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Despite the heat we have suffered in Madrid the last two weeks, every afternoon at about 4:30 pm I had to go out and took the Metro to Tirso de Molina. Each day I came to class sweating but impatient for listen to the stories that my colleagues advanced every day, and eager to receive the wisdom and passion of Alicia Luna. And please don’t think I’m sucking up, it’s just that I’m absolutely delighted with the two intensive courses I have attended at the Script School of  Madrid.

During the first week we did an Introduction to the script. One imagines that in 5 days will get little more than a general idea, and not. Alicia has improved a method of teaching that  tiptoes through the hard work with theory and works with examples and exercises that help you understand the elements necessary for getting a good script. Powerful and effective ideas for making your story works, involving the viewer and getting the story clear and attractive. (Link to summary of tips below).

During the second week, still digesting what we learned before, we dive into the Rewriting workshop. And, as Linda Seger writes in her book (bibliography included below), is the rewriting of the script what gets the perfect story. Reordering and focusing the action, discarding scenes that add nothing and adding what we had overlooked are part of this process. This week Alicia worked with us the scripts in a concultancy way… An absolut privilege!. Personally I confess you that after the horrible crisis I suffered during the first two days of the workshop, I finally feel proud of the screenplay for Roberto. Although I have to polish up some details, now I have a good story. Without Alicia and her workshop, I would still be stuck in the old Roberto.

Thanks, Alicia Luna, for transmiting your knowhow with so passion and commitment. Thanks fellows for your encouragement. Thank you all for having hugged Roberto and pointed me the right way.

Some resources for script and story writers

  • CELTX: free software for script writing with the  appropriate format. Powerful and easy.
  • Essencial posts from the Script School of Madrid:
  • Some bedside books:
    • The script (Robert McKee): the ultimate theoretical book (maybe a little hard for starting up)
    • Making a good script great (Linda Seger): funny and with a lot of good advices for running our story, focused on rewriting process.
    • Save the cat! (Blake Snyder): very cool, it attributes the success of a script to make viewers empathize with the characters and their story, offering tricks to get it.
    • The writer’s journey (Christopher Vogler): structure for heroes stories, very useful when something doesn’t work and you don’t know what.
  • Infallible spell to invoke muses, courtesy of my mother:

    After eight hours of sitting at your computer without writing too much, stretch your body, look at the sky and say, “Fuck the muse!”
    You have to wait … probably another eight hours and if it doesn’t work, say the spell again.

[TO BE CONTINUED...]