For screenwriters, which do you prefer, writing a full-length screenplay or writing several short screenplays?

Question

Justify your answers, please. :-)

Answer 1

First, let me say this about screenwriting: Very few short screenplays ever stand a chance of being produced as films. The rare exceptions would be with short documentaries or 'so-called' short films. And these are usually privately funded. On occasion a short film will be funded by a major cable company like HBO or by PBS. But this, too, is the exception. So any writer who wants to make a living in Hollywood would be wise to focus on full-length scripts.

As to myself, I've written four screenplays, two of which were optioned. I've also written shorter, original television pilots. Would I rather write a shorter script? I'll answer that in several ways:

Sometimes writers, directors and producers come up with an idea. It may be cute or unique or high concept but still not enough of a story to fill a complete film. So too many will greenlight the idea anyway and pad the storyline. This, as you know, usually makes for a bad film, often confusing and hollow, silly and poorly reviewed. Still, it happens all the time in Hollywood.

There have been rare occasions where short films are combined into a feature length film (like with 'New Your Stories' or 'Short Cuts') but these can only get produced if you are an 'A' list director who has enough pull in Hollywood.

And now my personal answer:

I would treat, in a perfect world, writing screenplays like writing prose literature. Some stories are short. Some take a full novel to tell. I would write a short script if I thought it was meant to be a short script and, likewise, a full script where the story couldn't fit into a shorter film.

Which would I rather write? Either! It depends on the story itself.

Short scripts are not always easier to write, by the way. It's often very difficult to say more with less. Full-length scripts have the luxury of being able to unfold over many pages. Here again, in a perfect world, I would write a shorter script if the story called for it, a longer one for a larger storyline.

One more point: It you are more comfortable with the shorter script format then you would be much better off focusing on television scripts. A typical shooting script for a television series runs 24 pages long for a half-hour series, 45 for an hour long series script. Whereas an average full-length screenplay runs from 100 to 120 pages because the general rule of thumb for writing scripts is that a screenplay averages out to a minute on film to every written page. With television scripts these are normally shorter to allow of commercials within the half-hour or full hour time frame.

Trust me on this.

Answer 2

I would go with several short screenplays, because you can probable do three or four of these in one year,if you do a long full length if would probable take a year or two.

Answer 3

i WISH it would be a happy ending, but my screenplay would be based on a true story