STORYTELLING IN GENERAL

In The Poetics, his great manual on how to write a play, the philosopher Aristotle said, Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity. The cause of this again is that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general. 3 

The early myths of any tribe usually tell about ways in which human beings are affected by the actions of a god or gods, while its fairy tales and legends are apt to describe ways in which human beings are affected by more earthy aspects of the supernatural—say witches, giants, trolls, talking 

To reflect such changes successfully, screenwriters need to be familiar with the classic films of the genre in which they choose to work. This is as true of writing parody—a favorite of film students—as it is of using any other style that deals with inherited material. 

It happens that the two structures that have proved most useful in shaping material for a short screenplay are those considered by scholars to be the very oldest of narrative forms the journey, and what we call the ritual occasion. If you have a main character clearly in mind, and a good idea of what that character s situation is and of what it is that he or she is after, you can often get a script off to a good start simply by choosing one or the other of these as a structure for your story line and seeing where it takes you. 

Two award-winning student shorts from New York University that use this structure to very different ends are Going to Work in the Morning from Brooklyn, written and directed by Phillip Messina, and Champion, written and directed by Jeffrey D. Brown. 

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Although screen stories have unique qualities particular to film, screen stories for both short and long films often share characteristics with other kinds of storytelling. In this chapter, we will discuss those general qualities and suggest links to other forms of storytelling, forms that provide the first and best source of material for short films. 

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