The value of a writing workshop
Whether vocation or avocation, a majority of a writer’s time is spent in solitude. That’s as it should be as we need that direct, unfiltered experience of the story universe and its characters to engage all levels of our creativity — conscious, unconscious, subconscious — in order to make the narrative come alive on the page.
For some writers and on some occasions, however, the single best thing you can do is a workshop: that is develop and write a story with the feedback of other writers within a structured classroom environment.
At Screenwriting Master Class, we have three online writing workshops:
* Prep: From Concept To Outline
* Pages II: Rewriting Your Script
What is the value of a writing workshop? Here are some benefits:
* The structured nature of a class with a schedule for posting pages, providing feedback and recurring teleconferences serves as strong motivation to move your story forward. At a base level, there is nothing like an external set of deadlines to encourage you to write.
* You engage in an essential writing skill-set: constructive criticism. That is you are responsible not only for honestly critiquing story ideas and script pages, you also are expected to generate suggestions to improve stories.
* You get a real-time analysis of your story. Oftentimes a writer will make a key plot choice or character decision that takes them down a path that proves to be the wrong one. Talking out those choices beforehand can save you time and stress.
* The workshop participants create a support group to help individual writers and the group as a whole through the ups and downs of the story-writing process.
* More often than not, workshop participants go on to create a writers group, people who share ideas, even read each others pages. I know of some folks who took one of my very first screenwriting classes over 10 years ago who still have a connection they use.
There are many other advantages of online workshops, so why not check one out? Starting next Monday, Tom and I will be leading the two Pages workshops:
For Pages I: The First Draft (4/16–6/23/2012), Tom Benedek, go here.
For Pages II: Rewriting Your Script (4/16–6/23/2012), Scott Myers, go here.
As always, Tom and I look forward to the opportunity to work with you.
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