logline

Noun

logline (plural loglines)

1. A very short summary of a script or screenplay.
   • Screenwriting Tip #12: If you don't know your own logline, you probably don't know what your script is about. Some writers will tell you they don't have a logline. Their screenplay is “too complex” or “too character-driven,” […]2013, Xander Bennett, Screenwriting Tips, You Hack, page 16
   • The first step in outlining is to make sure that your logline, that one-or-two- sentence summary of your movie you first created in chapter 2 (“Jump-starting the Screenplay”), is the best that it can be in capturing what your movie is about now.2013, Linda Venis, Cut to the Chase: Writing Feature Films with the Pros at UCLA Extension Writers' Program, Penguin, →ISBN
2. The line fastened to the log, and marked for finding the speed of a vessel.
   • Besides the ingenious Pilot knowing the elevation of the Pole in some places of his voyage that he hath passed, by keeping a true, not a dead reckoning of his course in pricking his Card aright, and observing the way with the logge-line, with other currants, will give a very artificiall conjecture...1613, Mark Ridley, A Short Treatise of Magneticall Bodies and Motions
   • Bring the ship to rights, that is, againe under saile as she was, some use a Log line, and a minute glasse to know what way shee makes, but that is so uncertaine, it is not worth the la­bour to trie it.1627, John Smith, A sea grammar with the plaine exposition of Smiths Accidence for young sea-men, enlarged