You’re hit by inspiration and you sit down to hammer out pages. Before you know it, you’re twenty pages into the script. Or forty. Or sixty. But the further you get, the more adrift you and the story are.

Every writer knows how euphoric inspiration is, but running with that feeling straight into a draft—skipping the heavy lifting of story building—is the first step to a weak script.

In this 3 week course, we’ll look at key concepts that will help you begin every script with a firm foundation—so the spark of your initial inspiration can carry you all the way to THE END. These concepts include:

• Loyalty—to the logic of your story and to the decisions and behavior of your characters. (Disloyalty to any of these three is the best way to lose your audience!)
• How to uncover the key question that your story seeks to answer.
• The narrative power of a segment.
• Using the midpoint to guide you through the quicksand of the 2^nd act.
• The beauty of the “flaw.”
• Beat sheet, beat sheet, beat sheet.

These concepts—and others we’ll cover—are not designed to create a joy-killing, soulless checklist-of-an-outline. Instead, when you approach your first draft, this story-building work will provide just enough direction to keep you on track—and free your mind for more inspiration when it really matters.
Three-week workshop. Limited to 8 screenwriters per class.  Ages 18+.  $50 discount for Artist Foundry members. (Membership is only $100 / year, visit our membership page for more information.)

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 9, 16 // 7–10 PM // ONE EVENING EACH WEEK FOR 3 WEEKS