Introduction to Scriptwriting with Abigail Webber

4 week course

Starting 30th October

Wednesdays 8 - 10pm

£80 or £75 for Members and concessions

What do you need to bring: A pen and something to write your ideas on.

This is a writing course for anyone who’s interested in finding out more about writing for the screen, or has some experience but would like to refresh and hone their skills. It will be run over four weeks, with two-hour sessions on Saturday mornings from 10.30am to 12.30pm, commencing on 30th October 2024.

Week One: Idea Generation, Story Structure and Formatting

You’ll learn how to expand your idea from a tiny seed to a full-fledged, structured story for film or television. We’ll also discuss the importance of theme and tone, and look at script formatting and how to produce a script to a professional standard.

Week Two: Character

You’ll already have begun developing your protagonist in Week One, but this session will look in more depth at how to create complex, compelling and original characters and weave their journey into the structure of the story. We’ll continue to explore structure, as it is intrinsically tied to character, and your project idea will be starting to take shape.

Week Three: Dialogue

This week we’ll look at giving your characters a voice: how to make them sound authentic, not too exposition-heavy, and distinct from each other. A big part of this is subtext, and remembering the ‘show, don’t tell’ maxim. We’ll look at different approaches to dialogue-writing and work through a variety of examples and writing exercises.

Week Four: Visuals & Feedback Workshop

This session will focus on visual grammar: the tools to enhance your story visually such as mise en scene, flashback, montage, intercutting etc. By this stage you’ll have a clear outline of your project and scenes and/or sequences written: this will be a chance to get constructive feedback on what you’ve got so far, and recommendations for continuing to develop the idea.

All sessions will have a strong practical element, so you’ll be writing each week and, as well as the final feedback session, there’ll be the opportunity to discuss work in progress at any stage.

Programmed in partnership with the Sir John Hurt Film Trust.