The enhances or extended logline contains all the key story elements. “desk cop” to stop them but when his taunts of the terrorists risks exposing his hostage wife’s identity, he must learn to adapt and change to outsmart the lead terrorist and prevent the true goal of a billion-dollar heist. The enhanced logline would something like: On the brink of a divorce, a bullheaded, street-wise, New York cop is trapped in his wife’s office building by terrorists and teams up with an L.A. to visit his estranged wife when her office is taken over by terrorists. For example, Die Hard’s logline would be: A bullheaded cop comes to L.A. By the end of the 80’s, novelists used the them to pitch their manuscripts as well.Ī Widgets Snyder’s basic logline template is composed of the hero (with a descriptive adjective), the antagonist (also with a descriptive adjective) and the hero’s compelling, ironic primal goal written to spark images of possibilities. The goal was to creating something that could sell your script in the length of time it took to ride an elevator. Used for both pitching a manuscript and selling the movie, the logline is a single line description of the story and an extended or enhanced logline is a 1-2 sentence description of the story with all the critical elements included. Starting in the 1980’s the the logline of a script became critical. I’ve added a quick summary worksheet below that you can download to get a feel for the technique. I was skeptical at first since I’d gone through a screenwriting phase a few years back and thought I’d pretty much read and discovered everything there was to developing plot as if writing a screenplay, but I picked up some new techniques and ideas from Mr. Blake Snyder’s Cat series makes it easy to visualize your plotĪ friend of mine who writes urban fantasy novels turned me on to Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! ® The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need and his technique of developing story plots.

Blake snyder beat sheet