Free Instructional Videos on Screenwriting

March 17, 2008

Over the past two months Melanie Anne Phillips (one of the co-creators of the Dramatica theory of story) has begun posting snippets of a screenwriting course on YouTube. I say screenwriting, but the course could apply to any kind of fictional storytelling.

The video snippets are from a 20-hour CD entitled Dramatica Unplugged available on her website here. It’s an extremely informative course, probably more-so than any other online video screenwriting course I’ve come across, and one that you can’t miss if you’re a fan of the Dramatica theory of story. It closely resembles the 2-day weekend course that she used to give so many years ago – a course that I was lucky enough to attend. I’ve had the CD for several years now and can confidently say that it has one distinct advantage over the live course: a pause button!

There were times during her lecture that I actually felt paralyzed; too stunned to even write a word, let alone keep up with what she was saying. She just knows so much about how the mind works and how that relates to how stories work, that once she gets on a roll – watch out. At least for me, the bombardment of fascinating insights was so overwhelming that I could actually hear my brain shutting down!

I highly recommend it if you are at all interested in how stories work and why the good ones work even better.