>Here I am at the Tinker Mountain Writers’ Workshop. We all arrived here Sunday evening and had initial sessions with our groups to trade manuscripts. My group, which is working in screenwriting with Hal Ackerman, is a good one, with just about everyone else having way more screenwriting experience than I do. Which is fine. I’ll learn.
This morning, after tours and computer lab orientation, we had our first craft lecture. Today was Hal talking about screenwriting (“Passion into Product”), describing some of the basics of format and structure.
This afternoon, in our workshop, we got into much more detail and since I am starting from a minimal base of knowledge, I learned an incredible amount from the one session. Among other things, we watched the opening 17 minutes of Little Miss Sunshine and got a sense of what makes that script so special.
Tonight we’ve got our first reading, by poet Thorpe Moeckel and creative non-fiction writer Jim Mckean.
>Cliff, I’d love to see your notes on the first act of Little Miss Sunshine, when you get a chance. I’ve been thinking about teaching that in my screenwriting one class.
>Good stuff, Cliff. Keep it coming!
>Would you want to post your notes on Little Miss Sunshine? Sounds fascinating.