What I’ve learned about … telling a story quickly

By Sarah Heeringa, November 21, 2006 @ 2 am

Fleeting Beauty tells the story of the spice trade in just ten minutes as an Indian immigrant (Nandita Das) creates spice maps on a willing canvas (William Wallace)

Films, Hitchcock once said, are not a slice of life, but a slice of a slice. Short films, says screenwriter and producer Shuchi Kothari, are a tiny sliver of that slice

Shuchi Kothari

Originally from Ahmedabad, India, Kothari did her PhD in Texas, worked as a script consultant and doctor in the US and India and now lectures in screen writing and media studies at the University of Auckland. Her portfolio includes the 2001 TV documentary A Taste of Place, the co-written screenplay Apron Strings which won the Bright Ideas Grant from the New Zealand Film Commission and is under development by the Signature Films Scheme, and the screenplay Bollywood Bride for Los Angeles-based Jag Mundhra Films. Her first short film, Fleeting Beauty, which she wrote and co-produced, was selected for the New Zealand, Valladolid and Montreal Film Festivals as well as the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. It’s the history of the spice trade in ten minutes.

Just the woman, then, to get a message across quick-smart. Here’s her tips on telling a story quickly.

Marry form and function

It’s much harder to write short than long, but like the difference between telling a joke and an epic poem, some stories are best to be brief. I suggest to my students that rather than shoe-horning all their big ideas into a feature, they take one aspect and illuminate it.

Make a little go a long way

Brevity is not only the soul of lingerie. Even though there’s not too much room for character development in a short, a lot can be conveyed by exploring an aspect of human behaviour, or a sliver of a huge moment. Achieving this requires a lightness of touch; badly done, and seven minutes can feel like 70.

Most narratives can be reduced to a single idea

What’s the story’s central notion? In Fleeting Beauty, it’s that the scars of history have traditionally been felt on women’s bodies. Only this time, an Indian woman is telling the story, she’s doing it by tracing lines in spice on her lover’s back, and he’s a Pakeha man.

Match the build-up with the payoff

There’s pressure to end films, shorts in particular, with a twist. Like dinner party stories, the bigger the build-up, the greater the expectation. With character-based pieces, a plot twist may not be appropriate. Instead you might take the emotion to an unexpected place. A lot can be made to happen in ten minutes.

– As told to Sarah Heeringa