High Concept Loglines:

There is a simple structure for creating a flurry of awesome possibilities in the mind of the reader. It's all about the Act 2 Battles. This unique thing fighting against this unique thing, and why they are fighting.

The structure starts with an Adjective or 2 and then the hero's job or status. You have max 6 words there. You can have a "who" clause of about 6 words because those clauses are often story based information. But if you do use a "who" clause, you will need to make the rest simple.

After that you have your obstacles which is pretty much the same structure as the Hero - Adjective or 2 and then the antagonistic force's job or status. But maybe a little more freedom here. Maybe about 8 words. And then the Goal, maybe another 8 words or so.

But don't get caught up on that too much. The way to tell is to isolate each component and make sure each are the best possible by themselves. After that, you can play with the order of the clauses and see if you want your obstacles to come after the Hero component, or if you want the Goal to come before the obstacles. Often if the obstacles have a "Who" clause, you will need to put the goal before the obstacles. Otherwise the "to achieve goal" can create confusion about who the goal belongs to.

So to simply state the meaning of the way they are put across:

"An Adjective Noun who does something cool to do with story, struggles against an adjective noun, in order to achieve a goal."

Or

An Adjective Noun, struggles to achieve a Goal, but an Adjective Noun has an apposing Goal which will screw over the hero.

"A brutish oil rig worker who leads a drill team, struggles against a crubling debris-hurtling asteroid, in order to blow it in half and save the planet."

"An oil-rig drill team leader, struggles to save the planet from being smashed to bits, but a killer asteroid wants to tear them apart before they blow it in half."

Although these aren't the real loglines, you can see how they work.

Here is an example where the antagonist "who" clause can screw it up:

"An oil-rig drill team leader, struggles to destroy a killer asteroid which wants to tear them apart, in order to save the planet." So the asteroid wants to save the planet?

The key is, Clarity, Simplicity, and Uniqueness, in that order. A logline that isn't clear won't deliver the correct meaning. A logline that is clear but complex will have the reader overwhelmed with too much information meaning they don't know how all the bits fit together. A logline that is clear and simple but not unique, will fall flat.

But without clarity, neither simpleness or uniqueness are even touched on. Without simplicity, uniqueness isn't even looked at. It's only when people understand your logline and grasp the simple story that they can then look at the unique element and go "WOW!"

And then there is World if that's a huge selling point, and theme and hooks but often they don't matter as much.

Eg, In an emotionless world, a curious detective who stops taking his emotion stripping drug, struggles to help the underground resistance in a coup, but the law enforcers will kill him for not taking his drug.

Even though that's a pretty complex plot, and there is a world clause, an adjective Hero and a who clause to add information to the hero, this logline is still clear and simple and unique.

Check out the High Concept Logline Generator. It makes working on the parts much easier without having to worry about wording until later.

https://hammonscripts.com/high_concept_logline_generator.html

https://www.facebook.com/groups/LoglineGenerator/