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Screenwriting Essentials Online Winter 2026
Category
Admission
- $375.00
Location
Summary
Seven Sessions
via Zoom, 1-4 pm Central
Feb 7, 14, 21, 28
March 7, 14, 21
Description
Screenwriting Essentials 
With Mary Ruth Clarke
We’ll delve into loglines, a great hook, thinking visually, how to avoid talking head scenes, and demystifying formatting. And we’ll deconstruct an Oscar winning screenplay to analyze the ever so important structure.
Each class starts with reading/discussing participant’s work, and then moves on to the learning.
Mary Ruth Clarke co-wrote and starred in the original Meet the Parents and co-adapted it into the blockbuster version. She adapted the novel You Cannot Mess This Up for the GoodForm Productions, which will come to the screen in 2026. Her screenplay Alice and Celia and Whatever It Takes is under option with Rainbow Productions. Mary Ruth’s students sell scripts, make movies and get staffed on TV shows. She consults for clients in LA and Chicago, and she has critiqued about a gazillion plays and screenplays. She’s a regular guest lecturer at the Off Campus Writer’s Group and Chicago Screenwriters Network.
She was on the faculty of the late great Second City Film School and is a member of the Writer’s Guide of America East.
Instructors send out Zoom invites one day before class begins.