THE FIRST 30 PAGES || ONLINE MASTER COURSE
THE FIRST 30 PAGES || ONLINE MASTER COURSE
COURSE:
A Six Week Online Master Screenwriting Course
Studying with Max Adams
Course Dates: 11.07.23 *special session || 01.09.24
Course Fee: $475 || Course Deposit: $150
Course Location: ONLINE
The First 30 Pages is an accelerated screenwriting master class studying online with author & award winning screenwriter Max Adams. During six weeks of advanced study, students will study story opening models provided in class, complete advanced course assignments and exercises, submit the first thirty pages of a [completed or in progress] feature script for analysis & review, and will participate in weekly online discussions reviewing and analyzing assignments and students’ submitted pages with Max Adams.
COURSE SYLLABUS:
WEEK ONE: What the First 30 Pages Do ||
Lecture: Set Up, Illuminate — Launch!
WEEK TWO: Images & Expectations ||
Lecture: Speed Demons & the First 10 Pages
WEEK THREE: Premature Ejaculation ||
Lecture: Why Opening on a Climax Usually Fails
WEEK FOUR: The Lies You Were Told About Characters ||
Lecture: “Character” Does Not Equal “Résumé”
WEEK FIVE: Heavy Reading ||
Lecture: Thirty Pages Under the Microscope
WEEK SIX: Resurrection ||
Lecture: Reevaluating Repetition & Pacing & How to Remove — Repetition
WEEK SEVEN: Grace Week ||
No Lecture
WE WILL BE COVERING:
- The traditional 30 page opening
- Opening a script in 15 pages or less
- Genre & the double opening
- Preambles — when they work, when they fail, & why
- Establishing tone & genre
- Establishing audience expectation
- Opening imagery
- Withholding for impact
- Establishing story goal
- Repetition in openings — when it works & when it doesn’t
- Establishing leads
- Establishing secondary characters
- Central dilemma escalation & illumination
- The 40 page opening — AKA the screenplay death knell
- And more —
YOU WILL TAKE AWAY:
- Actionable craft tools that, implemented in your own scripts, will immediately condense & focus opening pages in your existing & future feature and television scripts, strengthening and focusing a story base from which to launch story events and action that will have immediate cinematic impact for readers and industry professionals considering material for option, purchase, development, attachment and production.
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Questions? Send us email:
30 Pages 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.
If a reader isn't captivated on the first page or... if a reader gets bored before the inciting incident, you'll never get a full read. Max makes sure your opening image and protagonist intro will make the reader WANT to read what's next.