HIGH CONCEPT WRITING || ONLINE MASTER COURSE
HIGH CONCEPT WRITING || ONLINE MASTER COURSE
COURSE:
A Six Week Intensive Online Master Screenwriting Course
Studying Personally with Max Adams
Course Dates: 01.09.24
Course Fee: $475 || Course Deposit: $150
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: The Five Elements ||
Lecture: Selling to the Man Upstairs
WEEK TWO: Openings ||
Lecture: The Problem & the Visual
WEEK THREE: Turning Points ||
Lecture: Turn or Burn
WEEK FOUR: Remember to Climax ||
Lecture: The Three Point Essay is Your Friend — But Don’t Forget to Climax
WEEK FIVE: Time Line Pitches ||
Lecture: Time Lines & Cornerstones
WEEK SIX: Know Your Audience ||
Lecture: Writer Speak vs. Mogul Speak
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.
RELATED CLASSES
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High Concept 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.
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.