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Characterization Strategies

Who is your story about? Why have you chosen this person? The answers to these key questions will go far toward helping you write your short script.

The first impulse of writers of short films is not to spend much time on the characters. The thinking is that because you have less time, you therefore need less characterization. This is totally wrong. In fact, your short film relies principally on character. Unlike in the long film, there is little time to deal with the complexity of relationships, but the viewers must feel that your main character has a complexity appropriate to the type of story you choose to tell. For example, in Incident at Owl Creek, it is true that we don’t have a profound understanding of all ...

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