Course: An Introduction to Screenwriting

Our four educators share what they’re looking for in a cinematic story. They share their experiences about writing for a cinematic form and soon discover that not everyone approaches their …

This article will focus on the format that’s most commonly seen in contemporary movies, the causal, character-driven “Three Act Structure”. While modern films don’t have intervals or ‘real’ acts, the …

Michael Lengsfield, Lead Educator, welcomes you and introduces the course. In the first week, we’ll take a broad look at story and what makes a screen story, developing our own …

Michael Lengsfield starts by taking a broad look at screen stories. Anyone who’s been to the pictures will have a perfectly good notion of how screen stories operate. For example, …

What is our process for creating a scene? In this discussion each educator shares his or her process for creating a scene.

In this second week, let’s continue to work with the story we developed for our Five Finger Pitch, which should loosely conform to the model for the character-driven three act …

The panel discusses a range of alternate story structures and considers structure in relation to story architecture, audience expectations, the immersive medium and interrupted narratives. It’s over to you: see …

In the last discussion of story structure, we looked at the dominant form in theatrical films, the character-based causal Three Act Structure. Now we’ll look at other approaches to story …

Our educators review together the purpose of each act in the common Three Act Structure, the dominant form of story telling for film. It’s over to you: see if you …

Now that we have a basis for a story, we will consider the idea of “story structure.” It refers to the process of organising the story and constructing the screenplay’s …

Michael Lengsfield describes his Five Finger Pitch technique and suggests it as one way to quickly summarise your story. The aim is to find a story shape you can confidently …

When developing a story, we all need time to cast about for the material that interests and excites us. At a certain point, however, it helps to work some ideas …

This step gives you the opportunity to find out a little more about the team that will be guiding you through this course. It might be a good idea to …

Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland welcomes you to An Introduction to Screenwriting. As a professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, Giles introduces …

Screenplay Form and Style It helps to use professional scripts as a guide, so read lots of scripts. The BBC Writers Room offers a wide selection of sample scripts. Check …