This post features student writing.

The first two days of class, we established the basics and goals of scriptwriting by doing 20-minute prompts that really helped break down scripts into their simplest form. After we built on our prompted stories and shared them with each other, we saw the different paths a simple script structure could follow and what we could do to mix up stories in a less simple way. Then, a working screenwriter, Ali Waller came in to talk to us. We talked with her for two hours straight, and it was the most interesting thing to see what it’s like for an artist to live off of the art we were just practicing. After seeing the play Mysterious Circumstances, which we studied in class by reading the New Yorker article it was based on, it felt even more realistic to see an upcoming play in action after a playwright decided to turn an article into their own adaptation.

— Eva M.