APPRENTICE WITH JEFF BY CONSTANTLY BUILDING SCRIPTS FROM SCRATCH

A FEW SAMPLE PAGES FROM OUR DAILY WORK BUILDING SCRIPTS

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photo of SPP dialog
PHOTO OF 3 WISHES FOR WEBSITE
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WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

ENGINEER YOUR SCRIPT BEFORE YOU WRITE IT: If you take the time to engineer your script’s structure before you write it, then much of the misery of extensive rewrites can be avoided.

SEPARATE THE NECESSARY FROM THE UNNECESSARY: A central principle of writing effective drama, it frees you from the profusion of unnecessary detail and allows you to gradually layer in detail as it becomes necessary.

ACQUIRE PRACTICAL KNOW-HOW INSTEAD OF MERE KNOWLEDGE: Inert information about how drama works may sound clever but it doesn’t make your scripts work. All this training is about utility, so you can wield the tools and techniques like a seasoned professional.

TAP INTO AUDIENCE DEMAND: Audiences are extremely demanding even if they themselves are not aware of it. They bring a lot of energy to the theater and if you tap into it then you amplify your story’s power.

UNITY OF ACTION: Aristotle talks about how dramas that grip an audience tend to consist of a single action. In a well-structured drama, every part of the story serves the whole—it’s all one organism. A single action, a single hero, and a single result.

TURN STORY INTO DRAMA: Central to your job as a scriptwriter is to dramatize story, adapting it for a theatrical performance, whether film, television, or stage—in any genre.

PRINCIPLE & METHOD: It’s not enough to know how to utilize the tools; you must know the underlying principles that make them work. Your understanding of the principles will inform your application of the dramatist’s methods.

USE CHAOS AS CREATIVE DYNAMITE: Staying in the safe lane is not how to be a cutting-edge storyteller. The key word in the entertainment industry is Outrageousness. Get in trouble, go off the deep end, and inject chaos into your writing process to make your stories unpredictable.

DESTROY WRITER'S BLOCK & VAPORIZE CLICHÉ: These dynamic tools and aggressive approaches to storytelling will clarify your thinking and power you through stumbling blocks that stop many writers in their tracks.

DRAMATIC ACTION: Dramatic Action is not car chases and shootouts. It’s about getting them up on the edge of their seats, engaged mentally and emotionally, wondering how things will turn out. Consistent, coherent, compelling Dramatic Action is the name of the game.

“From within the swarm of gimmicky screenwriting seminars and trendy new how-to’s, it is Jeff Kitchen’s approach, relying heavily on the classic principles of dramatic structure and logic, that emerges as truly innovative. His technique is the answer for anyone seeking practical tools with which to diagnose script problems, generate effective solutions, or transform story ideas into compelling drama. Jeff’s seminars are aggressive; they are work sessions that produce real results immediately. Come with your sleeves rolled up."

Erin Quigley – Producer/Development Executive, 23 Red Productions

HOW YOU'LL LEARN

COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP: You’ll be trained using the principles of Cognitive Apprenticeship, acquiring deep skills through apprenticeship and focusing on the subtle hidden aspects of an expert’s thinking process.

DISRUPTIVE TRAINING PROCESS: Science has shown that the harder it is to learn something the better you retain it. The courses change gears constantly, throwing you in the deep end of the pool before you’re ready. You'll work hard for what you learn in this program.

LEARN TO EVALUATE PROFESSIONALLY: You must learn to evaluate a project or idea with a professional eye. It’s crucial to be able to isolate and articulate problems, to know when to improve things, and when to walk away.

THINK IT THROUGH: You'll be taught to think aggressively and independently, working to figure out complex problems while using the tools and their underlying principles, which is at the core of all writing.

READ EXCELLENT SCRIPTS REGULARLY: We read and discuss many great scripts which attunes you to quality writing and great story ideas. We pursue different ways of studying, for example following a theater script that goes on to win a Best Picture Oscar as a film.

GROUP PROBLEM SOLVING: Teams will work together to tackle sticky problems in the scripts we’re developing and writing. The ability to collaborate, and to be a good person to work with, is a crucial aspect of succeeding as a professional.

TRAIN WITH JEFF IN DAILY ZOOM CLASSES

Live class every day at noon PST

$400 per month

 

  • Become a seasoned dramatist who knows how to make stories work
  • 2.5 hours a day, Monday-Friday at noon, Pacific Time
  • Pay by the month, pause & restart classes when you need to
  • Two-year apprenticeship program—form deep habits of mind of a trained dramatist
  • Learn to create, develop, construct, and write scripts by constantly building stories with the group
  • Drill with the tools over and over on a wide variety of stories
  • Master the guiding principles that underly the techniques
  • If you have any questions or want a Zoom tour of the program, email jeff@script.kitchen

TRAIN BY PRE-RECORDED VIDEO

64-hour video featuring the creation, development, construction & writing of a complete original script from scratch

$597 for the course

 

  • Work alongside Jeff as he starts with a one-sentence idea and builds it into a story and dramatizes it right there with you. You're doing daily assignments, handling the tools, and participating in the full process
  • It's like a flight simulator, with you involved in every single step of creating and constructing a complete script
  • Then you write the actual script, working from the detailed dramatic outline that we just constructed
  • 74 classes for a total of 64 hours. Work at your own pace, study it however it works best for you. Take it as many times as you want
  • If you have any questions or for a Zoom tour of the program, email jeff@script.kitchen

SCRIPT.KITCHEN SUBSCRIPTION

80+ hrs of video classes 

$29.97 per month or $299.70 per year

 

  • Dozens and dozens of training videos and instructional articles
  • In-depth training in all the tools
  • One live class with Jeff each month
  • More classes being added regularly
  • Deepen your craft, build your habits as a trained dramatist
  • If you have any questions or want a Zoom tour of the program, email jeff@script.kitchen

REQUIRED MATERIAL

You need to buy the following books upon enrollment in the live daily training:

  • Writing a Great Movie: Key Tools for Successful Screenwriting
  • The Hero's Dilemma: Drama at the Heart of Your Story
  • Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
  • The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Riso and Hudson
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THE SEVEN TOOLS

DILEMMA: Trapping your protagonist between two equally unacceptable alternatives adds considerable dramatic power to your story. Building the Dilemma to a Crisis forces Decision & Action, leading to  the Resolution.

THE ENNEAGRAM: A mix of ancient wisdom about human nature and cutting-edge psychology, this personality profiling system explores your characters' behavior patterns, tendencies, drives, and flaws, helping create complex, dimensional characters that ring true.

36 DRAMATIC SITUATIONS: A free-association brainstorming tool that utilizes basic story elements like Madness, Disaster, and Ambition to isolate your story’s building blocks, and to explode them into unexpected dimensions. They also help get more clarity on what your story's really about.

THEME: The way in which the protagonist resolves the Dilemma expresses the Theme that’s arising organically through the complete action of the story. Knowing the Theme binds the overall story into a coherent concept.

RESEARCH AND BRAINSTORMING: Good research can provide realism and catapult you into unexpected realms. Brainstorming is a fun chaotic creative explosion that allows you to explore the far reaches of your story idea.

CENTRAL PROPOSITION: Use the power of logic to bring order to the creative chaos of story creation and pull all the parts of your story together into a coherent whole. It crystallizes the nucleus of your plot so you can transition from story creation to plot construction.

SEQUENCE PROPOSITION PLOT: This revolutionary plot construction and story development tool is unrivaled for building your story’s framework, then creating and dramatizing the structure of each act, each sequence, and each scene, gradually and systematically layering in details as they become necessary.