do you want to go out and make more short films but you can't because you just don't have any good stories or you do have stories but you would need a huge budget to actually pull them off or you would need a big cast and a big crew that you just don't have access to right now maybe you only have yourself to work with if so then this video is for you because I'm going to show you how to write a short film with a great story that's simple cheap and based on the resources you already have access to which means you can literally go shoot your next film this weekend if you want but to get to this Promised Land of film making freedom we need to fix your approach to writing that's where it all starts first of all simply avoiding the most common mistakes gives you a massive leg up when you're writing a short film so what are the most common mistakes well to me both of these are structural okay structure is the big problem with most novice writers when it comes to short films and the number one issue is just going too big having too big of a story and I actually made a whole video about this before but there is a big difference between a story that's ideal for a feature film and one that works well for a short film unfortunately we're wired to think in terms of feature film stories and feature film structures but that threea structure doesn't necessarily work for every short film and in fact many short films do not use a threea structure it's more simple than that but hold on to that thought I'm going to circle back to it because first I want to talk about one other big problem with short film story structures and that is simply not knowing where you're headed and not knowing why you're headed there and why it's worth going there so to remedy this I think you just need to outline your stories unless you're Stephen King who can just start typing and be like oh I wanted to do a short film about a wolf who's diabetic or whatever you should have more of a plan and know where you're going to with your stories that all starts with the outline if you can give yourself a strong outline then typing out the script from that outline is actually pretty easy for me the outline is is always the hardest part of writing because I need that big picture of the film to work I need to see the whole film from a few steps back make sure that it's working and that I'm putting myself in the audience's shoes all these moments that are happening in the film and then when I have that and I feel like it works I feel very confident about the film I feel very confident about writing it into a script because I know that I'm just set up for Success I've got all the big parts right the big parts are working so who cares if I mess up some little details along the way it's still going to work overall but most beginners either don't do an outline at all or if they do an outline it's really not fleshed out at all and they just are too eager to start typing up the script and unfortunately I think writing needs to be treated more like carpentry where you know measure twice cut once because you're just going to end up creating way more work for yourself and likely propelling yourself down a path that is going to have tons of problems that you could have solved from the bird's eyee view you're still in that outline phase before you started falling in love with your own dialogue and little character quirks and all those little details that you figure out when you're actually typing up the script which brings me to my next point there is a catch 22 in the whole process of learning to write or to improve your writing you want rules you want to be told what to do just like when you're learning any skill but at the same time people don't want to do that writers don't want to teach other writers that way we want to give you kind of open-ended writing advice because we want to see you blossom into an artist and find your own way and hey that's beautiful unfortunately open-ended advice leaves so many ways for writers to go wrong and in my opinion especially when you're starting out you should learn how to paint a simple still life of an apple before you go out trying to make crazy picassos and breaking the rules and doing your own thing you should know the fundamentals of what makes a story work you should know story structure there are fundamental Basics that we can teach and it's almost better to H you in to very restrictive writing style at first so that you can get those reps in get comfortable and start finding your own voice before you transition to being the free-spirited Terren Malik writer that I know you want to be what did you say so to simplify your writing I think you just go more prescriptive until you don't need it anymore in other words you just give yourself a set of rules to follow and they'll be your training wheels for this more sound storytelling and then when you're confident about that and you develop your story muscles you're not going to need them anymore you'll be able to feel when the story is clicking and working or when it's lacking something important these limitations these rules actually breed creativity and when I'm stuck in a story giving myself some rule or limitation always helps me find another way to solve the problem that I wouldn't be able to think of without that limitation but okay where do you get these rules where do you learn the structure of short films we're getting really close I promise but before that is probably the most important piece of the puzzle for anybody who's trying to improve their writing which is you got to make writing fun you're probably not going to ever actually do the damn thing if it's not pleasant for you and for most people I don't care who you are writing does not seem fun at first in fact it's exactly like working out if you haven't been doing it much you dread it you put it off you procrastinate clean your whole house just for an excuse to avoid the anguish of sitting down and writing or working out but what happens when you finally start working out every day you feel so good the rest of the day you feel like hey no matter what happens at my job I still accomplish something for myself this morning sitting in front of the computer or bench pressing whatever you were doing I challenged myself and grew I got stronger wait [Applause] baby I'll have stretches where I'm not writing at all and I cannot get myself to sit down and do it but once I get going it actually becomes my favorite part of the day it becomes fun and the more I build on the haveit the more fun it becomes the stronger I feel it's a better way to live especially when you're trying to become an actual filmmaker so how do you get going how do you build this Habit in the first place well you make it fun you make writing feel like a game because when's the last time you procrastinated on playing your favorite game I never have so how do you make writing feel like a game well games need structure to be fun they need rules otherwise it's chaos not really a game and this can look like anything okay for example I'm going to give myself the rules of this writing game that I have to sit down and write a horror film about a light bulb and I have 10 minutes to do it okay those are my three rules horror film light bulb I got 10 minutes so set up a timer and do it play that game suddenly you'll find that it's actually fun and pretty liberating to write like that so this is my favorite way to kind of get in the mood for writing when I'm in a funk especially I just give myself a little writing game like that to come up with a throwaway story and I say throwaway story but sometimes you end up with something that's surprisingly good from doing a little writing challenge like this but okay I know I've been throwing a lot at you here but how do we bring all these ideas together how do we bring them into a system we can follow to reliably come up with crowd-pleasing short film stories that we could literally go film this weekend well I've been working on this problem for a while and I think I finally cracked the code to stealing everything that I've learned from writing short films over the past 20 20 years into three story structures and 10 very straightforward concrete rules that give you all the big crucial wins for a short film story this is the instant short film blueprint imagine in 2 hours you were able to learn a new approach to writing short films based on the resources and budget that you're working with and write these short simple films that somehow still have really satisfying stories and connect with an audience and you could go out and film one of these this weekend you could repeat the process proc whenever you wanted improving your skills growing your network growing your portfolio of narrative work whenever you want with these instant short films well that's what I've created so proud of this thing I think it is the most effective practical way to improve your short film writing and I might be biased but hey if you don't believe me that's fine fortunately a 100 people have already pre-ordered and beta tested this course and there was literally not a single unsatisfied customer here's what they had to say about it so if you knew that in 2 hours you could level up your short film writing like these folks did what would that be worth to you I know I've spent thousands of dollars on short films with fundamental story problems that this course would have prevented me from making and I've also spent hundreds of dollars on master classes where amazing writers ramble on for a couple of hours but they're just giving me random tips and no actual process or method I can use to improve my own writing but fortunately this course is practical step by step and it won't cost thousands of dollars or even hundreds of dollars I've priced it it at only $79 to make it affordable for anyone who's getting started in film making and even better I'm offering a 25% off discount this week only to celebrate its launch and that knocks the price down to just 59 bucks and along with that discount this week only you'll get access to two bonus writing demos I did a 30-minute brainstorming workshop with two students where we worked through the lessons to flesh out stories based on their actual resources like their available locations and cast plus a 7 24 minute video of me speed running the course writing an entire short film script from scratch as I follow the lessons and it actually turned out pretty good so if you've learned a lot from all the free content on this channel my courses are where I take these ideas to the next level by giving you an action plan to actually get to work and start making some great so don't wait this offer ends this Sunday August 18th just click the link in the description below or scan this QR code to get the instant short blueprint plus the bonus content for only $59 this week only happy riding folks it's make some movies