Everyone, it's Justin Trevor winners and welcome back to 62nd script school. Hopefully you were able to come up with an original story idea. If you weren't, that's okay. Give yourself some more time, you're going to have a long relationship with your idea. Some days you're going to be madly in love, and other days you're gonna want to divorce. Find an idea that you're passionate about, at least in the beginning.

What I'm trying to say is enjoy the honeymoon phase. Today we're going to be talking about the logline. Before we dive in I want to tell you a fascinating story about the history of the logline. In old Hollywood Studios used to keep their scripts archived in vaults. There were stacks upon stacks of scripts. They would write the premise or the logline on the spine of the script so they didn't have to unstack the scripts.

In other words, the logline became the miniaturization of the idea. It told us what the story was about. And if it was well written, it made us want to unstack the scripts. It's actually like the original Twitter. It's expressing as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time. Speaking of time, 60 seconds on the clock.

Hit it. There are four essential elements in every logline number one, characters who is your protagonist or hero? What is your hero once? What is his or her main goal? Why do we believe in the hero? What makes your hero memorable?

Number two is conflict Who is your antagonist? How is the antagonist standing in the way of the hero achieving his or her goal? The bigger and badder the obstacle the better. Number three is originality. How is your story unique? What are the elements that make it stand out and number four is the world It is your job as a writer to incorporate all four of these elements within your logline.

Alright, stop the clock. Now let's take a look at Breaking Bad and create a logline, a chemistry teacher diagnosed with terminal cancer, teamed up with his former student to cook and sell crystal meth in order to provide for his family, his wife, his disabled son, and his daughter that's on the way. So number one characters who is our protagonist or our hero, a chemistry teacher? What does the hero one or what is the hero's main goal to provide for his family? Why do we believe in the hero? He's a chemistry teacher so he knows about chemicals.

What makes your hero memorable? He's highs and Birdman. Number two conflict Who is your antagonist? If you've seen the show, there are many antagonists Krazy eight to go Gus Fring. In the case of the logline. They antagonists is the hero's cancer diagnosis.

How is the antagonist standing in the way of the hero achieving his or her goals? It's an impending death sentence. Number three originality. How is the story unique? No one to this point had ever written a concept about the world of methamphetamines number four, the world where and when does the story take place? I want to tell you fun little fact.

The show for Breaking Bad was originally set in Riverside, California. But because New Mexico was offering tax incentives, the producers decided to take the show to Albuquerque. The tax incentives that were being offered were 30% back on the dollar, meaning if you spent a million dollars, you could get $300,000 back in tax incentives. So New Mexico or Albuquerque is the physical location, however, methamphetamines that's the world well, meth and drug dealing The DEA and cancer and how far a man will go to provide for his family. Those are really the elements that make up the world. So here's a little exercise for you.

Take 10 of your favorite TV Shows of All Time and write the log lines for them. One sentence will suffice. Once you've gotten some practice, try writing your logline. So good luck and happy writing.