Pre-Script Pro-Strategy Screenwriting Seminar

Build your toy box by identifying defining moments and credos from life experiences and movies. Determine recurring themes and values to guide your screenwriting through rewrites, production, and audience resonance.

Define premise as the screenwriting toolbox that answers the three questions—who is the protagonist, what does he want, and why should we care—while testing obstacles, conflict, stakes, and high concept.

Explore how to elevate premise and concept in screenwriting, analyze loglines, cusp of an era, zeitgeist, daring point of view, and universal themes through film examples.

Categorize action, adventure, sci-fi, and fantasy genres by core questions, ticking clocks, and world-under-siege stakes, using Seven Samurai, The Matrix, Star Wars, and The Godfather as fairy tale frame exemplars.

Define your genre through epic, crime, thriller, or mixed forms, compare with similar films, and use comparables to shape premise, audience fit, four-quadrant potential, and budget expectations.

Structure frames your plot with a two-journey protagonist—outer goals and inner need—guided by the three-act flow of attraction, anticipation, satisfaction, and self-revelation.

Explore the five stages of grief through a surreal, humorous scene, using a quicksand mishap and offbeat dialogue to illustrate emotional shifts in screenwriting.

Learn the 12 sequence structure for screenwriting, from act one setup and inciting incident to act two complications, the midpoint revelation, and the final battle revealing the protagonist’s moral change.

Explore the 12 sequence structure for screenplays, with act one to three dynamics, rising action and climax, plus a practical development process using short story form and shot headings.

Identify with your character to achieve verisimilitude and drive the story through a super objective and scene objectives. Emphasize actions over activities, adjustments, and emotional substitution to guide the actor.

Character grows from observable traits and attitude, revealed through coping mechanisms, wants, and needs. Define and reveal characters through pressure-driven choices, psychological, moral, or tactical conflicts, and clear purposes.

Explore the distinction between protagonists and heroes, their on-screen goals, and how conflicts, likability, and emotional stakes shape character arcs, from traveling angels to franchise heroes.

Emphasize that protagonists need active antagonists who challenge them and drive growth. Portray the antagonist as human, complex, and able to mirror the hero's fears and power.

Learn script formatting basics: use interior or exterior scene headings, present-tense action, and concise descriptions; establish character introductions, stakes, and beats that serve the story's theme.

Elevate your plot by applying the reverse prop to build clear cause-and-effect in every scene, and place characters across wilderness, town, and city social stages toward an anti-hero arc.

Explore how theme expresses story values, with self-sacrifice and the shift from arrogance to humility, and learn to brainstorm motifs, symbols, and genre to elevate theme.

Analyze thematic lies in romantic comedies, including persistent stalking, deceit, the 'Oliver fallacy,' and commodification of relationships, and highlight counterexamples toward healthier portrayals.

Explore perma, a happiness theory of positive emotion, life satisfaction and meaning, engagement, and resilience, and learn to weave shared connection and transcendence into compelling screenplays.

Identify and avoid common screenwriting pitfalls, from weak desire lines and overlong exposition to deus ex machina, while outlining conflict via a 12-sequence or five-act structure.