Scriptwriting invites students to work on the elements of writing for screen or stage using specific exercises to grow in their craft. Students study genre, character development, dialogue, plot, and structure separately, building skills in these areas to grow fiction-writing prowess.
While writing an entire script is not the focus of this class, students emerge with firm methodology to approach the structuring and writing of original works. Once a student understands the elements of scriptwriting, that writer becomes a more effective storyteller in each subsequent writing experience.
Syllabus
Week One
Students study genres specific to screenplays and analyze how they are structured. Students examine two movies of their choosing this week.
Week Two
Investigation of protagonists, antagonists, and side characters is the focus this week. Students explore character development in a new film-watching session.
Week Three
Students determine how to create concise, compelling dialogue that moves a story forward.
Week Four
To conclude, students examine how a script is built from the ground up and plan the structure of their own script to work on once class is done.
Common Core and Academic Standards Support
What follows is a word bank and set of skills associated with this class. Use them to craft your own learning narrative for use in year-end evaluations, charter school reports, or any other accountability source.
Word Bank
- Beat sheet and script cards
- Character
- Dialogue
- Genre
- Perspective
- Plot
- Protagonist/Antagonist
- Scene
- Sequencing
- Story arc
- Structure
- Theme
- Vivid detail
- Visual storytelling
- Writing craft
Core Skills
- Develop backstories that help characters be distinctive in a scene
- Find the bones of a script: dramatic need of the protagonist, inciting incident, collisions/tension, crisis, resolution
- Plan elements of story, scene by scene
- Plan a story opening beat by beat
- Reflect and apply metacognitive understanding of the scriptwriter’s journey
- Utilize dialogue to convey character and move action forward
- Utilize vocabulary specific to screenwriting to frame the writing process
- Write detailed, organized, structured original narratives
