A practical writing exercise
Write a logline with a goal and stakes
Write three one-sentence loglines from the same facts, recording what you cut and checking that the protagonist, action, obstacle, and stakes remain legible.
Your starting material
Use this complete original material for the demonstration. You can copy or download it before working through the steps.
Original practice material: Mara is a municipal courier in a river city. She carries the only signed order that can stop a house demolition at dawn. The recipient, surveyor Iven, must countersign it in person on the opposite bank. Mara reaches the last ferry and sees Iven's name added to the day's death register. An entry suspends all official business in that person's name. Mara saw Iven alive that afternoon; she does not know whether the entry is a mistake or a fraud. The ferry departs in ten minutes. The registrar can correct the entry only if Mara produces Iven or evidence of a clerical error. If she fails, six families lose their homes. The story's ending is not supplied.
Deliberately flawed example
Deliberately flawed example: A brave girl in a mysterious city faces destiny, death, a river, paperwork, a terrible secret, and the ultimate test of courage as everything changes forever.
Reduce facts into functions
Put 'Mara, courier' in the person box. Her action is to get an order countersigned; the registered death blocks that action. The demolition gives a concrete loss. The river and ferry matter because they limit the route and time, not because every interesting noun belongs in the sentence.
Do not announce that Iven was murdered or that Mara will expose a conspiracy. The material establishes a contradictory record, not its explanation. A logline can raise a question while staying honest about what is known.
Draft for different emphasis
Write one sentence with the deadline first, another with the discovery first, and a third with the choice first. Change the information order without changing the facts. Avoid vague pronouns: 'she must find him before it happens' forces the reader to reconstruct both people and event.
Read each version aloud and then cover the material. Can you state who acts, what she attempts, what blocks her, and what failure costs? Missing any one of those is a useful reason to revise; sentence length alone is not.
Keep a deletion record
A cut list makes compression inspectable. 'Brave' can go because the task demonstrates risk. The death register stays because it is the distinctive obstacle. The word 'only' belongs with the signed order if used, not with an invented claim that Mara is the only person who could ever save the city.
One possible revision
One possible revision — three one-sentence versions: 1. Before a dawn demolition leaves six families homeless, a courier must get a rescue order countersigned across the river, but the surveyor she saw alive is now officially registered dead. 2. When a death register invalidates the signature she needs, courier Mara must catch the last ferry in ten minutes to reach a surveyor she saw alive and save six families' homes from demolition. 3. To stop six families' homes being demolished at dawn, courier Mara must challenge a surveyor's official death record while the last ferry to his bank prepares to depart. Deletion record: Removed 'brave' and 'ultimate test' because they evaluate Mara without naming an action. Removed the unspecified 'terrible secret' because the source does not establish one. Kept the registry in all three versions because it obstructs the required countersignature. Version 1 prioritizes clarity about the task; version 2 emphasizes the immediate travel deadline; version 3 emphasizes the administrative challenge. Choose version 1 for a pitch that must explain the causal problem quickly.
What changed and why
- Replaced a list of atmospheric nouns with a goal and the particular obstacle that prevents it.
- Named a material consequence—six families lose their homes—in place of an unsupported promise that everything changes forever.
A choice worth keeping
Keep the apparent contradiction between the living surveyor and the death register. It gives the pitch a specific question without claiming an answer the source has not supplied.
Try it with fresh material
Original transfer material: Lin repairs hearing aids in a mountain clinic. A landslide has closed the road. Before the emergency helicopter leaves at noon, she must retrieve a child's custom earpiece from a locked delivery cage. The cage key was sent down the blocked road with a driver. The pilot will carry the child but cannot wait beyond noon because of incoming fog. Lin has tools that can open the cage, but breaking the clinic's seal will cost her repair license. Nobody has yet decided what she does.
Make four fact boxes, then write three one-sentence loglines with different emphasis. Add a deletion record of at least three cuts and select a version. Keep the missing key, deadline, and license risk; do not add a second key or a guaranteed rescue.
Feedback for your attempt
- Can the reader distinguish getting the earpiece from getting the child onto the helicopter? State the action Lin must perform.
- Does each sentence connect the blocked cage to a real choice? If the license cost vanishes, the conflict may become a routine repair.
- You may emphasize the child, the seal, or the approaching fog. The versions need not use the same syntax to preserve the same facts.
Check before moving on
- Write the four functions under the sentence from memory. Revise anything you cannot recover.
- Check for invented outcomes and vague threats.
- A successful sentence may omit secondary detail while preserving the central causal problem.
Original source material, loglines, and editing record authored by an AI agent. They are teaching examples, not raw production-tool output. An independent AI agent completed the transfer exercise and archived its artifacts; no human reader testing is claimed; no human outcome is claimed. Material version: 2026-10-18.