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Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect, Fifth Edition stands alone among screenwriting books by emphasizing that human connection, though often overlooked, is as essential to writing effective screenplays as conflict. This ground-breaking book will show you how to advance and deepen your screenwriting skills, increasing your ability to write richer, more resonant short screenplays that will connect with your audience.

Award-winning writer and director Claudia Hunter Johnson teaches you the all-important basics of dramatic technique and guides you through the challenging craft of writing short screenplays with carefully focused exercises of increasing length and complexity. In completing these exercises and applying Johnson’s techniques and insights to your own work, you will learn how to think more deeply about the screenwriter’s purpose, craft effective patterns of human change, and strengthen your storytelling skills.

This 20th Anniversary Edition features 11 short screenplays, including Academy Award Winning Barry Jenkins' (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk) luminous short film, My Josephine.

This accompanying companion website features the completed films updated to include two new award-winning screenplays Killer Kart and The Great Wall of Vicky Lynn and two downloadable bonus chapters with the screenplays for The Making of Killer Kite and Work in Progress.

Book Information Complimentary Exam Copy