Creative Writing: Introduction to Screenwriting Workshop

Learning to write a movie script is easier than it sounds. With the right knowledge and skills, you can turn your ideas into interactive stories that will captivate audiences around the world! Strong readers make the "movie" of a book in their minds and these lessons were created to turn those ideas into a viable script. We will be learning all about the fundamentals required for writing a movie script and pitching it, which can also assist students who want to write scripts in other media such as television or comics.

To better understand the scriptwriting process, we will be workshopping the first five pages of a script while learning format, structure, and plot development. Students will do most of the writing outside of class time and we will spend our time together reviewing slides, discussing their work, applying the writing techniques, and doing activities.

I would describe it as highly adaptable. I do not really prefer one teaching method or one way of interacting with the students in the classroom environment. Because in my opinion, each class is different, so is each lesson, and a good teacher should always adjust their teaching to their audience, the level of discipline in the class, the difficulty of the lesson, and so on. I simply prefer an individual approach to teaching, and I alternate between being an authority, demonstrator, facilitator, and delegator. 

Below is a rough breakdown of what we will cover over the course of the class:

Week 1: Prologue
Learning story structure and reviewing scripts used in TV production.

HW: Come up with 3 story ideas


Week 2: The Pitch
Learn what is a high concept and the different types of pitches ( Standard vs Elevator Pitch). 

HW: Write story ideas in a pitch format


Week 3: Action!
Start developing story ideas and formatting the title page of a script.

HW: Write the title page of your script


Week 4: Writing a scene
Learn the formatting structure of writing a scene.

HW: Write the first scene in your script


Week 5: More techniques
How to write a montage, camera angles, and an intercut.

HW: Continue writing script


Week 6: Workshop/Progress review

HW: Continue writing script


Week 7: Revising 
How to decide what works and doesn’t in your script.

HW: Edit script


Week 8: Presentation
Group reading and discussion on the first few pages of each students’ script.