Writing a Script That Connects
A Five-Night Intermediate Workshop on Turning a Finished Draft Into a Script that Readers Can’t Stop Reading
Thursdays, July 9, 16, 23, 30, and August 6, 2026
8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern (5 to 7 p.m. Pacific)
You have written a screenplay. Maybe three. You know what a slugline is, and you don't need anyone to open Final Draft for you. You have done the brave part, which is finishing. And yet the notes keep coming. “I ultimately didn't totally connect to the story on this one. I admired it but I didn't feel it. The writing is fun but the characters didn't grab me.”
You have hit the ceiling of competence. Your script works. It just doesn't connect.
This workshop is about the gap between a script that works and a script that connects. Where to withhold, where to escalate, where to make the reader uncomfortable, where to trust them.
Over five nights, we'll look at your script as visual real estate, dismantle overwritten descriptions, inject subtext, and look at how working screenwriters turn the page itself into a character with a voice. You will learn to write for a reader's taste, why boring scripts get made while yours gets stuck, and how to pull off a professional-level rewrite.
This is not a structure course. It is not even how to write a screenplay. It is about adding more tools to your writing toolbox that actually matter—character, dialogue, style, execution, nerve, and the unglamorous decisions that separate a reader who keeps turning pages from an assistant who drops your script on page 7 and never picks it back up.
In an age of TikTok brain-rot, getting the reader to turn the page has never been harder, or more crucial!
"Don’t confuse rewriting with polishing. Rewriting means ripping apart scenes and sequences and rebuilding them piece-by-piece. Polishing is finding ways to make the writing subtly better. Both jobs are crucial, but don’t polish until the scene accomplishes its function."
—John August
Faculty
Bailey Patterson is a Canadian screenwriter, director, and producer currently developing a horror project with franchise producer Warren Zide (American Pie, Final Destination). Writing screenplays since he was sixteen, he won the Story Summit Founder Award in 2020 for his script A Beautiful Life.
A true homegrown talent of Story Summit, Bailey has spent the past several years developing his craft under the mentorship of Academy Award–nominated screenwriters Tab Murphy (Gorillas in the Mist) and Jeff Arch (Sleepless in Seattle), as well as former Hollywood studio executive David Kirkpatrick.
Born with a camera in one hand and a VHS tape in the other, Bailey’s earliest memory is watching Titanic at just three years old. He began his creative career as a theatre actor, winning Best Male Actor of Alberta for his role in Memory Garden (2016).
Bailey serves as videographer at Story Summit, co-produces the podcast Living to Write, and is the founder of Limitless Productions in Calgary, Canada, where he continues developing bold new projects in film and television.
"Bailey is committed to helping you reach the next level. Whatever he teaches becomes a masterclass."
– Writer Cindi Neisinger
Films We'll Explore in this Course
How the Course will Unfold
Night 1 – The Anatomy of a Script That Connects
A script is not a movie. You cannot write a movie. What you can write is a document whose only job is to entertain the person reading it. We move past basic formatting to explore the page as a psychological landscape. This night is about weaponizing white space and understanding that how a line is written dictates exactly how it feels on screen.
We will explore:
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Why the script is its own art form, not a blueprint for one
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The page as real estate, and what chunky, overwritten pages do to a reader
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The architecture of white space: directing the reader's eye without camera directions
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Creating pace and tension through paragraph breaks and line length
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Advanced character cues: capturing a character's internal gravity on entry, not just how they look
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Psychological framing: using sluglines and micro-actions to imply isolation or dominance
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How to make the reader emotionally invested in your story
In the Zoom room:
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We read real screenplay pages aloud and name exactly what pulled us into the writing
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We contrast pages that read like minimalist poetry against their final execution
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We dissect how a single descriptive verb can change the pace of a scene without touching the dialogue
Workshop moment:
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Two-Sentence Showdown: Everyone puts their plot and their argument on screen, one sentence each, and the group calls out any Sentence Two that doesn't flip Sentence One.
Night 2 – Killing Your Darlings
Most scripts are overwritten. There are incredible screenplays full of novelistic, vivid prose, and you are allowed to write that way too. The catch is that when it is not done well, it sticks out like a sore thumb. But the more important meaning of overwritten is this: explaining things that don't matter, and drawing attention to things that don't matter, often just by mentioning them. If I took a pen to most of my old scripts, I would mostly just be crossing things out.
Tonight we cut like a structural engineer instead of a decorator. If a scene does not move the protagonist one step closer to or further from the thematic truth of the movie, cut it. Stop letting your characters do your job for you, and stop letting description do the reader's job for them. Trust the reader to do the math. Audiences are smarter than you think.
We will explore:
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The two kinds of overwriting, and how to tell flowery-on-purpose from flabby-by-accident
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The thesis, antithesis, and synthesis of a scene
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How to kill your favorite moments and how the needs of the movie outweigh the needs of the scene
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How to get into scenes as late as possible and leave as soon as the point is made
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How less is more
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Why the scenes you are most afraid to cut are often the ones holding the script back
In the Zoom room:
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We read lean, ruthless pages aloud and name what the writer chose to leave out, and why it works
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We track how cutting a single line can sharpen an entire scene
Workshop moment:
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Students refine their movie idea
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Each student develops a clear logline
Night 3 – Make Them Care (Note Behind the Note)
The note: the main character isn't likable enough. The note behind the note is not that your character needs to be likable. It is that they need to be sympathetic.
