Think of it this way: Suppose you have a complicated story to tell someone. You'll recite it one way if you have a few hours at your disposal. But imagine you're on a 15-minute coffee break with a coworker instead — or even a three-minute break, for that matter. How will you compress the story to fit into each of these shortened time periods? Certainly not by simply talking faster. Rather, you'll likely leave out extraneous details, avoid sidetracks, and trust that your listener can fill in a few gaps with his own innate sense of continuity.

You're Making a Movie, After All
As you develop the individual beats of your story, remember to think cinematically (see Figure 31). It is not enough for the scenes of your story to seem strong on paper; they must ultimately look and sound compelling on the screen as well. If you have a scene with dialogue, consider the body language of your characters as well as the delivery and tone of their voices, not just the words themselves. If you are writing an action sequence, think about the camera angles you will use and the pacing of the individual shots. Also, as you are developing your story, constantly ask yourself whether you have the time, skills, and tools to effectively produce each scene in your chosen visual format. If a scene requires a high volume of characters and an epic landscape with many weather effects, you might want to consider simplifying or omitting it. In other words, continuously remind yourself not to bite off more than you can chew.

[Figure 31] Remember, you are not creating a piece of literature; rather, you are planning a film, which is primarily a visual medium. Therefore, always think cinematically while you are developing your story beats.

Storytelling Pitfalls That Can Ruin a Good Short Film
Writing a good story is not easy; many things can go wrong. Here are a few pitfalls to try and avoid when constructing your short narrative:

• Too long. We recommend keeping your short to three or four minutes or less. It is difficult enough to capture an audience in the first place, and the longer your story is, the harder it gets to maintain their attention. If you can't describe the gist of your story in a single sentence, it's probably too long.
• Logic errors, unbelievable coincidences, and plot holes. Nothing breaks the immersive quality of a story like a glaring mistake in logic, believability or plot progression. Feature films such as Godzilla, The Last Boy Scout and Hollow Man have so many logic flaws that it's difficult to maintain believability as their plots unfold. The entire premise of Gus Van Zant's Finding Forrester is based on an extremely convenient coincidence, which is a perfectly acceptable device in a comedy or a fantasy film, but can be quite distracting in a supposedly realistic drama. Make sure your story beats make sense before you begin production.
• Inconsistent internal logic. Most animated films ask you to suspend your disbelief to some degree. In doing so, a world is created with its own (possibly altered) rules of physics, gravity and injury immunity. Once the rules of this world have been established, they must not be broken without an acceptable explanation. If you are creating a haunted house film with ghosts that pass through walls, it doesn't make sense to allow your protagonist to successfully punch one of these otherwise intangible beings. You should feel free (and absolutely encouraged) to bend the rules of reality to suit your storytelling needs. Just remember to consistently stay within the lines of the logic boundaries you've drawn — or at least have a very good reason for straying outside of them.
• Too slow. There is no more effective way to permanently lose an audience than to bore them. This is why pacing is such an important storytelling device and should be given thorough attention when writing and editing your film. Audiences will sometimes (temporarily) forgive logic errors and plot holes in the hopes that they will be eventually be explained or resolved, but once a viewer falls asleep you may never get them back.
• Style inconsistencies and inappropriate genre juxtapositions. A slapstick joke, such as a pratfall, in the middle of a poignant, cerebral comedy can irreparably damage the overall style of the piece and break the audience's connection to the story.
• Inconsistent character behavior. Your audience must be able to relate to your main characters or at least find them interesting to maintain their attention. If a character acts in a way that is inconsistent with his normal or expected behavior, he must have sufficient motivation to do so. Your characters need to be true to themselves and not display uncharacteristic behavior without an acceptable explanation. If Santa Claus commits murder, he had better be a villain in disguise or exist within the context of a particularly dark black comedy.