Up to this point I’ve mostly pushed the logline to the side. It’s never really seemed like all that powerful of a tool, and it’s always given me a sort of sleazy feel. Every book sells it as a marketing technique, something you whisper in an elevator when you realize a big-shot is in there with you.
This marketing premise doesn’t do much to inspire. Making anything about money like that really puts me off so I’ve been ignoring it.
But I’m coming to realize that’s a bit of a mistake.
The logline, or one sentence summary, is a great tool. It’s one of the best ways to define your project, and what I’ve found is that if you don’t define your project fully you’re quickly going to be in trouble. It may seem that having an endless amount of possibilities is a boon, but really it’s not. It’s suffocating. You’ll be paralyzed and then nothing will get done.
So you’ve got to define. Define. Define. Define.
This is a lot of work. It’s gonna require a lot of hard thinking to get that sentence just right, but it’ll be worth it. Because once that’s done, everything else is possible. Everything else that follows is a planned step in a specific, defined direction.