How to Write a One Sentence Summary for Films

Writing a Tagline for a Movie Pitch to Submit to Movie Producers

Aug 5, 2009

Finding the Right Words for a Film Summary, morguefile

Summing up a ninety-minute story line in one sentence is a challenging task. Where does the screenwriter begin?

A typical screenplay contains a weaving story, plot twists, several characters, lots of action and dialogue. When asked to summarise all of these things in one sentence, the writer might be lost for words. However, many submission packages required by film agents and producers demand a one-sentence summary with the screenplay.

What is a One Liner?

A one liner is a single sentence that can be used to sum up a film. The one liner comes in useful when trying to sell the script to agents or if anyone asks “what’s the script about?” Writing a summary for a film in 25 words or less is an exceedingly challenging task. In order to begin thinking about it, a few things are required:

A thesaurus
The synopsis of the film (if one has been done)
The genre
The time period
The movie’s theme (the moral of the story)
The hero’s goal
Climatic scenes

Conceiving a One Sentence Summary for Pitching a Movie

With the resources described, it is a good idea to seek out powerful, accurate and evocative nouns to use within the summary. If it is about a woman’s quest to find her lost brother, explore alternatives for the keywords within. Search, pursuit, exploration, investigation, inquiry and scout, possess different shades of the same meaning. Perhaps another noun could be used in the summarising sentence to compliment or contrast with the others.

Steps in Summarising a Screenplay

The following pointers might also be worth consideration:

Dynamise the nouns with active verbs. This will make the summarising sentence more memorable. Verbs such as scour, probe, pry, rummage and sift, etc, could be used instead of “find.”
Make the sentence work hard by minimising the use of weak words and lazy adjectives. Cut the word count by using one word in place of two.
Swap over clauses and sub-clauses within the sentence to see how it changes the meaning.

The resultant one sentence summary might read thus:

“A woman seeks out her brother after he deserts the army for being wrongly accused of murder.”

What is a Tagline?

A tagline is the commercial one liner that are displayed on movie posters and trailers. It is worked from the one liner when promoting the film and serves several purposes:

To provide a teaser
Defines the type of film it is, for a potential audience (buddy movie, action thriller, etc?)
To define the film’s genre
To provide a hook-line, that audiences will remember.

An example of a memorable tagline is from Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

Writing a One Liner for a Script

Summarising a screenplay in one sentence is an effective way of letting potential agents and producers get an idea of what the film is about and helps them decide whether to read the screenplay. Using a thesaurus is crucial in this process and helps the writer find strong nouns and active verbs to create a punchy one liner.

The copyright of the article How to Write a One Sentence Summary for Films in Selling Scripts is owned by Rachel Wills. Permission to republish How to Write a One Sentence Summary for Films in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.