Movies contain many pleasures—the actors, the visuals, the music—but one of the greatest pleasures is the dialogue, the structure: in short, the story itself. A well-written film is a needle that delivers an injection of narrative straight into your bloodstream.

In this workshop, we’ll look at two films and break down their narratives. How are films structured? What must happen, and when? And why? This is not a film criticism class, nor is it a screenwriting workshop: this is a craft-focused class that examines what cinematic structure is, and how you can use those tools when constructing fictional narratives on the page. The lessons of good storytelling can be carried from medium to medium, after all, and careful analysis of cinematic narrative can have a tremendously useful effect on the writing of fiction, whether short forms or novels.