所謂影詞，就是影戲之詞。它是影戲的操演人影匠所賴以演出的稿本，它在體裁上既像劇本，又像鼓詞和彈詞；然而戲曲史裡從未提到它，而一般說唱曲藝裡也從不把它列入；所以影詞彷彿成了被遺忘的一種俗文學作品。影詞在宋代也被叫作話本，這種話本雖然以代言體為主，也標記人物的賓白科介，卻常間雜敘述句在其中，所以看來又很像彈詞中的一類。影詞通常難得一見，石印刊行的也極有限，筆者積數年蒐羅不過手抄本兩種，石印本十五種，可說得來不易。有鑑於影詞體裁特殊，影詞作品罕見，特在做過《鼓詞敘錄》後，繼作《影詞敘錄》，以饗同好。本文體例一仍《鼓詞敘錄》，而對影詞體裁特色部分提挈較詳，以便與其他說唱文學作品對照比較也。

The so-called Yingtsu refers to the words for a shadow play (a leather-silhouette show). It is the manuscript that shadow artisans rely on to perform a shadow play. In style, it reads like a script as well as drum words. However, it has been neither mentioned in the history of drama nor included in the art of telling-singing performance. Therefore it seems to have been forgotten as a folk literary work. Yintsu was also called Huaben (script) in the Sung dynasty. Although this type of script was written mainly in the form of dialogues, it also included accounts of the motions of characters and narrative descriptions in its text. Thus it looks like a kind of Tantsu (Tan words). Yingtsu was rarely seen and the number of stone-printed scripts was also limited. The author has collected over the past few years two handwritten scripts and fifteen stone-printed ones. In light of its special style and rareness, I continued to work on Narration of Yingtsu, following my completion of Narration Of Drum Words. With the stylistic rules as specified in the Narration of Drum Words, this paper has a detailed account of the characteristics of Yingtsu’s style, to be compared with other literary works in the telling-singing literature.