How Good Is Your Movie One-Liner?

by Robert L. Gisel

 To write and sell a movie it has to be a great story idea you can tantalizingly tell about in a sentence. Great is not something you luck into or because you are uniquely one of the outstanding geniuses. It is simple, and it is learnable.

 To know what you are doing, if you want to write a great movie that embroils the audience, you must grasp the concept of the one-liner. Furthermore, to sell it to another, you must begin with a well defined story line that can be summed up in literally one or two sentences. That is the "one-liner" as it is called in the industry. This is so outrageously simple that when you have learned the knack of it you can rattle off great story lines at will.

 The successful screenplay has much conflict to embroil the audience. This might be the oppositional gap between the good and the evil or the right and the wrong of the protagonist and antagonist. Simply a wide divergence in the main character himself or herself can cause conflict in its incongruity and unique paradox. The more diverse, the more unexpected, sardonic or contrary, all believably so, the more potentially explosive the plot. If you can't state the irony and theatrical appeal in a few sentences you need to rethink the story.

 It isn't just opposites or contrariness of personnel. It is some paradoxical circumstance one wouldn't expect, haven't heard of before, somehow made credible by the characters and their personal drama. You'll see this in all the best movies.

 I'll make up an example. A scandalous banker, now jobless in a crashed economy, gets a job peddling hot dogs from a push cart. That is sardonic. Even more ironical, it is in his own financial district where he is known by everybody, where nobody but him desires him to be back on top. Or this incongruity for a comedy: he is a white man, bank President, fired for mis-managed loans, and the sales territory he is assigned on his new job for a moving company is in foreclosure haven Harlem.

 You should be able to reduce your spec screenplay to an antiphrasis stated in a line or several. A script that won't so reduce is probably flat or deficient in its plot or story lines and not a sellable work. Having a poignant one-liner the movie will practically write itself.

 That is really the simplicity of the one-liner. When you have it it rings. It grabs your interest.

 It says the story is unique and the description makes you want to see it. You can write a whole story from this cutting statement. Assuming one has craftsmanship, a studied skill, and imaginative rendition, which anyone can practice, one can develop a very good script package from the great one-liner . Even more, you can sell it in one sentence, which you must.

 When the Producer who could make your movie asks what it is about you had very well better be able to tell him, now, with no fluster, and no ramble through scenes of the movie. This ultra condensed description actually demonstrates in a moment if you have a great story idea or not. One can see the strength of his own screenplay, but this is vitally necessary to pitch your movie to a potential buyer or producer.

 Practice describing great movies you have seen in this way. Then make up some of your own.

 Here is how I would one-line these movies:

A homeless, social misfit, super hero who has been thrown in jail by society for his destructive offenses must be asked by their Mayor to save the town from destruction. (Hancock)

A man zapped by a UFO turns on unusually perceptive extra-sensory powers and turns off all his friends who are freaked out by his abnormal feats, while he attracts unscrupulous government people who want to own his abilities. (Phenomena)

Twins from a biological experiment reunite but have turned out to be complete opposites physically and morally. (Twins)

A real Angel with wings gets his last sabbatical in an Earth body and is bent on having some rogue and rowdy Earth fun, but he's not here to touch any lives or perform any miracles. (Michael)

A man and his wife, unbeknown to the each other, are each secret agent assassins who become deadly enemies when they get opposing assignments. (Mr. & Mrs. Smith).

 Wouldn't you want to see any of these movies only on the strength of the one-liner? Even without knowing the A-List actors who play the leads?

 See these one-liners as brief, to-the-point statements of the real irony of the movie that make it a unique conceptual package.

 Get it? Go to it.

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Inspirational Brevity

by Robert L. Gisel

 Some while back a good friend of mine pointed out that he never had time to read my longer posts but that he would read the shorter ones. It was his consensus this was so for most of the office crowd. From this sooth and months of experimentation I decided to make some adjustments.

 Personally, I tend disfavor toward long posts in the RSS Feeds I subscribe to. Reading a too-long post I will generally be die-hard about it and finish it to end. The next time that author's post comes before me I will relegate it to the "to be read" filing, for some day when I have more time.

 Posts of a serious social impact do tend to be longer as these will by necessity get into more specific detail of the who, when and the where, to withstand challenges of the critics. The permalink makes it possible to circumvent this, letting other's articles give the nitty gritty for someone who asks for it.

 Writing screenplays I learned to be brief. Say it in the least words and let the action and visuals show the rest, so as to fit within 120 pages, the technical equivalent of 120 minutes. I decided scripts had to have less words and novels had to have more. This isn't necessarily the case.

 The last book I ever read of Michener I abandoned after a too-long historical discourse. Hugo used to do this but it was done effectively to embroil the emotions. Any writing should say it with less and prolong the discourse only to intensify the emotional impact and intellectual stimulation.

 It has become a fun and fulfilling exercise of mine to invent quotable quotes that exhibit depth of thinking in one or few sentences, as well composing stimulating posts that are one page or less. It's write it, then edit to say it with less words. Your audience is intelligent and suggestive meaning will be perceived out of skilled illustration.

 And don't forget this, an author knows. He writes from certainty. Where he knows that from is the fabric of the universe and one's passage through it. If it's real to you now no doubt you lived it before. So write it, and don't hold back.

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We Hope She Doesn't Yawn

by Robert L. Gisel


On the ProBlogger site this new post "GRAB your Readers Attention and HOOK them into your blog" got my attention so as to invite my comment:

As I’m primarily a playwright I too have been inspecting this conundrum: how do you, in the title and one sentence max, blow up the oil facilities, discard the scuba gear, dry suit and have an immaculate tux underneath to join the elite party, all punctuated by the most exciting Rolling Stones theme song.

You used to get 20 minutes now you only have 10 to grab a persons attention in a movie. Actually it is 10 pages where each page equates to a minute of movie, and that is the time you have to tempt the reader to continue reading the screenplay. No movie gets made unless some potential filmmaker reads the script and likes it, thinks it is a winner and that it will make money at the box office.

The top film producers at Ken Rotcops Pitchmart will only promise to read the first 10 pages and only will they continue reading if they are hooked into interest by then. This is down from the 20 that was acceptable as late as a decade ago.

Evidently society is now media wise, catch on fast or get bored quickly. The net has such impossibly high volumes of data and traffickers to it I’m sure it is the same in the blogosphere, no one has time to be bored when there are so many fast and exciting impressions available.

This post caught my attention with the picture of the wicked block and tackle. That’s a well done hook.

But you should go to and read the post from ProBlogger not just my comment on it.

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