Writer’s Workshop
The Art of Superstructure: Finding the Essential Turning Points in Your Story
One of the greatest challenges facing all screenwriters, directors and television producers is the process of developing an engaging premise into a compelling, well-structured story. This workshop explores the art of superstructure, those essential narrative turning points that have held together great stories not only throughout the history of filmmaking and television, but since Shakespeare and The Greeks.
From your opening scene to midpoint to your story’s emotionally engaging climax, you will learn how each of these critical scenes work in synthesis with one another and in the process avoid the pitfalls of the poorly structured story. The final goal of the workshop is a greater understanding of what holds any great film or television season together and a set of tools that participants can immediately apply to their current project.
Workshop Instructor
Steven Wolfson, Instructor, UCLA Film Extension
Speaker
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Steven WolfsonScreenwriter/Instructor, UCLASteven Wolfson has taught screenwriting, playwriting and creative writing at The Writers Program at UCLA for the past 20 years and holds the distinction of having created the most new classes, workshops and seminars of any instructor in the program’s history. He has been awarded The Outstanding Instructor of the Year award twice, in both screenwriting and creative writing.
As a highly sought-after story consultant and dramaturg, Wolfson’s clients span the worlds of film, television, theater and prose. He has worked one-on-one with several A-list Hollywood writers and directors, shepherding new projects from inception to production. Wolfson’s series of unique writing exercises have been secretly passed throughout Hollywood for years.
As a screenwriter, Wolfson has sold projects to Fox, Lionsgate, TNT, MTV, Langley Entertainment, Beacon Films and producer Arnold Rifkin. Wolfson wrote the independent romantic comedy, Dinner and Driving, which premiered at The Austin Film Festival and went on to win audience awards at several film festivals and was sold to HBO. Wolfson also wrote and co-produced the critically acclaimed Lionsgate feature, Gang Tapes, a coming-of-age drama set in South Central, Los Angeles. Gang Tapes played to sold out audiences at film festivals in both The United States and Europe. Prior to selling his first screenplay, Wolfson worked as a story analyst for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin and Dreamworks and a number of independent film producers.
Wolfson is a founding member of the Mark Taper Forum’s Mentor Playwrights Project . His original plays have been produced and workshopped at The Mark Taper Forum, Taper Too, The Getty Museum, Cornerstone Theater Company, The Virginia Avenue Project and The Geffen Contemporary. His most recent play, The Absence of Wanting, premiered in Berlin.