April 8 – June 3, 2024
$475 – link to payment options below.

This asynchronous online workshop will guide you from concept to finished script outline.

This eight-week course grounds you in the key craft elements of story structure, plot, scene development, character, theme, genre and dialogue and shows you how they work together to grip an audience’s emotions. You learn how to create and evaluate story ideas, explore how characters’ inner wants and immediate goals shape and drive a screenplay’s action, see what constitutes compelling plots and subplots and learn how to construct a scene. Throughout the course, you complete a series of exercises which serves as the basis for your script outline—a prose description of your screenplay. The course goal is to learn how to write effective, compelling scenes and to create a four-to-five-page outline that clearly delineates your script’s beginning, middle and end. The ability to write an effective outline is a critical skill for the professional screenwriter and serves as the basis for most pitches.

Limited to 15 students.

Required reading: Save the Cat by Blake Snyder

Required film access: Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Limitless (2011)

There will be weekly peer critique as we go through the different elements of your script story beats.

Tony DuShane is the screenwriter of Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk directed by Eric Stoltz and starring Paul Adelstein, Reed Diamond, Lauren Lakis,   and Sasha Feldman. He has taught novel and screenwriting at UCLA Extension since 2015. DuShane has written hundreds of articles on books and music for outlets like Mother Jones, Penthouse, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and more. He teaches a free class every month at the Los Feliz Public Library in Los Angeles.

Tony DuShane’s Film Courage Interviews Link.

Testimonials from UCLA students

• Tony is amazing. He could motivate a brick wall to write a screenplay and make it laugh with his humor.
• Knowledgeable, personable, always willing to help out and field questions and I’ve learned more in the last 10 weeks about how to map out a screenplay and produce something that resonates than any other class. He was remarkable!
• Tony is really giving great guidance and helping establish a work ethic that will sustain and help me as a student grow.

To register in the United States pay $475 via paypal or if you need to pay by check, email dushane@gmail.com for instructions.