

Stick to only the important plot points when writing a movie synopsis.Ī screenplay needs to be brisk and always moving the plot forward. There are other fundamentals, of course, but keep this in mind and you’re golden. Let your writer’s “voice” shine through in the synopsis.Write what we can see (apart from a couple of exceptions if needed.).Overall, keep the habits you’ve learned from screenwriting at the forefront of your mind when writing a film synopsis. Its focus is the script’s core conflict: what the protagonist struggles to achieve and what’s at stake if they don’t achieve it. It is simply your script’s main plot written in prose and condensed down to a single page. The best way to think of a movie synopsis is as a short story version of your script. Identify the best one, and you’ll know it when you read it. Then write five different loglines for your screenplay. This will help you drill down to the movie’s core and develop the ability to summarize it in a couple of sentences. Write ten loglines of your ten favorite movies.
#About time movie summary professional
Here’s a great exercise to help train your mind to see the core idea in a story and write a professional logline.
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If the idea is good, the logline for that story will trigger the reader’s imagination and make them want to read the synopsis.Ĭheck out this post for more information on how to write a logline. Just like the synopsis sells the screenplay, the logline sells the synopsis.Ī good logline explicitly tells us what the story is about, and what our protagonist is up against, in two sentences.Īfter getting in a car accident, a woman is held in a shelter with two men who claim the outside world is affected by a widespread chemical attack. Putting it into written form as a plot synopsis means first learning how to write a logline. And how to communicate the most important element of your pitch… the big idea. Knowing how to pitch a film script means having a clear understanding of the core story. But it can be a good idea to include it at the top of your one-page movie synopsis also. Technically, your logline can also go in your query letter. How to write a film synopsis: the logline. Here are the key elements that go into a synopsis format: Learning how to write a synopsis for a movie is crucial-just as important, in many ways, as writing the actual script itself. But one of the most overlooked devices when pitching a screenplay is a tightly written film synopsis that sells the core concept and story. If there’s one plight that aspiring screenwriters share, it’s getting a screenplay read by “the right people,” i.e. What goes into a movie synopsis (as a selling tool)? However, a synopsis is usually sent at the beginning of any communication and a treatment further down the line. A treatment, on the other hand, is usually around 5 to 10 pages.īoth can be used as selling tools. The main difference between a movie synopsis and a treatment, is that a synopsis is only one page in length. What is a synopsis of a movie compared to a treatment? or left behind after a meeting.Ī writer’s hope is that after the industry contact reads it, he/she will like the story enough to request the whole script. This kind of synopsis should fit on one page (or less) and, for this reason, is sometimes called a “one-pager.”Ī script synopsis/one-page is either sent along with a query letter to a manager, exec, producer, etc. Its primary function is as a selling tool to aid the writer in the marketing of their script. How to write a synopsis as a selling tool.Ī screenplay synopsis is simply a breakdown of its core A-story into prose. We’re also going to show you a synopsis format example, so you can see exactly what one looks like, but let’s start with the most common reason for writing a plot synopsis: as a marketing tool. The ability to tell an exciting, coherent story in under 500 words of prose. Whatever your motivation for writing a synopsis, the basic skill required for both is the same: To nail the story before writing the script.To use as a selling tool after writing the script.

In this post we’re going to focus on the two most popular reasons for writing a film synopsis: The first question you have to ask yourself when wondering how to write a synopsis for a movie is “what kind?”