We go underneath, into the spaces between the lines. We separate what a character wants from what they will admit to, the external goal from the internal drive. The audience is smart. The fastest way to lose them is to explain what they already feel.
We will explore:
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Sympathetic versus likable, and the note behind the note
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Wants versus goals: external objective versus internal drive
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How to make the reader care through active, in-the-moment events rather than relying on deep backstories (AKA the only backstory that matters is what is happening right now)
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What a character says, what they mean, and what they are desperately trying to hide
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Weaponized subtext: characters using everyday language to wage quiet psychological warfare
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How to give each character a distinct rhythm, vocabulary, and blind spot
In the Zoom room:
• We open Final Draft and rewrite a flat, exposition-heavy scene, stripping away dialogue while doubling the emotional impact
• We track how a single subtextual line can recontextualize an entire sequence
Workshop moment:
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Save the Sympathy: each writer pitches one small, specific moment that earns sympathy for their protagonist in the first ten pages, and the group votes on which ones actually land
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We look at how to make the reader lean forward by holding back the exact piece of information they are dying to hear
Night 4 – The Professional Rewrite
The fourth night is about the difference between improving pages and rewriting a movie. At this level, the work is no longer about making individual scenes prettier. It is about understanding what the script actually is, what promise it makes in the first ten pages, where it loses pressure in the middle, and what emotional experience it must deliver by the end.
A professional rewrite means tuning out the noise and focusing on the movie you are actually trying to write. Not the version that pleases every note. Not the version that protects your favorite scenes. The version that moves, builds, lands, and connects.
We will explore:
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The first ten pages as a promise: tone, stakes, world, character, and flaw
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Sustaining the middle: overcoming the second-act plateau and keeping tension rising
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The last fifteen minutes: what the ending must pay off emotionally, not just plot-wise
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Building toward what the script actually is
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Writing for yourself while still keeping the reader desperate to turn the page
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How to separate polishing from true rewriting
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How to create a clear, practical rewrite plan
In the Zoom room:
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We diagnose where scripts commonly lose momentum and why readers drift away
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We look at how beginnings, middles, and endings talk to one another across a full screenplay
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We discuss how to decide what to cut, what to deepen, what to sharpen, and what to rebuild
Workshop moment:
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Rewrite Roadmap: each writer identifies the central promise of their script and leaves with a focused plan for the next draft: what must be cut, what must be clarified, what must be intensified, and what must finally connect.
Night 5 – Making the Page Sing
The final night is about the thing that turns a strong rewrite into a script a stranger cannot stop reading: voice. A lot of people will tell you a script is a technical document, a blueprint. That is technically true. Lots of things are technically true. But the scripts that connect are the ones that are fun to read, even when the subject is heavy.
So we sweep the reader up in vivid imagery they can see in their mind's eye, rather than handing them an instruction manual. We learn breakbeat formatting, the rhythm of short lines and dangling beats that keep the eye dancing down the page.
We will explore:
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Voice and style: the script as a character that sings
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Writing cinematically, not clerically
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Breakbeat formatting and the rhythm of the page
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How short lines, white space, and dangling beats keep the reader moving
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How vivid imagery can make the page feel alive without becoming overwritten
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The difference between description that directs the eye and description that clogs the page
In the Zoom room:
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We read pages that sing and name exactly what makes them effortless, gripping reads
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We rewrite a dull stretch of description live so it moves on the page
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We look at how rhythm, sentence length, and line breaks change the emotional temperature of a scene
Workshop moment:
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Page-to-Music: Writers bring one flat or overworked page, and we revise it for rhythm, image, pace, and voice until the page starts to sing.
What You Walk Away With
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You can read your own script the way a professional reads it.
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You know how to use white space and visual real estate to control the reader's speed and emotional response.
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You write fearlessly and authentically for yourself, rather than trying to please an imagined audience.
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You prioritize the "now" over backstory.
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You can cut like a structural engineer instead of a decorator.
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You understand sympathetic versus likable, and how to earn a reader's care.
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You can audit a character on the internal, interpersonal, and external levels.
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You can write complex subtext, so your characters never say exactly what they think.
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You can inject a distinct, undeniable voice into your scene description and dialogue.
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You have diagnosed and dismantled the common pitfalls of the second act.
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You know what clear structure is and how you can hold the audience's attention from start to finish in your own voice and style because you are writing the movie YOU WANT.
One Last Thing
The goal of an intermediate workshop is not to learn the rules. It is to learn how to stretch, bend, and command them to serve your specific vision.
Your first screenplay didn't need to be perfect. It needed to exist. You proved that. You have one.
Now comes the part that makes you a screenwriter and not just someone who wrote a screenplay. The rewrite. The cutting. The slow, thrilling work of turning something that works into something that connects. Hook a stranger so completely that they need to know what happens to your characters. Make them turn the page. Writing your own material should be driven by excitement and passion. And most importantly, write the movie that will save their life, and yours.
The Screenplays We'll Read
There is no greater way to learn screenwriting than to read, read, read screenplays. And of course, FINISH YOUR OWN. These are the scripts we will read and take apart together across the five nights: (some may change or be added)
Today's Price Only $297 for 10 Hours of Instruction
Story Summit Members: This class is included at no additional cost
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Please note: Our classes are designed specifically for live participation, so your attendance is important. If you need to miss a class for any reason, you’ll receive a passcode-protected link to watch the recordings after the course is over.
