DIALOGUE WRITING || JULY 7
DIALOGUE WRITING || ONLINE MASTER COURSE
COURSE:
A Six Week Online Master Screenwriting Course
Studying with Max Adams
Course Dates: 07.07.26
Course Fee: $475
Course Location: ONLINE
Dialogue 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 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 dialogue assignments with Max Adams.
COURSE SYLLABUS:
WEEK ONE: Reality vs. Dialogue Reality ||
Lecture: But That’s How People Really Talk!
WEEK TWO: Monologues vs. Withholding ||
Lecture: When to Go Shakespeare
WEEK THREE: Rhythm & Cadence ||
Lecture: Colloquialism, Friend or Foe?
WEEK FOUR: Character & Dialogue ||
Lecture: Why Does Molly Sound Like Mary?
WEEK FIVE: Subtext & Depth ||
Lecture: The Duck Metaphor; Or, Why Woody Allen Was a Writing God
WEEK SIX: Voice Over & Narration || Lecture: Film vs. Audio Book
WEEK SEVEN: Grace Week ||
No Lecture
WE WILL BE COVERING:
- Cadence, rhythm & speaking patterns
- Monologues — when to go long & when to cut it short
- Exposition & narrative dramatic tension
- Repetition — when it works & when it kills
- How to carry a static scene with dialogue
- Turning scenes with dialogue
- Dialogue peaks
- When silence is dialogue
- Voice overs & breaking the fourth wall
- Electronic devices & animated dialogue
- Supporting character cornerstones with dialogue
- Comedic tension in dialogue
- Dramatic tension in dialogue
- On the nose dialogue
- Talking heads
- Subtext
- 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, creating dialogue that more fully supports story, character, dramatic & comedic tension, suspense, plot, pacing and cinematic impact improving reading experience for future readers and industry professionals considering material for option, purchase, development, attachment and production.
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Ratings and Reviews
Jim Jenkins
Max serves as that very special blunt force instrument that you need to kick your understanding of dialogue into high gear! Her lessons are well laid out and her assignments help you rethink and challenge your approach to writing your characters. Max's feedback is clear and direct and honest. She's the voice you want in your head when you type out your masterpiece!
2 people found this helpful.
Leah Baxter
I was writing dialogue without realizing that I could get so much more out of it. This is how the pros do it! In just 6 weeks of a FUN class, I improved my dialogue dramatically!
4 people found this helpful.
Maggie Mulloy
This was my first course with Max. I left with a deeper understanding of how to make each character unique. I can better utilize tools such as, subtext, withholding, and cadence to enhance my character's distinct personalities. It's a worthwhile course!
4 people found this helpful.
Melinda
This was the first class I took from Max and a great start for learning more about screenwriting. Characters drive stories by what they say and do. Dialogue differs from ordinary speech. Creating distinct voices for each character in content, vernacular, length of their sentences, and cadence takes craft. That is what the class teaches, how to make characters pop off the page, alive and kicking.
4 people found this helpful.
Nektarios Chrissos
Wooden lines can ruin characters and stories. Max knows that, being a Nicholl winner and fellow, not to mention a Hollywood trenches' survivor. She gave me the tools to write dialogue lines that can make actors want to play the roles; that will stop the eyes' rolling after reading corny conversations. A very, very useful course that I was lucky to spot and take.
5 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.
This was a great class and provided so much information, especially on monologues, narration, and voice-overs. This class really clarified some tools and provided a lot of insight as to what to use when, and what not to use, when!