Hey, Folks!
So, did you have a moment or two, or three, this Holiday Season that was full of drama, good or bad, that you’d LOVE to put into a work of prose you’re writing?
You ever look at works by playwrights, screenwriters, and TV writers and how they can take moments from real life and make them dynamic and compelling and say to yourself, “Damn! I wish I could put things like that in my short story or novel?”
Well, whether your idea of a Holiday story is Die Hard or Hallmark Channel movies, multi-award-winning novelist and nationally syndicated film critic Michael Marano’s class at Boston’s Grub Street, SCREEN & STAGE TO THE PAGE: What Drama, Movies & TV Can Teach Prose Writers (starting January 10, 2019) will let boost your prose, giving you access to the incredible storytelling tools stage and visual media writers have been using for decades in the creation of Tony, Oscar, and Emmy-Award-winning narratives!
What kinds of tools are we talking about?
Well, chances are you’ve just had, or maybe had last year, an exchange around the Holiday Dinner Table that’d make for an awesome chapter in a novel, or a scene in a story. Take a look at this scene from Judd Apatow’s classic show, Freaks & Geeks (play from the 15:40 mark to 19:30)…
<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/58193659″>Episode 4 – Kim Kelly Is My Friend</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/smokinrobocop”>smokinrobocop</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
In SCREEN & STAGE TO THE PAGE: What Drama, Movies & TV Can Teach Prose Writers, we will dissect the ways in which all the highs and lows and escalation of that scene are concentrated for maximum emotional impact.
What other kinds of tools will we learn to use?
Think about it. Is there a scene more clichéd than the police interrogation scene? 99% of them can be summed up to: “Hello, Detectives. Here’s the exposition you need to go to the next act, where you’ll get more exposition.” But with True Detective, novelist and short-story writer Nic Pizzolatto re-invented the interrogation scene so it became riveting drama in and of itself:
We’ll dissect exactly how Pizzolatto did it, so that what in TV format is binge-worthy can, for your prose, be page-turning!
Screen & Stage to the Page will meet for 10 weeks on Thursday mornings from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM at Grub Street HQ in Downtown Boston, 162 Boylston Street, 5th Floor by Park Street Station near the Common. Click on this link to enroll!!!
Hope to see you all in January!
Inside the mind of author Michael Marano 