your log line.

Put it another way, I have no problem with seeing all four in a story as your log line suggests, but if you focus principally on Susan's blackness as your main plot, you’ll make the film for only 18% of the American audience that identifies with being black, and you’ll be telling the rest of your potential audience that their lives matters less. If you focus the spine on the fact that Susan is a woman, you’ll marginalize 49% of your potential audience and tell them (the men) they don’t matter. If you focus the spine of your story or being a rescue swimmer, then you have marginalized 99.9% of your audience. But I think everyone in your potential audience would identify with the human need to help others and the moral dilemma of helping others in situations where you are useless to do so.

UNDERDOGS

At the same time, the most successful stories are “underdog” stories, or as Disney labels them, “fish out of water” stories. These are stories where the protagonist can easily be identified as one with the audience. They are just like everybody else, filled with fears and anxieties, and a lost sense of “What can I do?” When you put such a character into a situation that seems impossible you have the biggest interest, the deepest hook.

So my story and log line recommendation would be to focus the story on someone who wants to help others in desperate situations but has to overcome their insecurities of doing so. Keep their motivations high and noble that all your diverse international audience can identify with. Second I would focus on the technicalities of the difficultly of becoming a rescue swimmer. This will intrigue everyone. That Susan happens to be female and black will raise the noble pursue of her in an otherwise male and white world. And while you can make some minor points about her being female and black, you don't want to become so politically correct that you miss the point and open your story up to mockery.

The regular audience goer will believe (coming into the theater) that Susan should become a rescue swimmer ONLY if she can be a good one. Her sex and the color of her skin should not enter into her success of failure, although you can show her struggling with her black-female identity. Just keep it a subplot. This is where Martin Luther King's call for judgment to be made on character not on skin color comes in. If you make gender or race an issue then you suggest that Susan should become a rescue swimmer BECAUSE she is female and black. If you make Susan female and black but don't make a big deal about it, then you reinforce the idea that gender and race are not the issue—character qualities counts. This was part of the success of THE KARATE KID I worked on with Will and Jaden Smith. While Jaden is black, the story was not about his blackness, but about the cultural issues between American and Chinese. Overbrook did the same thing with last year's ANNIE. Both were successful and appealed to broad audiences because race was not an explicit issue in the promotion or the plot...yet it was there.  A gender example would be KILL BILL where Uma Thurman's sex is an implicit not an explicitly issue, and it attracted a male audience.

Now, since Susan's story is a true story, and being female and black WERE issues for her, you will want to still deal with them. Just remember the more you bring them to the forefront of your story, the more you limit your audience to just black females, which would be about 9% of your potential audience.  If you don't made a big deal about then you garner a larger audience who will see black females as fully capable and you'll win their respect from a faithful portrayal of a rescue swimmer's difficulty of rising to that level.

LOG LINE DIFFICULTIES & SOLUTIONS

If you want to make all four elements a significant part of your story then you'll have a log line that reads like this:

After defying incredible odds to become the first African-American, female, rescue swimmer for the U.S. Coast Guard, Susan Carville is asked to embark on a mission that will require her to choose who will live and who will die among the crew of a sinking ship who are a mix of men and women, whites and blacks. 

This log line is fraught with racial, class, and gender overtones and what becomes lost in such political messages is the remarkable universal nature of anyone becoming a rescue swimmer in order to save another's life. The audience is narrowed and the message debatable.

But if the log line is:

After defying incredible odds to become a rescue swimmer for the U.S. Coast Guard, the newly certified swimmer is sent on a death-defying mission where the swimmer must decide who will live and who will die.

Then the log line has universal appeal. And when the trailers and poster comes out and we discover the swimmer is a black woman, the appeal for the story will skyrocket. People don't like to be preached at about any political issue, but they subliminally understand the gender and racial undertones.

Also notice this minor point. Proper nouns are never used in a log line. Use generic descriptions to (again) keep the appeal broad.

The 11 Story Imperatives & Log Line Mugs

Trying to be of help, here. Imagine, as you're writing, and every time you grab for your drink you're reminded of the 11 Story Imperatives or the Log Line elements that every story needs to succeed. I've culled these from my experience consulting on screenplays in Hollywood, my own writing, and research form successful and not so successful motion pictures.

