Winner of last week’s Logline Friday:

@butterwolf An overly patriotic motivational speaker has a stroke and develops a rare medical condition known as foreign accent syndrome.

ButterWolf’s logline caught my attention with its twist: patriotic motivation speaker who develops an accent. That the accent is the result of a medical condition puts it over the top.

Some followers such as @ eyangers pointed out the lack of plot in the logline. While I agree the details are sparse, they’re not general. The crux of the film is there, and with our knowledge of movies we can deduce what might happen: the speaker encounters discrimination and has a change of heart about his patriotic vitriol.

Maybe this happens, maybe it doesn’t – a good logline doesn’t have to give the entire story away. As long as you get the reader interested, you’ve done your job. If that means being a big vague about the details to pitch the most interesting parts of the script, so be it. Sometimes a little mystery is a good thing.

Onward!

-Eric