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Q&A How to distill a plot into a logline?

Seems like step 2 of the 3-step method of coming up with the title. First step: you compress the story into a half-page summary, that catches the essentials, piques interests, and so on. You conde...

posted 10y ago by SF.‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T03:30:59Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10929
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar SF.‭ · 2019-12-08T03:30:59Z (almost 5 years ago)
Seems like step 2 of the 3-step method of [coming up with the title](https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7793/how-to-come-up-with-a-good-title/7798#7798).

First step: you compress the story into a half-page summary, that catches the essentials, piques interests, and so on. You condense events from the chapters into single sentences, cull unnecessary fluff, replace revelations with mysteries, spoilers with questions. That way you obtain the blurb, the kind of thing that is printed on the back envelope of a book, or as a summary on the page where you buy one.

**Second step** : you compress the blurb into 1-3 sentences. You ignore the original story, you summarize only what the blurb says. It's currently short enough, that you should be able to grasp its essence and pick the juiciest pieces. **This is your logline.**

And then you can compress the logline into one word or a short phrase, and that's how you get the title.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2014-05-13T14:17:30Z (over 10 years ago)
Original score: 3