CHARACTER WRITING || ONLINE MASTER COURSE
CHARACTER WRITING || ONLINE MASTER COURSE
COURSE:
A Six Week Online Master Screenwriting Course
Studying with Max Adams
Course Dates: 09.10.24
Course Fee: $475 || Course Deposit: $150
Course Location: ONLINE
Character Writing is an accelerated screenwriting master class studying online with author & award winning screenwriter Max Adams. During six weeks of advanced study, students will analyze the cornerstones of character, study produced scripts and film clips provided in class, complete advanced course assignments and exercises, and participate in weekly online discussions reviewing and analyzing course materials and character assignments with Max Adams.
COURSE SYLLABUS:
WEEK ONE: Character Intros & Set Ups ||
Lecture: Authorial Intrusion is Your Friend
WEEK TWO: Protagonists vs. Antagonists ||
Lecture: Chatting With Aristotle or, Whose Story Is It?
WEEK THREE: Empathy vs. Likability ||
Lecture: Use Flaws Don’t Lose Flaws
WEEK FOUR: Using & Defining Character Goals ||
Lecture: No Goal Equals No Character
WEEK FIVE: POV Characters ||
Lecture: Taking A Page From Terry Rossio
WEEK SIX: Secondary Characters & Subplots ||
Lecture: Illuminate or Perish
WEEK SEVEN: Grace Week ||
No Lecture
WE WILL BE COVERING:
- Cornerstone elements of character
- Who the story belongs to & why
- Protagonist want vs protagonist need
- Characters & features
- Characters & series
- Character & plot
- Subplot characters
- Character introductions that impact
- Point of View characters
- Antagonists & plot focus
- The three primary character arcs
- Supporting characterization with dialogue
- Supporting characterization with action
- “Likable” vs “Interesting”
- And more —
YOU WILL TAKE AWAY:
- Actionable craft tools that, implemented in your own scripts, will immediately improve your existing & future feature and television scripts, ceating stronger characters who are more dynamic and arresting on the page and on the screen — creating stronger appeal for readers & industry professionals considering material for option, purchase, development, attachment and production.
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Questions? Send us email:
Character Writing Email:
Ratings and Reviews

Your Instructor
MAX ADAMS is an author and award winning screenwriter. She has written for Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Universal Pictures — and a couple others to remain unnamed because no one around here wants to get black listed.
Max is a former volunteer AFI Alumni reader and WGAw online mentor, has appeared as a speaker at, among other places, AMPAS, USC, and Film Arts Foundation, is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at University of Utah and a former lecturer & instructor at New York Film Academy, is the author of The Screenwriter’s Survival Guide AND The New Screenwriter’s Survival Guide, is the founder of two international online screenwriting workshops and has the dubious distinction of having been dubbed “Red Hot Adams” by Daily Variety for selling three pitches over a holiday weekend — which made her agents cry.
[In a good way.]
She answers now to both “Max” and “Red Hot” in crowds and dog parks.
Testimonials
Jennifer Mulligan
Screenwriter
Max Adams has been a keen mentor, champion and cheerleader. Her online classes have provided me with very specific and important screenwriting tools. My short script, Minerva’s War, was a 2014 Finalist at the Lady Filmmakers Film Festival in Beverly Hills as a direct result of learning and applying these techniques.
You might fall in love with reading screenplays, with learning what a powerful character introduction is, with the process of writing and it might take over your whole life. Max is a genius. Plain and simple. And, I will be in her next two classes.