Storytelling and Social Media: Writing Short Form Drama Content

Want to stand out on social media but have tried every trend going?

Why not write your own fictionalized series, grab some friends to act out the parts and film the results yourself on your phone. Sound outlandish? It's not. I see an increasing number of creators and small businesses doing this to garner (and crucially, retain) attention online.

Expanding your creative repertoire by, for example, dramatising your client problems, could help attract eyeballs on social media and thus grow your business. The idea stems from a new phenomenon currently sweeping film and television industries called micro drama or "verticals".

Micro dramas are currently experiencing massive popularity and are tipped to grow into a multi-billion dollar format by 2030 in their own right. But to produce your own, home-grown variety, you don't necessarily need massive financial investment or studio backing. By keeping it simple, cheap and cheerful, you can tap into the addictive nature of this episodic content to attain your personal, professional or business goals.

What are verticals or micro dramas?

They are serialized, short-form content designed to be consumed on mobile phones. Filmed in a vertical format, these scripted shows are like snack-sized TV series. The tone is usually melodramatic; think fast-paced soap operas with storylines that include lots of twists & surprises.

The story engines of these shows involve a high-stakes premise with an inbuilt, often a fairly outrageous hook at their core. The currently top-performing titles include Fake Married to My Billionaire CEO, Secret Surrogate to the Mafia King, and The Secret Bride. Obviously, themes of romance, deception and revenge feature heavily, with cliffhangers at the end of each short episode driving the audience to devour the next one. Some titles attract a huge following, like China’s From Rags to Rank One, which gained 238 million views in a single day (as reported by Variety), over 1 billion cumulative views and averaged 77 minutes of watch time per user.

The most popular micro dramas are to be found on dedicated apps like ReelShort, FlexTV, DramaBox and GoodShort, but there’s a growing number on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. But there's no need to limit short form drama to *just* romance, especially if you're interested in adapting this format to business purposes. There’s lots of scope to experiment with other genres and explore a variety of themes.

 

Storytelling and social media: why it works

Incorporating micro drama into your networking or marketing strategy is an ingenious way to attract attention on social media. Here are three reasons why verticals could work for you personally or your business:

1. If you’re trying to be an influencer or launch a personal brand, it’s a different type of content to experiment with. Are your posts not cutting through? Maybe you don’t feel completely comfortable doing “talking to camera” reels? Scripting fictional, serialized shorts based on your experiences could be a solution. It might even offer more seamless opportunities for brand collaborations.

2. If you’re a small business, serialized video content can often help build a following much faster than conventional methods. Due to emotional attachment to the characters (when done right), audiences quickly become invested in the storylines. This means higher views, higher engagement, and potentially higher sales.

3. If you’re looking to showcase your screenwriting chops to the world, this is a significantly lower barrier to entry than trying to get your work onto bigger screens. Canvassing friends to play the different parts (or paying actors eager for the experience), then filming and uploading the results yourself to a platform could help you reach an audience. In the meantime, it also offers invaluable, immediate feedback. Test out ideas, concepts, scenes, dialogue and monitor the results using analytics.

Combine the popularity of this new-ish format, the forces of storytelling and social media to grow not only your skills in screenwriting, but also your personal brand or small business.

Are you interested in learning more about storytelling techniques that power verticals/micro drama (and really, all successful film and tv series)? Register for our next Creating Micro Drama Webinar & Workshop.

If you're interested in getting a micro drama series written by a professional TV writer, please reach out for further details.

Story Inkubator was founded by writer, scriptwriter and teacher, Kristina Jilly, an Australian living in Central Europe who's written for HBO Europe and RTL Television. A teacher at the University of Applied Sciences in Upper Austria, Kristina also writes online content about the art of storytelling and topics that inspire creativity. 

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