Story Development for Screenwriters

Course Details

How many times have you gone to the movies in the past year and thought, "I can tell a story better than that!" Truth is, you can. After all, you write stories of one kind or another all the time. What you don't know yet is how to write and develop that story so that it works on screen. It's not as easy as it looks, even for those of us who have been doing it for years. It's much less mysterious, however, and much more fun, once you learn (and master) basics like working from character, incorporating premise, building stakes, and more. Through various exercises, such as breaking down the structure of several popular films, developing an original feature-length screenplay together, and a Q&A session, this class will give you a working knowledge of all of these techniques. And once you learn these important screenwriting tools, you'll not only have an easier time writing (and rewriting) your screenplay, but you?ll also write each successive screenplay more effectively than the one before.

• The basic steps of the hero's journey
• The mythic journey of some of your favorite movies
• How to develop rich and interesting characters
• Important questions to ask when developing your story
• The role premise plays in a screenplay

Instructor Bio

Michael Zam's Courses

Michael Zam is a screenwriter, script doctor, and writing coach. For five years he ran NYU's adult creative writing department, where he created and developed the program's very successful screenplay certificate program. His screenplay, Lizzie Walker Slept Here, is currently being prepped for shooting next summer in Ireland. He's written comic essays and articles on film and media for a variety of publications, including Time Out, Details, INDIEwire, and as a pop culture critic he has been quoted on everything from the Golden Globes to sex on film sets in The Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning Sun, USA Today, and CNN, among many others. He studied filmmaking at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and holds a Master's Degree from the American Film Institute, where he also won the top screenwriting prize, among several of his screenwriting citations.

Testimonials

I emerged from the 12-Week Screenwriter with a screenplay that I was very happy with and a very solid idea of how I could improve it. Michael provided us with a framework that helped me see the gaps in my original concept, and find ways to fill them. His comments and those of my classmates were consistently insightful and thought provoking, and helped me push the story much further than I could have alone -- and the chance to watch other people's screenplays come to life, as well as the opportunity to think about their evolving work critically, taught me a lot about story telling and the writing process. -- Jean-Francois Chenier

"After working on a novel for more than a year, I took Michael Zam's class, and was able in a timely fashion to evolve a structure for the same material. Rather than floundering around, I was able to apply his system to pinpoint my rather complicated story and discover an ending I couldn't know in advance. Michael was consistently kind, accurate, insightful, encouraging, and pragmatic -- not just about our work succeeding, but our chances in the real screenwriting world. I recommend this class to anyone with a story and a committment to realize it." -- Susan Weinstein

"At the start of the class, I was dubious that we would really be able to crank out a draft by the end of the session, but almost everyone did. The upfront character and plot development work that Michael had us do in the first few weeks really helped when it came to actually writing the screenplay. His insightful feedback and constant encouragement also played a big part in motivating me to finish it. And, we all enjoyed the class so much that we lobbied mediabistro to create a new one specifically to revise the first drafts we now had in hand. If that doesn't say something about the quality of the class, I don't know what does." -- Elizabeth Kricfalusi

"Michael Zam is great. He's EXTREMELY supportive and also quite knowledgeable about screenwriting, and he made himself highly available to all of us, had positive constructive criticism throughout for everyone involved." -- Daniel Tynan