Class Description
In this interactive 10-week workshop, writers will learn the art of script writing while working on either a feature-length film or a pilot for a television show. With Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and YouTube redefining what the word “television" means, the boundaries between TV and feature films have become less clear. Television shows have evolved into long-form movies lasting dozens of hours and told over the course of years, creating some of the most compelling stories of our time. Whether your movie is two or fifty-two hours long, a movie is a movie, and this class seeks to break down the barriers between television and the movies (or better, show that they have already gone away).
Students will learn about the differences and similarities between film and episodic television, explore new media, and discuss how the medium is evolving. We will discuss screenplay format, as well as how to structure a scene, create compelling characters, write dialogue, and overcome writer’s block. Students will work on creating a backstory (or “show bible”) to help make the world of their story more complex and populate this world with fascinating and believable characters.
During the class, we will analyze the structure of several films and episodic television shows to help students gain a complex understanding of stories that follow the Hollywood paradigm as well as those that defy it.
Students can expect to leave the class with a detailed outline, several completed scenes crucial to the screenplay, and either a completed first act of a feature-film or the first half-hour of a television pilot. Writers we will study include:
Jordan Peele (Get Out)
Jenji Kohan (Orange is the New Black)
Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot)
Christopher Nolan (Inception, Memento)
Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation)
Sarah Gertrude Shapiro (Unreal)
Donald Glover (Atlanta)
Kumail Nanjiani, Emily V. Gordon (The Big Sick)
Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water)
Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant)
Jill Soloway (Transparent)
Rashida Jones (Nosedive)
Did you know that we have scholarships available for all GrubStreet classes? To apply or find out more, check out our scholarships page.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.