A screenplay requires both your creative imagination and technical adherence to formatting rules that have gone mostly unchanged for – believe it or not – the past 90 years. In this intensive, 6-week class with Scott Lax, you’ll learn to format a screenplay to strict Hollywood standards (using readily available free or paid software, your choice), while learning the critical elements of screenwriting: character, narrative, dialogue, and the three-part screenplay structure. You’ll learn practical, hands-on lessons about what producers look for in a screenplay, as well as what to avoid. By the end of the sessions, you should have either the beginning of a feature-length screenplay, or a partial or completed short film screenplay.

Instructor: Scott Lax is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. His novel, The Year That Trembled, was named a “Milestone in Fiction” by the Denver Post. He produced the feature film version of that novel, for which he was named Midwest Filmmaker of the Year at the 2002 Cleveland International Film Festival. He works as a lecturer in Creative Writing and Screenwriting at the Cleveland Institute of Art.