Fundamentals of Story

SCRIPT X 451.1

Choose and develop your best story ideas as you incorporate classic story principles to craft a powerful, memorable script.

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What you can learn.

  • Examine structure, subtext, crisis, and climax to enhance your story's dramatic arc
  • Determine point of view and character development to enhance storytelling
  • Apply creative tools to stimulate your creative process and avoid cliche
  • Complete exercises and give and receive feedback in class

About this course:

Whether you want to be a writer for film, television, or theatre, a dynamic understanding of story is absolutely necessary for success. In this course, you learn how to choose and develop your best story ideas while examining point of view, structure, character development, dialogue, subtext, crisis, and climax using classic and contemporary scripts as models. Tools to stimulate your writing incorporate acting improvisation as well as photography, painting, and music. Individual and group writing exercises are shared in a supportive atmosphere with guided rewriting as a core task in the course. At the end of the class, you're able to integrate classic story principles in every facet of your work as well as use these tools to analyze your own writing and take it to the next level.

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