CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
INTRODUCTION 1
PART I Fundamentals: Breaking Ground 7
Chapter 1 STORYTELLING IN GENERAL 9
Chapter 2 TELLING A STORY IN IMAGES 17
Chapter 3 USING SOUND TO TELL THE STORY 29
Chapter 4 DISCOVERING AND EXPLORING A MAIN 37
CHARACTER
Chapter 5 TELLING THE DRAMATIC STORY 47
Chapter 6 WRITING AN ORIGINAL SHORT SCREENPLAY 65
Chapter 7 ON REVISION: SUBSTANCE AND STYLE 79
PART II Moving Forward: Writing Strategies 87
Chapter 8 THE NEED FOR STORYTELLING 89
Chapter 9 VISUALIZATION STRATEGIES 101
Chapter 10 DRAMATIC STRATEGIES 113
Chapter 11 CHARACTERIZATION STRATEGIES 127
Chapter 12 MORE ON DIALOGUE STRATEGIES 141
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PART III Genres: Forming the Story 151
Chapter 13 THE MELODRAMA 153
Chapter 14 THE DOCUDRAMA 171
Chapter 15 THE HYPERDRAMA 187
Chapter 16 THE EXPERIMENTAL NARRATIVE 205
PART IV New Directions 221
Chapter 17 THE OPPORTUNITY FOR RENEWAL 223
APPENDIX A Short Short Screenplays 233
Vincent, by Gert Embrechts 235
Sob Story, by Matthew E. Goldenberg and

thank my wife, Ida, for her intelligent critiques of the
manuscript at all phases.
On this latest edition we would like to thank our new
scriptwriters—Gert Embrechts, Matthew Goldenberg,
Michael Slavens, and Anthony Green—for allowing us to
include their screenplays. We would also like to thank
Elinor Actipis at Focal Press and Trevor MacDougall at
Kolam, Inc. for their excellent and thorough edit.
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INTRODUCTION
This book is primarily intended for film and video students or independent
video- and filmmakers who are faced with the necessity of writing a short
narrative script. For our purposes, we consider a short film to be one of 30
minutes or less, as films longer than that usually need a secondary, or minor,
plot-line to sustain audience interest and, in addition, are much less likely to
be eligible for festivals or suitable to be shown as “portfolio” work.
Although our main focus is on the short narrative film, we intend to
demonstrate the ways in which each short form has borrowed freely from
the others. It is important that less-experienced screenwriters realize that,
even when the scripting of a narrative, documentary, or experimental film
proceeds in an informal way—using improvisation, for example—the film
itself still needs a purpose and shape to make a coherent whole. This is true
even of stories that may concern themselves primarily with form, or form as
context, as is frequently the case with postmodern films or videos.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SHORT FILM
At the outset of film being created as an art, all films were short. Indeed,
until 1913, all films were 15 minutes long or less. Only after the Italian film

work of Man Ray and Maya Deren to the more contemporary work of Stan
Brakhage, Michael Snow, and Joyce Wieland.
Other developments in the short film coalesced around the documentary
work of John Grierson and his colleagues Basil Wright and Edgar Ansty at
the Empire Marketing Board in England, and around the work of Pare
Lorentz and Willard Van Dyke in the United States. The films these film-
makers produced were issue-driven, encouraging government intervention
in the economy in the United States or promoting the benefits of government
policy in the United Kingdom. None of these films revolved around a par-
ticular event or used a protagonist or an antagonist; their structures are, for
the most part, essay-like rather than narrative. The drama of real-life issues
close to a particular political consciousness motivated these filmmakers, and
their films were often labeled propaganda.
Yet another offshoot of the short film, this time from the commercial stu-
dio of Walt Disney, was the animated short, intended to be shown with fea-
ture films in theaters. These 5- to 8-minute films had a protagonist (often a
mouse, a rabbit, or a wolf) with a strongly defined character and a particu-
lar goal. The story would unfold when the character’s efforts to achieve a
goal were thwarted by a situation or antagonist. The character’s struggle to
achieve his or her goal made up the story of the film. These films abounded
in action and conflict, the dramatic values yielding laughter at rather than
sympathy for the main character and his or her struggle. They were very
successful, and their pattern of narrative plotting and development of char-
acter set the tone and pace for an even shorter film form—the commercial.
Whether they last 3 minutes or 30 seconds, commercials often tell a story
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Introduction 3
based on the pattern established in the animated shorts, which used estab-
lished narrative forms—the tale, the fable, the journey—to convey, and at
times to frame, the narrative. By 1960, filmmakers in Europe had begun to

one supported in large part by cultural ministries. Magazines devoted to
short films as well as festivals devoted exclusively to the form assure, at least
for the medium term, that it will continue to thrive. Internationally, film
schools have provided continuing support for the short film. The interna-
tional organization of film schools, CILECT, has held a biannual student film
festival focused on the European schools, and an annual student festival has
been sponsored by the Hochschule in Munich. Another important biannual
festival is the Tel Aviv Film Festival. All of these festivals are related to the
CILECT organization and focus on the work of students in member schools.
The Oberhausen Festival in Germany and the Clement-Ferrand Festival in
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