HIGH CONCEPT WRITING || MAY 12
HIGH CONCEPT WRITING || ONLINE MASTER COURSE
COURSE:
A Six Week Intensive Online Master Screenwriting Course
Studying Personally with Max Adams
Course Dates: 05.12.26
Course Fee: $475
Course Location: ONLINE
High Concept Writing is an accelerated screenwriting master class studying online with author & award winning screenwriter Max Adams. During six weeks of advanced study, students will study and analyze the five core elements of concept, study examples in 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 concept assignments with Max Adams.
COURSE SYLLABUS:
WEEK ONE: Defining High Concept ||
Lecture: The Crichton Model
WEEK TWO: Brainstorming ||
Lecture: The Mundane Must Die
WEEK THREE: Using Location ||
Lecture: You Don’t Need “Quirky” When You Have Airforce One
WEEK FOUR: Modifying Character ||
Lecture: Unplugged: 1980s Teenagers or New York Marketing Executives?
WEEK FIVE: High Stakes ||
Lecture: Everything Goes Better With a Man Eating Shark
WEEK SIX: Fantasy ||
Lecture: Harry Potter vs Boring Potter
WEEK SEVEN: Grace Week ||
No Lecture
WE WILL BE COVERING:
- The definition of high concept
- The five cornerstones of concept
- What story elements instantly elevate concept
- What story elements instantly mute concept
- Genre & concept
- Using leads to up concept
- Using opposition to up concept
- Using arena to up concept
- Using stakes to up concept
- Using genre to up concept
- The most overused characters & professions in scripts
- Mental real estate
- Juxtaposition — characters vs concept & arena
- Juxtaposition — characters vs situation & genre
- Big ticket story elements & burying the lead
- And more —
YOU WILL TAKE AWAY:
- An understanding of concept and its building blocks and a set of craft tools that, implemented in your own work, will give you the chops to elevate and strengthen concept in every piece of writing you take on — be it past, present, or future.
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Ratings and Reviews
Gary Weskrna
Max breaks apart the pieces of High Concept into a E=MC² formula that you can scale up or down as needed. When you are in control of what you write, instead of just stumbling onto a good idea, it makes all the difference in the world and she gets you there.
5 people found this helpful.
Leah Baxter
I had a strong concept going in. Then I took Max's High Concept Writing and jumped the stakes! This is my second time taking this course, and both times I had huge breakthroughs! I will never write a script until the concept has been through this process. Highly recommend this course!
5 people found this helpful.
Tonia Kempler
We all hit our pages with the assumption our ideas are solid, many times they need work to make them a High-Concept idea that will stand-out among all the rest. Max has a magic touch when it comes to helping writers analyze their ideas.
7 people found this helpful.
Nektarios Chrissos
I primarily write sci/fi and fantasy; such stories are the epitome of high-concept writing. And this is an element we fantasy writers often botch. Max's class helped me elevate my stories to epicness; high concept in screenwriting isn't big explosions, defiant superheroes and sizzling special effects; it's something else entirely, that Max's course will surely help you handle, as it helped me.
6 people found this helpful.
TESTIMONIALS
Alvaro Rodriguez
Screenwriter
Debi Yazbeck
Screenwriter/Producer/Director
CK Love
Screenwriter/Author
Tony Ferrendelli
Screenwriter
About Max Adams
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, former Nicholl reader and judge, 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 TheAFW — 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.
Max has been writing, selling, mentoring, and teaching for two decades. Four or her workshoppers have won Nicholl Fellowships from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. Many of her students and workshoppers have gone on to option, sell, publish, and produce work.
I had just finished a draft of my first screenplay – a year’s long project – and it was time to move on. Okay, I was stuck. Max’s High Concept class gave me tools to elevate story components, highlighted where I need to focus on story conception, and resulted in at least 2 new, solid stories ideas that I can pursue from here. Thanks, Max!