Break your story in prep

In December 2010, when Tom Benedek and I were just about to launch Screenwriting Master Class, I posted this on the blog:

Have you ever started a script and not finished it?

Has it ever taken you 4, 5, 6 months or more to finish a script?

Have you ever gotten so lost when writing a story, you became incredibly frustrated?

Chances are you did not do enough story preparation.

Don’t you think it’s time to approach writing like professionals do and break your story in prep?

Screenwriting Master Class offers a 6-week online Prep: From Concept to Outline writing workshop, a step-by-step way to develop your story, enabling you to crack it before you type FADE IN.

The beauty of this approach is three-fold:

• You can go into the page-writing part of the process with confidence because you’ve already broken the story.
• Since you won’t be overwhelmed with finding the story when writing pages, you can focus your creativity where it should be — characters, dialogue, themes, mood, pace, etc.
• By devoting six weeks to prep, you will almost assuredly cut the overall amount of time you spend writing your script and increase the odds you will finish your draft.

Here are a few testimonials from writers who took the Beta version of the Prep: From Concept to Outline course I recently finished teaching:

“You gave us all just the right amount of ideas, encouragement, and support to discover, develop, and design a real workable blueprint to take into the page writing.”– David Broyles

“The Prep class has given me a set of practical tools to use to take the bare glimmer of a concept to outline in six weeks.” — James Tichenor

“I honestly can’t wait to get started on this script now, and to use what I’ve learned in Prep to go back and rewrite other scripts.”– Paul Labich

Approach your writing like most of the pros do: Break your story in prep!

For more information, go here.

In the nearly three years I’ve been teaching through Screenwriting Master Class, I’ve led 13 Prep workshops. It has proved to be not only one of the most popular classes we offer, it is also one of the most successful. Why? Because it works! If you fully engage yourself in the six stages of this process, you will end up with an outline you can use as a springboard for writing your screenplay.

Moreover I hear from writers frequently who have taken the workshop, how they continue to adapt and use it on other stories. I’m not saying it’s the way to break a story, however it has proved to be a viable approach for many writers.

Six lectures written by me.

Six writing assignments which take you from 
a Protagonist Character Treatment all the way to a Narrative Throughline outline.

Six due dates to spur you to make progress on your story.

Online forums with feedback from myself and your fellow writers.

Weekly teleconferences for yet more feedback.

I will be leading the 14th section of the Prep workshop beginning a week from today. Here’s your chance to give yourself a holiday gift: A fully worked-out story into which you can leap on January 1st, a great way to start the New Year typing FADE IN with confidence you know where you’re going.

For more information, go here.

As always, I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!