Lane Shefter Bishop - Sell Your Story in A Single Sentence: Advice from the Front Lines of Hollywood

Sell
Your Story
in a
Single Sentence

Advice from the
Front Lines of Hollywood

Lane Shefter
Bishop

Id like to dedicate this book to my husband, Andrew, whosince the day we methas given me the gift of supporting me wholeheartedly in absolutely everything I pursue.

Contents

WHATS YOUR STORY ABOUT?

Its the million-dollar question that writersscreenwriters, authors, really anyone putting pen to paperwhether just starting out or highly experienced, get asked perpetually during their long creation process. When faced with this situation, most writers do one of three things: One, they stare blankly, like a deer in headlights, grasping for words that will adequately describe their baby even as they realize they have not in any way prepared for this critical moment. Two, they try to create a tease or surprise in response by dutifully reciting their back-cover blurb, which unfortunately serves to make their masterpiece sound terribly generic. The last resort is to stumble through a painfully long-winded plot description that includes an excessive amount of unnecessary information and sucks up a great deal of timeboring the listener to distraction.

Whats needed is a top-notch logline, a one-line selling tool like no other. Its a writers most important assetinvaluable for query letters, for keeping laser-focused on what makes a story unique, and for having the perfect elevator pitch ready to go. By learning the secret to writing the best logline possible, a content creator can literally sell their story in a single sentence. This book is the key to unlocking that potential.

AS A PRODUCER IN HOLLYWOOD, I LEARNED EARLY ON the value of being able to sell something in a sentence. Most execs just dont have time to hear an endless plot description, nor read 300 pages of a manuscript. Screenwriters would complain to me about how hard it was to get anyone to read just a 120-page script, but when I asked what their screenplay was about, I was told Its Jaws meets The Mosquito Coast or Its Memoirs of a Geisha meets The Soloist . Those slap-dash descriptions could fit many screenplays from many screenwriters. So how does that help you sell your specific story? The simple answer is that it doesnt.

During my two-year stint as an executive vice president on the buying side, I would have sincerely appreciated someone who could swiftly and concisely tell me about their project. It would have saved legions of unnecessary meetings and gruelingly long phone calls. Sometimes just getting to the heart of a story was a painful processbut without that knowledge, how could I sell it to a studio or network? As a result, many hours of my job became the struggle to design a logline for properties in our slate when the actual creator had no idea how to sell his or her own piece.

When I started my own company, Vast Entertainment, I decided to focus solely on literary material rather than scripts. I knew from experience that if 200 screenplays arrived as incoming submissions, maybe two of them were good. But if two hundred books came in, probably 50 to a 100 of them could provide a nice base for a film or television project. It was a matter of a higher rate of return for my reading hours. Yet I was in for a rude awakening.

At that time, I found that no one wanted to hear about what they considered lengthy material. The page count didnt even matter: Books as a whole just seemed too daunting. It was all the buying executives could do to focus on shorter, more concise screenplays; they certainly didnt have the extensive free time to read multiple novels. Youd practically hear a groan when you mentioned that the project was based on a book, and you just knew they were going to make some poor 19-year-old intern read it instead and deliver a short write-up on the plot. I vividly remember one executive literally starting to rearrange items on his desk instead of even pretending to listen, once I mentioned my pitch was based on a book. So it became abundantly clear to me that I had to change my approach if I wanted to set anything up.

I became fixated on the idea of simply focusing on what made a property unique and how I could make that element very clear, very fast, with the most dramatic punch I could muster. After all, everyone wants something that feels fresh, shiny, and new, right? Soon, and with a great deal of struggle as well as a ridiculous amount of trial and error, I determined the concept and elements of a true logline. And I began to sell, setting up more than twenty projects in the first two years through a steady stream of pitches and meetings. With this nod to success, I thought that I couldnt possibly be the only one looking for this manna from heaven. So for the last few years Ive traveled all across the country, and even internationally, speaking at writers conferences, screenwriting events, authors workshops, and book conventions about crafting the amazing selling tool of the perfect logline.

By traveling far and wide, I discovered that the need for this information is, in fact, huge. I speak to thousands of content creators each year who all have questions about how to pitch their material, how to create a selling sentence, how to determine the heart of their work, and how to specify what makes it truly distinctive in an inundated marketplace. And they are from all experience levels, the novice to the professional, and from all walks of life. Literally hundreds of help me logline queries are fielded by my offices monthly.

A writer once started a pitch by saying to me, I know youve probably heard many people today telling you their fantasy stories I stopped him right there and said, Why dont you start by telling me what makes your story unique from the other hundred tales in the same genre Ive heard today? That, of course, is the crux of the logline.

Theres never been a book on the art of crafting a true one-sentence logline and the timing is perfect, because films like Twilight, The Hunger Games, and especially Harry Potter really opened the doors for book-to-film adaptations to take center stage. In fact, in the last five years, 16 out of 35 (or about 45 percent) of the Academy Award Best Picture-nominated films were all based on books. In 2014 alone, 31 feature films that were originally novels came out in theaters.

Its no surprise, since many books already possess a huge built-in following, which usually translates well into box-office dollars. Insurgent alone grabbed $52.3 million in its opening weekend at the US box office, just shy of Divergent s $54.6 million debut. The Divergent franchise, based on teen action books by Veronica Roth, has garnered a plump $388 million so far, with two movies still to come. According to Forbes , nearly a quarter of the 200 top-grossing films worldwide tallied by Box Office Mojo have been directly adapted from books. Today, astonishingly, nearly 50 percent of all films made are derived from some type of previous piece of workcomics/graphic novels, articles, books, magazines, short stories, and the like. So having underlying material or IP (intellectual property) is now a much-desired resource and can literally be the difference between making the sale and leaving empty-handed.

For example, I have a property about a sociopath lawyer. (I know, some say those are synonyms.) But even with an A-list screenwriter coming in and pitching their fantastic idea for a new sociopath lawyer show, I couldnt sell it if I couldnt also say, Its based on an amazing book about a real lawyer, in her 30s and attractive, who is currently living in California, teaching law students, and who literally tested in the 99th percentile for sociopathy. Suddenly, its not just made-up fodder from the writers mindsit truly exists in reality, and by being based on underlying material, the story becomes infinitely more marketable.