How to write a short film script

To write a short film, build the script around one idea, one main character and one clear change, set it in as few locations as possible and keep it short — at roughly a page per minute of screen time, a ten-minute short is about ten pages. The best short scripts start late, cut anything that does not serve the central moment and end on an image the audience remembers.

A short film is not a shrunken feature. A feature has room for subplots, a large cast and a long build; a short has room for a single situation and the turn inside it. Writing one is also the most practical way to learn screenwriting, because you can finish it, film it and see what works.

How long should a short film script be?

A short film script is usually 1 to 15 pages, since one page of screenplay is roughly one minute of screen time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short as 40 minutes or less including credits, but festivals set their own limits and a shorter film is easier to program, so check each festival's rules before you write.

• 1 to 3 pages: a single moment or joke. The easiest length to shoot well, and ideal for a first project.
• 5 to 10 pages: room for a small story with a beginning, middle and end and two or three characters.
• 10 to 20 pages: a fuller short drama or comedy — still one central situation, but with space for a turn in the middle.

Length also shapes the kind of story you can tell. A two-page short is usually one scene with one reversal; a twelve-page short can hold three or four scenes and a small arc for its main character. Write the story at its natural length, then cut a tenth. Short scripts almost always play longer than the writer expects.

How to write a short film: start with one idea

A short film works best when it is built on one idea: a single situation, question or reversal that can be stated in a sentence. If the idea needs two sentences to explain, it may be a feature or a series instead.

• A situation: three strangers stuck in a lift with a parcel that might be ticking.
• A question: what does a man say to the son he has not seen in ten years, in the five minutes before a bus leaves?
• A reversal: a burglar breaks into a house at night and finds the owner waiting up with a pot of tea.

Write a logline for the idea. If you cannot say what changes by the end, you have a premise but not yet a story.

Limit locations and cast

Short films are usually made on small budgets, so the script should favor few locations, few speaking parts and things you can actually get. A single location with two or three actors is a classic shape for a reason: it puts all the pressure on the characters.

1. Write for what you can access — a friend's kitchen, a car, a park at dawn — rather than for what you cannot.
2. Keep speaking parts to two or three. Every extra actor adds scheduling, rehearsal and cost.
3. Avoid night exteriors, crowds, animals, young children and weather unless the story depends on them; each is hard to manage on a small shoot.
4. Let a confined space work for you. The Locked Room in our Screenplay Museum puts three strangers in a stuck lift: one location, one clock and pressure that rises with every line.

Short film structure

A short film usually has three movements — a quick setup, a complication and a turn — compressed into a few pages. There is no time for a long first act: the inciting incident often lands on page one, and the ending often lands on an image rather than an explanation.

1. Setup (the first page or less): who, where and what is wrong, established through action.
2. Complication (the middle): the situation escalates. The character tries something, and it gets harder.
3. Turn (the last page or two): a reveal, a choice or a reversal that changes how we see everything before it.
4. Final image: leave on a picture, not on a line that explains it.

Openings matter even more in a short. Our script Last Call shows a cold open that drops the audience straight into the situation, with no warm-up.

How to write a script for a short film, step by step

1. Find the idea and write the logline.
2. Decide the ending first. A short film lives or dies on its last moment.
3. List the beats — five to eight is plenty for a ten-page script.
4. Write the first draft quickly, in proper screenplay format.
5. Cut the first and last half-page. Most drafts start too early and end too late.
6. Read it aloud with actors or friends, and time the reading.
7. Rewrite for the budget: merge locations, cut characters and simplify anything you cannot shoot.

A short film example

Here is the opening of an original two-page short. In a dozen lines it establishes who, where and what is at stake:

EXT. BUS STATION - DAWN

One bus, engine running. WALTER (60s) waits by its door with a paper bag. His son ADAM (30s) steps down, sees him and stops.

ADAM
Who told you?

WALTER
Your mother's calendar. You're still on it.

The DRIVER leans out and taps his watch.

DRIVER
Five minutes.

The location is one bus stop, the cast is two people and a driver, and the clock — five minutes — gives the scene its pressure. The rest of the short only has to answer one question: what will they say before the bus leaves?

Short film script examples to read

The best preparation for writing a short is reading short scripts. Our Screenplay Museum has six original one-page screenplays, each built around one technique: a cold open, showing not telling, intercutting, subtext in dialogue, voice-over against image and a single location. Each one can be opened as your own project to study, rewrite or extend.

For the longer road from idea to finished feature, see how to write a screenplay.

Write it in Scenaloom

Scenaloom's screenplay editor and its PDF export share one layout engine, so a page on screen is a page in the PDF — useful for judging length at roughly a page a minute. The locations page and the scene list are built from your scene headings, which makes it easy to count locations before you plan a shoot, and shot lists can be exported as CSV sheets. The Free plan needs no card. Start writing.