They are available at The Moral Premise Story Shop at Cafe Press. Only modestly marked up.
http://www.cafepress.com/moralpremisestoryshop


Readable graphics of what's on the mugs, tumblers, glasses, etc are available at the Moral Premise Writing Aids web page.  http://www.moralpremise.com/storyaids.php

An written explanation of the Log Line mug and its graphic is HERE:

An written explanation of the Story Mug Shot mug a its graphic is HERE:

 Let me know if these help. The more you grab for that mug, the more you'll learn.

WRITING GOOD LOG LINES

A key ingredient of the Log Line is the Story Hook. Here's a link about Hooks. 

Also, another explanation of this graphic and the log line is found HERE.

=====

This is the last article you’ll ever need to read on log lines. Our goal: a strong, pithy pitch for a movie that will keep you focused as a writer and get your audience into the theater.

Because I teach, consult, write, and direct, I am always in desperate need of a good log line. If not for the story I’m currently working on, then to explain to my wife what I did all day long at home while she was off earning money to pay for our groceries. I’m always having to come up with them, or help others figure them out – the log lines, not the groceries.  So, I needed an easy to remember formula that worked. But first, I needed a motivation. Don’t we all?

WHY LOG LINES?

Originally, log lines were long thin ropes on a spool with knots tied in them that mariners unreeled behind their ships to measure their speed – in KNOTS. They counted how many evenly spaced knots passed through their hand as the sand in the hour-glass drained from the top to the bottom. The mariner’s log line was a necessity in helping them navigate their journey and not get lost. It told them how far they had gone in a certain direction and when to turn the boat to find their destination.

[The other advantage of the marina’s log line was that if the boat got lost, the sailors simply had to follow the log line back to port. As time went on, and captains become more adventurous sailing to distant lands, the log lines got pretty big. But, after a few ships sank from the enormous weight of the reels, ships never got lost again. Why? They learned their lesson and never ventured far from port.]

Now, if that last part in brackets sounds like a joke, it wasn’t intended as such for the writers reading this. It’s the lie that tells the truth -- about the importance of log lines. Log lines help us navigate our writing. They also help to steer funding and attachments to our projects. And they direct audiences to theaters. Log lines are a necessary tool that keeps us focused in writing our story, and helps convince “names” to spend their time and money to get our story made and distributed. A good log line tells us how far we need to go before we arrive at a turning point in the plot. And, if we get lost, a good log line will lead us back to the beginning where we can start again.

THREE METHODS
Below, I outlined THREE methods of writing a log line, but I favor the first, and so the examples at the end of this post use the first. Use whichever sounds the most intriguing. Different stories/genres may lend themselves to one better than another. But all three need to at least imply all the critical elements of a good log line, which are listed in the next paragraph as I also describe the first method.

THE FIRST METHOD and ELEMENTS OF A GOOD LOG LINE

Fundamentally, a good log line will be a single sentence that will includes five elements.

The subject of the sentence will describe (1) an imperfect but passionate and active PROTAGONIST. The verb will depict (2) the BATTLE. And the direct object will describe (3) an insurmountable ANTAGONIST who tries to stop the protagonist from reaching (4) a physical GOAL on account of (5) the STAKES, if the goal is not reached.

The formula graphic at the right show you one possible way of organizing the log lone sentence. Notice that the terms (i.e. placeholders) I've chosen for the formula should be replaced or implied with specific nouns and visceral terms that fit your story. You don't have to be explicit, but you do need to communicate the moral and emotional tone that causes your protagonist to leap off the page with passion. That is, the log line is better if the words chosen enhance the story's marketability by suggesting the movie’s:

• Values
• Genre
• Setting
• Visual
• Ironic hook
• Relationships in the balance
• Emotional context, and
• Visceral action.

VERB

The verb you choose to depict the struggle must be visual and active. After all this is a movie, not a play or a novel. Thus, the log line verb should be one of the following, or one like them that best suits the genre:

struggle, battle, contends, wrestles, grapples, scuffles, fights, wages war, jousts, duels, spars, scraps, opposes, takes on, clashes, quarrels, feuds, or crusades.

STRUCTURE

Now, take all those elements and put them into a compelling sentence in this order:

[protagonist]…[verb]…[antagonist]…[goal]…[stakes].

What it doesn’t sound right? Then, rewrite it. You do know what a rewrite is, don’t you? As formalistic as all this sounds, expect to rewrite your log line many, many times --- not necessarily at first, but over the time that you develop your story and script. 

