5 Advices For Writing a Story For the Short Film

There has never been a better time to learn the craft of writing short film scripts. Interest in and access to creating and viewing short films and episodes of series has exploded worldwide, for both TV and the Internet. A great short film can also open doors for you in the film industry. But writing a successful short film story isn’t easy. It requires the craft and concentration. So here are five suggestions for crafting a screenplay of a short film.

1. Find a small, specific, significant idea you can tell well in a short script

Short films shouldn’t have the big story ideas because otherwise it will not be able to the film’s length and as a result, the movie can’t breathe. So for short films it’s very important to have touching but also small and simple story that will be easily understandable by audience.

2. Craft a complex character with a small, significant want

It’s important the script to know what main character wants because it’s on of the main ''shortcuts to the imagination’’ to revealing who your protagonist is. He/she has to have a yearning for something that matters to this character.

3. Create a pattern of external and internal change

It's helpful to think of a script as a template for significant human change that you create through specific moments of change—the discoveries and decisions your protagonist makes that change the character's personality and move the story forward. What your character wants and is trying to achieve in your short script is the surface action - the events that we see on the screen. And how these events forever change the inner world of the character is a deep action - an arc of your character.

4. Start your story on page one

It’s also helpful way to think of a screenplay as an energy system. The energy system begins with the inciting incident, a significant event that unleashes the energy system and ends at the climax—the moment when the outcome of the story is known and the energy system comes to an end. So given the limited number of pages you have in a short script, it’s especially important to make sure your inciting incident occurs on page one.

5. Show, don’t tell

Probably the most important way of storytelling. It's very good to know that both feature and short films are not books that interpret story only by text. Films are different because except telling they can visualize what happens on screen and audience understands the narrative and character much better. So if there's a change to show except tell, show!

Original material-https://www.routledge.com/blog/article/six-tips-for-writing-short-film-scripts-that-connect

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Andrii Azarchenko

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