The Austin Screenwriting Beat Sheet Workshop — February 19-20

Screenwriter Al Rodriguez and actor Robert De Niro ham it up on the set of "Machete"
Screenwriter Al Rodriguez and actor Robert De Niro ham it up on the set of “Machete” (photo: Joaquin Avellan/20th Century Fox)

Screenwriter Alvaro Rodriguez will be leading our Workshop in Austin, Texas. Al completed two Save the Cat! writing workshops with friend and mentor Blake Snyder in 2008 and 2009 and became a contributor to this site in 2009. He is the co-writer of Fox’s Machete (2010) and Warner Brothers’ Shorts (2009), and the writer of Dimension’s From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter (2000). He was a panelist and screenwriting competition judge at the 2010 Austin Film Festival and will return in 2011.

The Beat Sheet Workshop is like no other screenwriting intensive. It goes far beyond simply teaching you the Save the Cat!® system of story structure principles to provide you with a hands-on approach that applies those principles to your next screenplay.

With this approach, you’ll walk in on Saturday morning with an idea for a film, and leave on Sunday evening with the 15 key beats that will serve as the foundation of your screenplay. Because the class is limited to 10 writers, you will be experience personalized interactive training each step of the way — from Fade In to Final Image.

More details on the workshop can be found here.

To book a spot and/or ask for more information, contact [email protected].

The Los Angeles TV Writing Beat Sheet Workshop — Dates to be determined

Geoff Harris

Former network executive-turned writer Geoff Harris, who has taught TV writing workshops for ABC and NBC over the last seven years, will guide you through the two-day TV Writing Beat Sheet Workshop in downtown Los Angeles.

The Workshop will employ many of the same elements of the Screenwriting Beat Sheet Workshop that Blake Snyder designed, including locking down your title, logline, and the 15 beats that will become the backbone of your script.

In addition, you can choose to write an original episodic pilot or a spec script of a current TV series. And, your script can either be a drama or a comedy.

By the end of the weekend workshop, you will be armed with a Beat Sheet that clearly identifies the beats to your story, thereby preparing you to write your script and have a clear sense of your story.

Given that the workshop will be peopled with writers, the process is wonderfully synergistic, one that leads to a professional script and proves that Aristotle was right that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

More details on the workshop, which is limited to 10 writers, can be found here.  And Geoff’s Beat Sheet for the pilot episode of “Breaking Bad” can be found here.

For more information, contact [email protected].

Also, we are still accepting registrants to our next Los Angeles Screenwriting Beat Sheet Workshop, taught by Jose Silerio on February 12-13. For more information, please contact [email protected].

And stay tuned to this spot for our introduction to the first Los Angeles Novel Writing Beat Sheet Workshop… coming soon!

Next week’s blog: The Kids Are All Right Beat Sheet