STRUCTURAL WRITING || ONLINE MASTER COURSE

STRUCTURAL WRITING || ONLINE MASTER COURSE

 

COURSE:

A Six Week Online Master Screenwriting Course
Studying with Max Adams
Course Dates: WAITING LIST
Course Fee: $475 || Course Deposit: $150
Course Location: ONLINE

Structural 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 structural models and 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 structured and revised outline and beat sheet assignments with Max Adams.

 

*Please use the contact form to send email to be added to the waiting list or sign up for the AFW newsletter to be notified of new course dates.

COURSE SYLLABUS:

WEEK ONE: The Model, The Set Up ||
Lecture: How to Kill a Script in Thirty Pages or Less

WEEK TWO: The Second Act ||
Lecture: Escalation is Your Friend

WEEK THREE: Scene Structure ||
Lecture: Emotional High Points, Use Them or Lose Them

WEEK FOUR: Turning Points ||
Lecture: How to Turn a Scene in Three Sentences or Less

WEEK FIVE: Mystery & Escalation ||
Lecture: Withholding, It Is Not Just for Breakfast

WEEK SIX: Climax ||
Lecture: Protagonist Enclosed, No Batteries Required

WEEK SEVEN: Grace Week ||
No Lecture

 

WE WILL BE COVERING:
  • The myth of the three act structure
  • Scene sequencing
  • Set up & illumination
  • Story launch platforms
  • The 15 page first act
  • The 30 page first act
  • Obstacles, turning points & plot focus
  • Beating out the action plot
  • Beating out the character driven plot
  • Scene length & timing
  • Climaxes & plot focus
  • Time jumps & story compression
  • Dots writing & traveling sequences
  • Narrative dramatic tension & escalation
  • Turning points & obstacles
  • Comedic tension & pacing
  • Dramatic tension & pacing
  • Why stories slump
  • 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 a focused well paced story that more fully supports 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.
RELATED CLASSES
STRUCTURAL WRITING is a master screenwriting class. If you are a new student, a writing sample will be requested prior to final acceptance into the class. In rare instances in which you are not accepted into the class, your course deposit will be returned.

Structural Writing is the most difficult course in the AFW curriculum and is a WAITING LIST CLASS only and admission is more restricted than in other AFW courses. And, in most cases, we will not allow a student to take Structural Writing as a first course.

Please email about Structural Writing before registering. And consider starting with one of the other courses in the structure class set first: The First 30 Pages and/or Mastering Story Momentum.

Questions? Send us email:

Structural Writing Email:

3 + 14 =



Ratings and Reviews

5.0
Avg. Rating
3 Ratings
5
3
4
0
3
0
2
0
1
0
What's your experience? We'd love to know!
Tonia Kempler
Posted 3 years ago
Incredible Class

This class took my script from a mediocre script to an award-winning screenplay. Max, is simply the best instructor there is out there. I highly recommend this master class for anyone who is truly serious about their career.

×
Preview Image
Debi Yazbeck
Posted 3 years ago
Award winning course

This is probably the most valuable course I've ever taken, so I took it twice with two different scripts. I was clueless on how to make my story be coherent, but Max fixed that. My brain hurt a little on the way, but soooo worth it! It's not a beginner's course IMO, but it is crucial to having a screenplay that can win awards and get noticed.

×
Preview Image
Nektarios Chrissos
Posted 3 years ago
One of the best courses I've ever attended on screenwriting structure

Max Adams's teachings have done wonders for my screenwriting (and my storytelling in general), and this course is no exception. With this course, you'll get the tools to write a solid screenplay with an enticing beginning, middle and end, an even pacing and all the story stages done right. Some of the best spending of my money on a writing course ever!

×
Preview Image
Show more reviews
What's your experience? We'd love to know!
Author & Award Winning Screenwriter Max Adams

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

Send Me Updates!

.