Creative Writing

Instructor:  Chad Galts, Chadg@school-one.org

Course Overview:

This course introduces students to the craft of writing for performance, focusing on how playwrights and screenwriters use language to create dialogue, settings, characters and insight to build stories and experiences. Working across both stage and screen forms, students will learn how dramatic writing captures the way people actually speak, argue, evade and connect—and how those choices help us see each other and the realities of modern life more clearly. Students will draft original scenes and short pieces, workshop their writing with peers and study models from contemporary playwrights and screenwriters.

This course is broken down into 3 main units:

1.     Foundations of Dramatic Writing: Character, Dialogue, and Setting

2.     Conflict and Structure: Building a Scene

3.     The Path to Performance: Revision and Table Readings

MATERIALS WE HAVE READ ALOUD, WATCHED, LISTENED TO OR COVERED IN CLASS:

Lady Bird (screenplay)

Contaminated? (prompt)

Little Miss Sunshine (screenplay)

The Swaggering Soldier (opening only)

A Streetcar Named Desire (opening only; we also listened to the opening of scene 3)

Rear Window (screenplay)

Do the Right Thing (screenplay)

A Doll's House (audio recording—no link, but ask me about it if you want to find it)

Chekhov’s Gun: Meaning, Examples and How to Use It

10/5 UPDATE

Local opportunity (all rush tickets free to high school students): World Premiere of James Lucey’s Witching Hour: Secret Cellar, the third installment of Lucey’s Witching Hour horror anthology series for the stage.

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

Burbage’s annual Halloween horror anthology returns with “Witching Hour: Secret Cellar,” an entirely new collection of three terrifying and darkly comic tales from playwright James Lucey. Descend into the Secret Cellar, where something is lurking among the forgotten Halloween merchandise—and finding what you came for may be the only way out. RUNNING TIME 75 minutes.

More info: https://www.burbagetheatre.org/secretcellar

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS

10/15 HOMEWORK

Write a short outline or summary of your final project (1 to 2 pages) in ANY format. This can be a refinement of previous work (homework from 10/5), a description of what we have discussed in our individual meetings, something you have already started working on, or something completely new. Imagine yourself describing the project to someone in under 5 minutes: What do you hope to accomplish in your project? 

DUE by 10 a.m. on 10/19; please email it to me: chadg@school-one.org. 

10/8 HOMEWORK

• Work on final project.

• Read Chekhov’s Gun: Meaning, Examples and How to Use It and come to class on 10/14 prepared to discuss how it applies to your project.

10/5 HOMEWORK

NOTE: DEADLINE ON 10/1 HOMEWORK IS NOW THURSDAY, 10/8 (not Weds).

Project outline: Write a list/outline that answers (or makes guesses at) these questions for your final project for the trimester:

• • Who is in it?

  • Where does it happen?

  • When does it happen?

  • What’s at stake in this story?

  • What’s going to happen?

  • How do you think it’s going to end?

DUE 10/7. No formal requirements (can bedeveloped answers or just notes). We will discuss individually in class on Wednesday.

10/1 HOMEWORK

Write 2-4 pages—IN THE FORMAT OF A PLAY OR SCREENPLAY—using ONE of the following prompts: 

1. The Borrowed Car 

2. • Characters: A teenager and their older sibling 

   • Location: A driveway, late at night 

   • Situation: The teenager has just returned the sibling's car with a dent that wasn't there before. The sibling wants to know what happened. The teenager wants to get inside without answering.  

2. Lost-and-Found

2. • Characters: A student and a school custodian 

   • Location: A school hallway after the final bell 

   • Situation: The student has come to claim a jacket from the lost-and-found, but the custodian is holding something that was in the pocket oif the jacket and wants an explanation. The student wants it back with no questions asked.

3. The Last Shift

   • Characters: A manager and an employee 

   • Location: A restaurant kitchen after closing 

   • Situation: The employee has come to quit. The manager wants them to stay.  

Rules 

• Play/screenplay format

• Must choose one of these prompts 

• No time jumps 

Due on 10/8 at 10:00 a.m. if you want me to print it for reading aloud: chadg@school-one.org; if you are keeping multiple assignments on the same doc, please let me know when this particular one is finished. 

9/30 HOMEWORK (not additional, but an option if you're struggling with 9/28)

Prompt: Two people are having a conversation. One of them is trying to tell the other something important. Before they can say it, someone or something interrupts them.

Write 2-4 pages—IN THE FORMAT OF A PLAY OR SCREENPLAY.

Due on 10/1 at 9:30 a.m. if you want me to print it for reading aloud: chadg@school-one.org; if you are keeping multiple assignments on the same doc, please let me know when this particular one is finished. 

9/28 HOMEWORK

Prompt: Two friends (or people who know each other already) are getting ready to leave for an important event. They need to leave in ten minutes, but they have just discovered an object and cannot agree about what to do with it.  

Using this prompt, write 2-4 pages—IN THE FORMAT OF A PLAY OR SCREENPLAY (see examples above and the homework description for 9/14)—that establishes:

• The characters and their conflict.

• Where this is happening.

• What the object is (wallet full of money? a phone? a set of keys? a lost dog? a photograph? an unopened package? etc.?) 

There are 4 rules to follow:

1. Both characters want something.

2. They disagree about what to do.

3. Neither character can simply walk away.

4. By the end, something has changed.

Due on 10/1 at 9:30 a.m. if you want me to print it for reading aloud: chadg@school-one.org; if you are keeping multiple assignments on the same doc, please let me know when this particular one is finished. 

And if you're interested in the podcast I was describing at the start of class, have a listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-permanent-questions-with-david-brooks/id6803240325?i=1000791859335. 

9/24 HOMEWORK

Describe a neighborhood (preferably your own, but not required) using four different locations in the style of a screenplay—introduce three different settings; characters can overlap, but each space or setting needs to be distinct. What do you need to state in the opening descriptions that will be important to the story later (even if you will not write that story for this assignment)?

Due on 9/28 at 9:30 a.m. if you want me to print it for reading aloud: chadg@school-one.org.

9/21 HOMEWORK

Write a one-page setup—characters with SHORT descriptions and scene-setting description—of a "typical" evening meal. Who's there? What's the situation? What do you need to state in the description that will be important to the story later (even if you will not write that story for this assignment).

Due by 9/23 at 9:30 a.m. if you want me to print it for reading aloud. (Jude goes first and can read this or the last one).

Also, I had the wrong email address in here before. Please use send to chadg@school-one.org.

See you Weds.

9/14 HOMEWORK

Write two pages of dialogue between two people waiting at a bus stop; the bus is late. Examples: an impatient teenager and a nervous old man, two people who just met and are attracted to each other, a boss and an employee, two siblings who are angry with each other. 2-pages.

Format:

• Title

• Character list: Who is in the scene? (very brief descriptions)

• Scene-setting: Where is this in space and time? What’s the situation? (brief, but adequate)

• Stage directions: (In-line with the script, but set off from dialogue.) What am I looking at and what is happening on the stage?

• Actor/performance directions: (In-line with the dialogue.) How should the person reading behave, inflect, etc?

DUE 9/17: send to chadg@school-one.org