Basic Story Structure & Screenwriting

Learn the screenwriter’s craft! Explore story structure, character development, the pitch and treatments with Wayne Beach and Janet Roach.

The basic foundation for all forms of filmmaking is the story. Led by an accomplished screenwriter, this one-week workshop immerses students in an intensive study of how to structure a story and approach the writing of a screenplay. 

During the day students explore concept, character, outlining, plot points, writing dialogue and action, the dynamics of scene and sequence, visual storytelling and screenplay format. Each evening the student writes an exercise or a scene to more fully engage with dynamics discussed in the day’s session. 

Principles explored will be equally applicable to scripts for small independent films as well as those for large studio films. The practical realities of the film and television industries are surveyed. By week’s end the students have learned how to pitch their stories, write treatments, and how to build ideas into finished film scripts.

Students emerge with an insider's view of the film industry as it relates to the screenwriter.

Testimonial:

"I have been in the industry for over 20 years and I was still able to learn every day at MMW."
- John Papa, Providence, RI

Instructors

Wayne Beach

Wayne Beach has written screenplays for Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox, Disney, TNT, Fox 2000 Pictures, and Village Roadshow Pictures.  He has developed projects for the makers of Pirates of the Caribbean, Law & Order, The Fugitive, Ocean's Eleven, and The Perfect Storm.  His filmed writing credits include Murder at 1600 (Warner Bros.) starring Wesley Snipes, Diane Lane, Alan Alda and Dennis Miller; and The Art of War (Warner Bros.) starring Wesley Snipes, Donald Sutherland and Anne Archer.   

Having completed writing on several new projects including Ten Good Men, a feature film being developed by Wolfgang Petersen’s Radiant Films, he is currently on assignment adapting The Garden of Betrayal, a new novel by Lee Vance published by Knopf.

In 2007, he made his directorial debut with Slow Burn, based on his screenplay. The film received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released by Lionsgate. Slow Burn stars Ray Liotta, LL Cool J, Mekhi Phifer, Jolene Blalock, Taye Diggs and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

In addition to his work for the screen, for three years Beach taught screenwriting at Northwestern University.  His former students include prominent writers, directors and producers with hit films and hit television shows to their credit. He currently teaches screenwriting at Maine Media Workshops and Maine Media College.

Janet Roach

Janet Roach is an Academy Award Nominated screenwriter, teacher, lecturer and former documentary filmmaker for CBS and PBS. She has written over a dozen film scripts, of which five have been produced. Janet has also won the British Academy Award, and the Writers' Guild award for Outstanding Achievement in Screen writing. She was nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay of Prizzi's Honor. She also wrote the scripts for Mr. North and the ABC television movie The Three Stooges. 

She taught screenwriting at Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and has taught both documentary filmmaking and master classes in screenwriting at the Maine Media Workshops for more than 20 years. She has also taught screenwriting master classes in Canada, Finland, Mexico, Poland and New Zealand.

A part-time resident of New Zealand, she is currently at work on a memoir, Swimming with Dinner, about the adventures she has shared with her husband in an isolated point of land on the North Island's Doubtless Bay.