Saturday Hot Links

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: With the overwhelming response to “Go Into The Story: The Quest” whereby I will select up to four writers to take a 24-week Screenwriting Master Class workshop with me as their mentor — for free — I have gotten a ton of email requesting more background on just what The Quest is. So let me take a whack at that here.

One of the reasons I was interested in starting SMC was because I envisioned a distinctive approach to screenwriting that involved both theory and practice. What I discovered in pulling together the lectures, writing exercises and assignments, and overall structure was something that was different than anything else I had ever seen. The Quest is:

Coherent: Rather than a writer being forced to pick a bit of screenwriting theory from this guru or that, this educational resource or that, the Core content comes from a specific perspective — my own — based on over 25 years experience as a screenwriter and over 10 years as an educator. Every concept presented in Core is tied together by an overall philosophy about screenwriting, writing and creativity.

Comprehensive: The content presented in Core provides writers all the knowledge they need to have to be able to write a professional quality screenplay.

Character-based: Whereas so much of the conversation about screenwriting is focused on structure [and by ‘structure’ most people mean ‘plot’], Core presents an approach that begins and ends with character. In my view, this is not only the best way for a writer to craft unique, compelling, and entertaining multidimensional characters, it’s also the most effective — and frankly logical — path to find your story’s plot.

Career: It is not just about writing a screenplay, it is about educating participants how to approach the craft as a professional, giving them necessary tools and understanding on how to survive as a Hollywood screenwriter.

There are three components to The Quest:

Core: 8 weeks of theory covering Plot, Concept, Character, Style, Dialogue, Scene, Theme, and Time.

Prep: 6 week prep-writing workshop.

Pages: 10 week page-writing workshop.

In essence The Quest is an intensive, immersive screenwriting curriculum. Its principles and practices are grounded in solid theory as well as decades working in the front lines of Hollywood as a screenwriter, and can be carried forward by participants into all their future screenwriting projects.

I originally intended The Quest to be a private workshop where a writer would work with me one-on-one, learning the Core theory, putting that theory to use cracking a story in Prep, then writing a first draft of an original feature length screenplay in Pages.

I started beta testing the workshop earlier this year with a handful of writers. It has been so successful, that’s what inspired me to come up with the “Go Into The Story: The Quest” initiative: How could I make this approach available to more writers?

Here’s the thing: The Quest is not a system. It’s not a program. It doesn’t offer any magical secrets to writing a million dollar spec script. Rather it is a way of looking at and engaging in the script-crafting process, one that respects the fact that stories are organic in nature and are not supposed to be reduced to a formula.

Since The Quest is based on principles and practices I have been using myself and teaching successfully for years, I am confident there is something there. It may not work for everyone. And I’m certainly not saying it is the way to write a screenplay. As noted many times, I don’t believe there is a right way to write.

But in the core of my being, I believe there is something going on with the way of looking at screenwriting as conveyed through The Quest… something special, something unique, perhaps even something groundbreaking.

As I originally intended, I offer The Quest workshop through SMC to writers in a one-on-one arrangement. The writer gets their own private online course site, schedule and structure to motivate them to learn, write and make progress as a screenwriter. It is not cheap, I know that. But I spend a lot of time interacting with each writer: answering questions, providing extensive feedback on their pages, teleconferences, and so forth.

Writing a screenplay involves making thousands of choices. Having a mentor with 25+ years experience can help steer the process toward a successful end point. And what you learn from those creative interactions, you can carry with you for all future projects.

Bottom line: The Quest is for writers who are serious about learning the craft of screenwriting in an immersive and comprehensive way.

For more information, you may go here.

As to “Go Into The Story: The Quest,” I am hugely interested to see how that turns out. I have been overseeing screenwriting workshops for over a decade and know my abilities. To be honest, I have an instinct for this. I am confident the writers who participate in “The Quest” will seriously raise the level of their writing abilities and hopefully come out with a great script which can go to market.

So there you have it: More background on “The Quest.” I continue to work through the loglines [now up to about 2,300 of the approximately 4,000 entries]. There are a number of solid candidates for the workshop. Emails go out to those who make the first cut: Monday, June 25.

Comment Archive

Sign up for more like this.