Short Films

Finally, when your screenplay is complete, it’s a good idea to work backwards through your script to check that everything was set up right. Does everything lead plausibly to the ending you’ve written?

The middle is where much of the battle is won or lost.

Start fast, hook the viewer, introduce your protagonist and his problem and get to the heart of the story straightaway.

THE BEGINNING: SET-UP AND HOOK

9. BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES AND ENDS

CHARACTER NAMES

ACTION or DESCRIPTION

DIALOGUE

PARENTHETICALS

This would be great as an exercise in subtext.

7. BRAINSTORMING – GENERATING STORIES

In writing what you know think about your most intimate and personal emotions and experiences. What did they feel like? Now transfer that to the characters and imaginary situations in your story. Create emotional situations that will touch an audience using all that you’ve learned and know of human emotions. That’s where the connection with the audience lies. Your first kiss or love, the tragic loss of a loved one, a painful divorce, grief, the loss of a parent or child, the elation or joy of winning some great success, getting married, the birth of a child and so on. Think about your own deeply emotional experiences and what they meant for you then transfer that emotion to your stories. Now you’re writing

In other words, whatever the setting, whatever your interest, you must find the drama in it and turn it into something emotionally exciting that engages and entertains an audience. Shorts have to work the same way. Pick a suitable idea, one that fits the timescale and constraints of a short, then make it as intense and dramatic as you can within the confines of that space