Screenwriting Workshop

In conjunction with EEI Creative Arts and Elite Prep, Open Screenplay is now offering writing workshop courses for students to build college resumes through writing skill and teamwork. Working in groups, students will produce a professional screenplay for industry and market review and therefore have the ultimate team writing-based extracurricular activity available today

Live sessions. Learn to write a screenplay. Submit to a contest.

Live classes with award-winning screenwriting team
Collaborative writing of a short film screenplay
Live writing lab for editing and assistance from instructors
Submission of final screenplay to scholarship contest

5 Week Lesson Plan

Starting your Screenplay

When you start a screenplay some of the decisions you make on the early components can be some of the most fun but can also be deceptively tricky! This week’s lesson breaks down the initial building blocks and choices that will affect the screenplay’s story and steps to create them that will make writing the entire screenplay easier.

Characters

Characters are the audience’s “way in” to the story and help them understand and experience the entertainment value and impact of the screenplay. Each type of character performs its own specific function in the story, and understanding how to build the characters and make the most organic choices for them are a key aspect of screenwriting.

Story Outline & Structure

Creating a broad plan for your story before jumping into pages makes the writing much easier, and this week’s lesson shows how to do this in an efficient way and also provides a deeper understanding of Story Structure, which is incredibly important to storytelling in general but especially to screenwriting.

Telling your Story in Scenes

Our stories play out in scenes, and choosing which scenes are pertinent to the story can be difficult. This lesson creates a deeper understanding of what scenes are and how best to think about them while creating the tapestry of storytelling in our screenplays.

Writing your Script

The Script (aka pages) is where the moments of the story come alive, and where the choices of the entire screenplay are shown and play out, creating bits of entertainment that the audience is there to see, and include the most memorable parts of what we watch.

More than just screenwriting theory -- put your learnings to use to write a screenplay and submit it to a contest!

Collaborate with others for a fun and interactive learning experience

Live Instructor sessions and real-time Q&A - not pre-recorded videos

Meet your Instructor

Laura Sweeney

Accomplished Filmmaker and Screenwriting Instructor

Laura Sweeney is an award-winning screenwriter, director and actress with an impressive list films that found success across the international film festival circuit. Laura has taught screenwriting for Writers Boot Camp and is a highly demanded script consultant. A graduate of Georgetown University and studied acting with the Moscow Art Theatre.

Course Details

Open Screenplay is offering a first-of-its-kind practical 5-week course in screenwriting that combines the learning experience of live video sessions with collaborative writing where participants learn and practice different aspects of screenwriting, write collaborative screenplays together, get direct feedback on their contributions, and submit to a contest for a chance to get paid and produced.

Next workshop starts Dec 20, 2021

Screenwriting Workshop

Live sessions. Learn to write a screenplay. Submit to a contest.

5 Week Lesson Plan

Starting your Screenplay

Specific topics covered in this week’s lesson include:

Characters

Specific topics include:

Story Outline & Structure

Specific topics:

Telling your Story in Scenes

Specific topics:

Writing your Script

Specific topics:

Meet your Instructor

Meet your Instructor

Laura Sweeney

Course Details