Taking Your First Steps in Screenwriting with Gary Hewitt

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Take your first steps in screenwriting with Gary Hewitt. A monthly writing workshop running over 12 months, these in-person workshops are for beginners and those interested in screenwriting.

About Taking Your First Steps in Screenwriting with Gary Hewitt

Listed Under Workshops Events / Film Events / Talks and Lectures Events

Do you have a excellent idea for a film and want to turn it into a script? Have you already started a screenplay and hit a wall? New screenwriters will be able to learn the concepts and techniques of storytelling and look at how to develop and structure a screenplay by using hands-on, interactive learning.

This will provide new screenwriters with the skills and techniques required to kickstart their imagination as an emerging screenwriter. These workshops will help unlock storytelling potential of scripted dialogue and express dramatic ideas on the page. You’ll receive friendly, constructive feedback throughout the course and have the opportunity to discuss and share your script ideas with a group of fellow writers. This can be an incredibly useful part of the creative process, helping you develop the style and scope of your writing.

PLEASE NOTE: fluency in English is required for this course.

SCREENWRITING WORKSHOP SCHEDULE (ROUGH BREAKDOWN)

Each class will run on the first Monday of every month, 7-9.30pm at Refractive Production Hub. The classes will be a 2.5 hours long with a break for refreshments.

MONTH 1 – PROJECT TREATMENT – Monday 2nd September 2024
Learn the craft of writing your project treatment:
Logline
Synopsis
Genres
Tones & themes

MONTH 2 – CHARACTERS – Monday 7th October 2024
Learn how to develop your characters including:
Character Arcs and character motivations
Protagonists
Antagonists
Writing unlikable protagonists & inhuman antagonists

MONTH 3 – STRUCTURE – Monday 4th November 2024
Learn how to map out the structure of your script with:
3 Act Structure
turning points & midpoints (SOTL & titanic will be used as examples)
conflicts

MONTH 4 – STEP OUTLINE – Monday 2nd December 2024
Learn how to write out your Step-outlines and work out if your project will be written from an omniscient narrative, restrictive narrative or an unrealisable narrative.

MONTH 5 – SCREENPLAY FORMATTING – Monday 6th January 2025
Screenplay Formatting
Using the white space
Writing unfilmable‘s
Best script software to use

MONTH 6 – SCENE STRUCTURE – Monday 3rd February 2025
We will go in-depth into writing Scenes including:
Scene structure
is the scene needed?
Writing opening scene
Character introduction and Status and power in scenes
Guest Speaker

MONTH 7 – MCGUFFIN’S AND OTHER ITEMS – Monday 3rd March 2025
Find out the difference between Talismans & McGuffins
set ups and payoffs Chekov’s gun. (Shaun of the dead & EEAAO will be used as examples)

MONTH 8 – WORLD BUILDING – Monday 7th April 2025
World building and visual storytelling.
Does the rules of your world make sense
Are the rules clear from the start
A prologue
Can you move the story forward in other ways rather than Dialogue

MONTH 9 – REWRITING – Monday 5th May 2025
What’s the best way to go about rewriting your script.
Take a vacation From Your First Draft
Kill Your Darlings – Can any CHARACTERS or PLOTS be cut out or combined?
Write from each character POV (treat them as your main character)
Can you identify the CATALYST, FIRST ACT BREAK, MIDPOINT, SECOND ACT BREAK, and CLIMAX?
Does the main character have a clear ARC?
Do the STAKES escalate throughout the script?
Do the SUBPLOTS connect to the main plot? Is a THEME emerging?

MONTH 10 – ONE ON ONE MEETINGS – Monday 2nd June 2025
Let’s look at your project one on one
What issues are you having?
How far along are you with the script?
How can we make it better?

MONTH 11 – EXPOSITION & WRITING BETTER DIALOGUE – Monday 7th July 2025
How to write exposition properly.
How can you tell the story through meaningful dialogue.
Exposition should be brief
Exposition through character

MONTH 12 – TAKING YOU SCRIPT INTO THE WORLD – Monday 4th August 2025
Creating Pitch decks,
Entering competitions
Finding agents
Guest Speaker

TUTOR
Classes are taught by award-winning filmmaker Gary J Hewitt who has been working in the industry for over 10years. Gary J Hewitt is a Screenwriter and Director from Glasgow, Scotland. His debut feature film Cleek has its festival run in 2018. It was distributed by Shami Media Group on Amazon Prime and later went to DVD on March 15th 2019. Following the success of Cleek. Gary directed multi award winning film ‘Mia: A Rapture 2.0 Production’. The film won over 10 awards including Best British Film, Best Film and the IAC Diamond Award at BIAFF. Since then, Mia: A Rapture 2.0 Production has been distributed by North American company Meridian Releasing Group and can be purchased on Amazon. Gary’s most recent project The Defender (currently in Production) ranks in the top 30% in coverfly, was one of 6 semi-finalists at FILM MARKET HUB, scored 7.5/10 on SCREENCRAFT and was a quarter finalist .

FINAL WORDS
This will serve as a fantastic platform to jump-start screenwriting careers for people who have had no formal education or experience in the field. The class will provide an intuitive structure to the art of screenwriting and will be a creative home where writers develop their craft. It is designed to offer personalised attention to your ideas, with an emphasis on industry expectations and standards.

Once the fundamentals have been established the students will be able to immediately put these new skills to use by writing their own scripts.

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All information (whether in text or photographs) is supplied in good faith but should not be relied upon as being a statement of representation or fact.

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