Screenwriting reference
What is a logline?
A logline is a short description of a story's central character, goal, obstacle, and stakes. It gives a reader a quick sense of what the story is about without replacing the screenplay or a full synopsis.
What a useful logline usually tells you
A clear logline makes the story's engine easy to understand. It usually identifies who the story follows, what that person wants, what blocks them, and what may happen if they fail. The exact order and wording vary, especially in the source records collected in this archive.
- Who: the central character or characters.
- Goal: the thing they are trying to achieve.
- Obstacle: the force, problem, or situation working against them.
- Stakes: what can be lost if the goal is not reached.
Loglines in this archive
The Scott Myers Spec Script Deals archive contains 2,562 source records from 1991 through 2025. Each record keeps the original logline alongside the available title, writer, genre, agency, studio, sale details, and source page. Use the archive to study how stories were described in the spec script market over time.
Browse all screenplay loglinesFrom the source archive
Screenplay logline examples
Mr. Clarke
A mysterious former SAS operative who has buried his violent past beneath the immaculate manners of a butler must become the man he swore he’d left behind when a band of mercenaries lays siege to the English country estate he serves, turning its halls, secrets and traditions into weapons to protect the people he now calls family.
Ben Lustig, Jake Thornton
The Operator
An ex-Tier One Operator who earns a living as one of the CIA’s invisible clean-up men. When he’s ordered to shepherd his most hated target to safety, the mission turns into a high-stakes cat and mouse game for survival.
Harrison Query
Smother In Law
A young woman attempts to help her single (and overbearing) mother-in-law with her love life.
April Prosser
Aunt Roxie
A carefree writer agrees to watch her uptight sister’s gifted children for a week, navigating teenage romance, elementary school politics, and her own messy love life while learning what it means to be a loving aunt and responsible adult.
Johnny Rosenthal
Shiver
Ne’er-do-well smuggler in the middle of a deadly double-cross while on a job in the Caribbean Sea, resulting in him surrounded by bodies, hostile mercenaries, thirsty sharks, and a deathly time loop.
Ian Shorr
The In-Claus
N/A
Travis Braun