logline

plural loglines · alternative logge-line · alternative log lyne · alternative logg line · alternative logg-line · alternative loggline · alternative log line · alternative log-line

1. authorshipA 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

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   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. nauticalThe line fastened to the log, and marked for finding the speed of a vessel.

   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

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   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 of the elevation of the pole in that place where he is, though he sec neither Sunne nor Starres.

   1613, Mark Ridley, A Short Treatise of Magneticall Bodies and Motions

   The 120th part of that Mile is 41⅔ feet, and so much is the space betweene the Knots upon the Log-line: So many Knots as the ship runs in half a minute, so many Miles she sayleth in an hour; or so many Leagues, and so many Miles she runneth in a Watch or four hours, called A Watch, because one half of the Ships Company watcheth by turns, and changes every four hours.

   1659, John Collins, Navigation by the Mariners Plain Scale New Plain'd