By
NEW Screenwriting Boot Camp with J.D. Mathes
NOW ENROLLING FOR FALL 2023
Register: https://tinyurl.com/MathesWrites
$150 for four sessions
Tuesdays, 10/3, 10/10, 10/ 17, and 10/24/23 • 5:30-7:00 PM
In person • Redlands Community Center, 111 W. Lugonia Ave, Redlands 92374.
Do you have a screenplay inside you just waiting to come out? Is there a movie playing in your head that you dream of seeing on screen? Then join J.D. Mathes and learn the ins and outs of writing a script for the screen!
In this boot camp, you will learn the process of crafting a short script from a real call for scripts, storytelling basics, the use of the three-act structure to industry expectations, and how to correctly format your work. Take your story from initial concept to a finished, ready-to-submit script.
You will also discover what producers and agents want to see from a submission – including logline, synopsis, character sketches, and story arc – with examples from a J.D. Mathes project that was successfully submitted and produced. Participants will explore what a proof of concept is and how to pull one off, how a “short” can lead to a longer project, and how to adjust to write a feature, a play, a libretto, or other dramatic writing.
At the end of the boot camp, writers will have short dramatic readings so everyone can hear their words live and feel the immense satisfaction of witnessing their work in the world. Register today!
Registration is limited.
J.D. Mathes grew up a feral child in the deserts of the American Southwest who loved to read library books and take photographs. In 2019, he was awarded a PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship and writes about the personal impact of incarceration. He has worked as a screenwriter with Rehabilitation Through the Arts, awarded the Norman Levan Grant twice, a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar alumnus, an award-winning author of four books, photographer, screenwriter, and librettist.
Two of his four books are Shipwrecks and Other Stories—awarded Honorable Mention, Los Angeles Book Festival—and a memoir, Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on Fire— awarded the North American Book Prize for Memoir—about his experiences fighting wildfire throughout the American West, including four years on an elite helicopter rappel crew and ten years as a crew boss and an incident commander. He has taught various writing courses since 2005. His script In the Desert of Dark and Light, adapted from his short story “Red Flag Warning,” is in pre-production. Although Mathes still struggles with subject-verb agreement and where to put commas, he is working with The New Press on a book/memoir, ILL SERVED, about veterans and mass incarceration. He loves his two daughters very much.
