How to Test Your Logline: Try the Ten Page Swap
Reading Time: 2 minutesIt is Swap Ideas Day! It’s a day for brainstorming with a friend.
Try this exercise: give your logline away and see what comes back.
You hand another writer your logline and nothing else. They write your first ten script pages, or your first chapter. You write theirs. A week later you trade back and read what somebody else did with your story.
Bam! A brand new angle on a story you have been living inside for months.
A notes session tells you what somebody thought of your execution. A swap shows you what your premise looks like another way. Great for jumpstarting your story when you’re stuck.
The Ten Page Swap
1. Trade loglines and nothing else. One sentence each. No pitch, no context, no “so the thing you need to understand is—.” If your partner has to ask a question before they start, your logline is not finished.
2. Follow the boundaries. One week. Ten script pages or one chapter. The constraint forces you to decide a take on the story.
3. Write it your way, not their way. You are not trying to guess what your partner would have done. You are writing the version you would write. The different approach is the point of the exercise.
4. Read all the way through before saying one word. No reactions, no reading over a shoulder, no commentary at the halfway mark. Finish first.
5. No defending. Your version is on the table. Their version is on the table. Neither one is a criticism of the other. You are exploring each other’s premises.
6. Compare with three questions.
• What did they do that I would never have done?
• What did we both do without discussing it?
• What did they find that is better than what I found?
7. Nobody owns anything. This is an exercise, nobody is co-writing anything. For clarity put the rules in an email.
What You Will Find Out
- Your defaults. Where you start, how you start, who you start with.
- How your premise lands. Anything you both did without discussing is the logline talking.
- Where the story wants to start. Two writers, one premise, two different opening pages.
Try It!
Pick one writer and send them your logline today. One sentence, no explanation, plus the seven rules above.
Happy Swap Ideas Day! Go trade something. Go discover something. And let me know how it goes.
Dive Deeper
Loglines and Taglines: What’s the Difference
P.S. Did you run the swap and now you are staring at two openings with no idea which way to go? Bring both versions to a story coaching session and we will work out which one your story wants. Book a session here.
Check it Out!
Ever wonder what it’s like to work with me? Watch me evaluate pitches on The Dialogue Doctor podcast!
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