MORAL PREMISE

Having written the book The Moral Premise, it’s only fitting that I reference it here. While the log line describes the PHYSICAL essence of the story, the moral premise statement describes the inner working, or the PSYCHOLOGICAL essence of the story. If you’re not familiar with the moral premise statement construction, here’s an example. Its purpose is to articulate the arc of the story from psychological value to physical consequence. For instance:

Fear leads to paralysis; but

Courage leads to action.

The log line only hints at the context of the moral premise statement. Both are necessary to write a strong story that touches both physical and psychological beats.

Again, it’s worth repeating: While the log lines tell us what the movie is about PHYSICALLY, the Moral Premise Statement  tells us what the movie is about PSYCHOLOGICALLY, that is, the Moral Premise explains the conflict of values and the character's inner motivations which incites the physical action.

Audiences leave the theater thinking well or ill of a movie based on their subconscious awareness of the moral premise’s truth and consistency. Start with a good hook, then develop a good log line that includes the hook. Then, establish a true and consistent moral premise statement. With those tools in hand you’ll be well on your way.

THE SECOND METHOD - 4 QUESTIONS AND 4 ANSWERS

My friend Jeffrey Alan Schechter makes the justifiable claim that a good log line should clearly and unambiguously answer these FOUR QUESTIONS:

1. Who is your main character?
2. What is he or she trying to accomplish?
3. Who is trying to stop him or her?
4. What happens if he or she fails?

The answers to those questions, which MUST BE embodied in the log line, are:

1. A sympathetic character, who is
2. trying to accomplish a compelling goal while being opposed by...
3. a powerful and committed opponent, over
4. life and death stakes.

You see this is very similar to the first method, so I'll stop here on this.

THE THIRD METHOD - THE STORY QUESTION LOG LINE

Another intriguing method of constructing log lines is the Story Question Log Line. It might be formulated like this:

Will an imperfect PROTAGONIST be able to BATTLE an all powerful and ubiquitous ANTAGONIST to achieve his or her IMPOSSIBLE DREAM (e.g. a PHYSICAL GOAL)?  

[Example:  Will a lonely young man be able to fight off depraved government officials and blood-thirsty scientists, who want to cut up and dissect his new girlfriend — a real mermaid?]

LOG LINES: THE BEGINNING AND THE END

Log lines, as I said above, are the place that writers start. Log lines help to focus the filmmaking team as they move through the process of writing, development, attachment, production, and then marketing. But the best log lines are usually written AFTER the movie is finished. Why? Because movies are made three times: in the writing, in the shooting, and in the finishing. And it's not until it's all over that we really know what the film is about, and what the characters are REALLY about.  At any rate, log lines are critical to understanding what makes a good story. 

EXAMPLES USING THE FIRST METHOD

Here are a few good log line examples.

•   A naïve young man battles heartless authorities to protect the life of his girlfriend when it’s revealed that she’s not human— she’s a mermaid.

•   A police chief, with a phobia for open water, battles a gigantic shark with an appetite for swimmers and boat captains, in spite of a greedy town council who demands that the beach stay open.

•   A Parisian rat teams up with a man with no talent to battle convention and the critics that anyone can cook and open their own restaurant.

•   A lawyer who loses his ability to lie for 24-hours, clashes with his ex-wife for the affection of their son and the healing of their family.

•   A young farmer from a distant planet joins the rebellion to save his home planet from the evil empire when he discovers he is a warrior with legendary psychokinesis powers.

GIVE IT TIME – BUT DON’T STOP

Nothing good comes easily. That adage begins and ends with log lines. Their importance in the movie industry (and in all storytelling efforts) cannot be overstated. The human mind requires a respite from time-to-time to reach its full potential. Within your mind is the capacity to not only write a good log line, but construct the good story that goes with it. Write hard each day. But then relax and do something that involves physical activity aside from sitting in a chair and bending over a computer. Writing is hard work -- but you need exercise, too. I spend the mornings writing. In the afternoon I chop logs, garden, sail and chase my wife around town. You’ll be surprised how your mind assimilates and solves problems when you’re not trying to force it. As your project develops never stop coming back to your log line and see if you can make it that strong, pithy pitch that will sell your story.

Dr. Stan Williams, author of The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue and Vice for Box Office Success, consults on story structure, screenplays and the film industry from his home in Michigan and from the road in Los Angeles. You can reach him through his website at http://www.moralpremise.com.

Copyright © 2011 Stanley D. Williams