Story for
Screenwriting: Advanced Structure

Story for Screenwriting: Advanced Structure is for anyone who writes (or wants to write) drama for film or TV and would like to know more about how and why story principles work.

The course is suitable if you:

• Write for TV, film, radio or stage – or would like to move into screenwriting from another form
• Have an MA and would like to gain practical industry-level skills
• Work as a screenwriter and would like a refresher on story structure
• Are a team developing drama, and would like to share a common vocabulary of story
• Would like to see the blueprint underlying all successful stories
• Need to discover why your stories aren’t working – and how to fix them

This professional training allows you to:

• Acquire the key technical skills screenwriters need
• Understand story structure, including five-act structure
• Gain greater understanding of industry expectations around commissioning and audience
• Clearly identify and pursue your potential as a screenwriter
• Master techniques to help diagnose and fix story problems
• Get to grips with writing a professional standard treatment
• Practise giving effective feedback to writers and receiving critical notes
• Network with other writers, the tutor team and industry guests

Session 1: Introduction to Story (1)

You’ll start by learning the grammar of storytelling and the essential elements of a story, and experiment with summing up a protagonist’s wants and needs.

Session 2: Introduction to Story (2)

We build on the basic building blocks of the archetypal story, examining structural form in more detail. We’ll look at the inciting incident, the character’s journey and story endings.

Session 3: Essential Story Tools

This is about ‘breaking’ a story into its component parts to see whether it’s working as well as it could. By the end of this session you should be able to deconstruct any story and understand how to fix parts that don’t work.

Session 4: Five-Act Structure

We break down a story into five acts and look at why this is such an invaluable tool for dramatic storytellers. You’ll learn the art of identifying turning points and the midpoint, and rewrite a broken story in five parts.

Session 5: Building Stories

We introduce the basic building blocks of stories – scenes – and explain why you need to get inside characters’ heads to make them work. You’ll use that knowledge to plan an original story in five parts.

Session 6: Top Story Tips

This session offers simple tips that will inspire you to look at stories and scripts with a fresh eye. If you have a problem with a story, this session will provide the solution.

Session 7: Write Your Own Treatment

We look at the rules for writing a successful professional-standard treatment. Submit your treatment for an original idea and receive a detailed one-to-one feedback report from your tutor.

At the end of the course you’ll have everything you need, including expert feedback, to move onto our Story for Pitch Decks course, and prepare to pitch your idea at agents and commissioners.

ScreenSkills – This course has been made possible by the support of ScreenSkills, and has been approved as part of an informal or formal continuing professional development (CPD) programme. You may be eligible for a training bursary for this course. Apply direct to ScreenSkills here, at least four weeks before the course start date.

New Writing North – If you’re a resident of Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland, you may be eligible for a bursary thanks to funding from North of Tyne Combined Authority.

New Writing North are offering 10 discounted bursary places, on this course across 2023 as part of the North of Tyne Cultural Skills Programme. Apply direct to NWN.

As this counts as CPD training, you may also be able to get funding from your employer to do it.

Join our alumni – After your course, you can join our online alumni community where you’ll meet our growing network of past students. You’ll be able to.

• Rejoin your classmates in a private forum
• Continue to access an archived version of your course materials
• Meet alumni from other courses and share work for feedback
• Join discussions about screenwriting, script editing and the industry
• Attend live chats with guest writers and industry folk

Mentoring and one-to-one feedback – Our team offer mentoring, script reads and reports. We are happy to quote by job or script, or to arrange a longer mentoring scheme as you work on a specific story idea. We’ll create a package to suit you, so please email [email protected].