How to Write a Script

How to Write a Script

Next date: 10th April, 2012

This course is designed for anyone wanting to write a script for film or TV. You don't need any prior experience - just a burning desire to tell a story with pictures. The course will teach story structure, script format, scene construction - and everything else that budding screenwriters need to know.

Keeping it simple, keeping it friendly

Our online course is designed to be simple to fit into your life, simple to understand ... and very friendly.

Simple to fit into your life. Because the course is online, you can dip in and out whenever you want. As long as you have a few hours to spare each week, it doesn't matter what other commitments you have, or which times of day are most convenient for you.

Simple to understand. Our online course course environment is straightforward. If you can turn a computer on, your technical skills are probably fine. All our courses are hosted on our social networking site, The Word Cloud, so you can pop over right now to see how it feels.

Friendly. Our approach is highly interactive and supportive. You'll have your tutor to help you, but you'll also get loads of support and encouragement from your classmates.

Course Tutors

Your course tutors will be Amber Trentham (left top) and Erin Cramer (left bottom).

Amber has worked as a script reader/editor for Working Title, ICM, the UK Film Council, and Gorgeous. Her commisioned feature scripts include Dead Devil Donkey, The Madolscents, Available Light, UFO and Future Perfect. She has run film festivals and tutors script writing. She is represented by Casarotto Ramsay.

Erin is a screenwriter who has had projects in development with Working Title, BBC Films, Celedor, Ecosse, Hart Sharp, Wildgaze Films, Finola Dwyer Productions, Wall to Wall, and other companies. Her short film, Bad Bosses Go to Hell, was produced by Killer Films and sold widely. She teaches screenwriting at Met Film School and London Film School.

Amber and Erin are hugely experienced tutors and editors.  

Bookings info

Duration: 6 week course

Next start date: 10th April, 2012

Fee: £295

Syllabus: See detailed info below

 Each week, you will get an introductory video, detailed lecture notes, a discussion topic, a homework assignment and feedback on that assignment. In addition, all class members are encouraged to chip in themselves. Ask questions that have been bothering you. Get into debates with your tutors and classmates. Offer each other feedback. Set challenges. Have fun!

How to book: See schedule and bookings info

More about our online courses: Click here

Any questions?: Ask away

Course Syllabus

Introductory Period
Before the course starts, you'll be able to watch an introductory video from the course tutor, get to know your fellow students in a dedicated area of the Word Cloud site.

Week One: Ideas
We will begin by looking at how to select your film idea and the importance of putting this idea in the context of the market place. How to understand genre and the creative limitations genre entails. How can you use genre to help rather than hinder?  We will discuss how to think about writing for an audience and tailoring your idea to fit your budget. It’s so important to be realistic from the start and to face the facts of the movie business: devise your screen idea with a view to getting the film made.

Week Two: Story structure.
First of all we will look at the classic three act narrative structure. Then we will focus on story archetypes and how they work to connect audience to screen. We will look at ‘the hero’s journey’ as a mythic template for story structure and character journey structure. Also we will examine the subversion of classic narrative structures: Flashback / flash forwards techniques, stolen jeopardy, non-linear narratives, episodic structure and the various pitfalls. You will also be looking at act turning points, and how they are the dramatic building blocks of the screenplay.

Week Three: Plot
An in-depth look at Plot and its' relationship to Character/ Genre/ Theme/ Tone. Looking at how all these elements interact and inform one another. The alchemy at play. You will examine the relationship between genre and audience expectation, how genre informs plot, which in turn informs depth of character.

We will look at plot driven narrative, and how it differs from character driven narrative. And how subplots feed into this and need to correlate thematically to the central plot.

Week four: Character
This will be a more in depth look at character and how to develop your screen characters. We will explore the notion of a character arc by examining various iconic screen characters, from Travis Bickle to Luke Skywalker to Thelma and Louise. This will provide a good spring board to discuss the idea of character back story and subtext, and how to build this into your screen characters.

Week five: How to format a screenplay
Though this might seem dry, it is one of the biggest pitfalls for new writers. If a script isn’t formatted properly, it won’t be taken even half seriously. Sad but true. You will be given advice on all the rules and regulations of how to write a scene, how many scenes to write, how long to write them, the ratio of action to dialogue in the scenes and so forth.  This will be the most technical module, the least imaginative, but the most fundamental!

Week six: Consolidation
The long journey – we will look lastly at what the writing process is, what to expect and how you go about traversing the development of an idea into a script into a film.

Tying right back to the first session, you will explore the various avenues open to new writers, where to go from here. You will be aiming to create the screenplay’s first basic pit stop – the two page outline of the film, which is the smallest document that one can write to try to score development finance.