Writing Short Stories

Short Film Design

Key Elements

- Character Driven

- Flawed Character

- Urgent Goal

- Interaction with other characters/Props

- Twist in Character's surprising (yet coherent) reaction

Storytelling Tools

- Introduce Main Char and Urgent Goal immediately

- Play on conventions (character, relationships, filmic, genre)

- Props and setting

- Sound and Design

- Simplicity

- Story Loop, Twist or Gag

Do all successful short films incorporate all of these elements, or only some? Which films do? Before I start thinking about the story for my second project, I need to look into some other short films to think about what are the most necessary elements to make my story work, even if it is only the pre-production stage that I concentrate on. I also intend to incorporate some elements of theories that I studied in Context of Practice. I do think that most stories adhere to one of Booker's seven plots, so I might have a look at which my story fits into and what elements within that usually make it feel like a resolved story, or if I'm having trouble I may choose to follow one of these loosely. As I am designing/writing for a short film, there is less space for so many stages and in depth character development (especially when the film would be planned to be no longer than 3 minutes if that) which means that is would be harder to incorporate many stages of the other theories I looked at. I learned in CoP that following a structure too closely could be dangerous anyway, so I might just look at the stages and try to explore stages that would work best in the story that I am trying to tell.