I consider you a special being.
You’re here, on Logline It, which means you value the story’s concept.
This places you ahead of millions of wannabe screenwriters who just open up a Final Draft lookalike to type “FADE IN”. This type of ignorance is not going to get them?anywhere.
Lucky you’re not one of them.
Still, one day you will want to leave this cosy forum, and write your?story in all its glamorous or gory?detail. You will have to deliver a meaty 100 to 110-page draft.
How to do this successfully?
Amazon reportedly lists over 2,000 books on screenwriting. Intimidating…
What if started by asking?where the authors of those books learned the rules they profess.?I hear you say “They copied them from the other guru”.
A long time ago, I started teaching screenwriting, after reading the best known books, and being profoundly dissatisfied.
Rarely did I find a theory that made sense to me. I’m sure you are like me, in that you prefer to understand why things should be one way and not the other. No point in listing screenwriting rules if there is no underlying meaning, right?
To reach this level of understanding, you’ll have to take a different approach.
No amount of books will be able to help you.
What you need to do is analyse films, and read scripts. Make sure you only study?the best: the most successful, and the most rewarded.
This is how I came to understand a whole lot more than any book had ever taught me.
The irony, of course, is that I was going to pass on the insights, without the requirement for my students to do the work themselves. I have been for years, because some people don’t have the time, and they pay for the shortcut.
This is about to change.
I have started an experiment, and I call it the Immersion Screenwriting Course.
In this course, I hand the students a selection of the very finest screenplays, a timeline to read them, and a set of exercises to process the scripts in an intelligent way.
At the end of 100 days, students will have read about 2,000 of the best screenplay pages.
During those 100 days, students will also hand-copy a full-length screenplay, and learn the technique by osmosis. This is a practice I have gone through myself in a different area, and was so impressed with the results that I wanted to apply it to screenwriting.
I’m not the only one with this idea.
A number of?prominent film industry people advocate the method of hand-copying screenplays, including Alexander Mackendrick and Steven Spielberg.
I am pretty confident that the results of the course will be spectacular, in particular for those?at the beginning of their career, and who have not yet been spoilt by?theory.
I would like to invite you to take part in the experiment.
Why don’t you join me for the free webinar, where I explain the fine detail of the course, and you will have an opportunity to join in.
Another powerful aspect of the course is the fact that you will be held accountable. You will have to work every day. Read and write, up to one hour a day.
Because this is the only way to generate lasting results.
-Karel Segers
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