Screenwriting Institute
Use your creativity to craft the stories you want to tell through dialogue, plot, and tone.
The Wake Forest Summer Immersion Screenwriting Institute is an unforgettable experience for high school students. Do you have an interest in screenwriting and are curious about writing your own? Are you passionate about storytelling? Do you love creative writing and dream about creating the next great movie, documentary, or television series? If so, then the Screenwriting Institute is for you. The Screenwriting Institute is a week-long program designed for high school students to gain an understanding of the art and craft of writing screenplays for film, television and/or video games. Students will learn how to write their own screenplay, meet with Screenwriting professionals, and create multiple original screenplays by the end of the week.
At a Glance
2025 Dates: Week of June 1 – 5
Program Length: Sunday – Friday, overnight
Who Can Apply?: Current 9th – 12th grade students
Location: Winston-Salem, NC – Wake Forest University Reynolda Campus
Tuition: $3,200
*Tuition is subject to change per year
*Courses carry no secondary school or college credit. Upon completion of the program, an official Wake Forest University Certificate of Completion will be awarded to all Screenwriting Institute participants.
What You’ll Experience
Topics Covered:
- How Storytelling Works
- The Language of Screenwriting
- Structure – Set-up and Pay-Off
- Character Development – Goals, Obstacles and Flaws
- Workshopping and Editing
- Genre and Tone
Hands-On Experiences:
- Work to write a screenplay
- Read and analyze different styles of storytelling
- Engage in discussion with professional screenwriters
- Share your work and engage with the work of your peers
- Learn to use screenwriting software to create industry-standard scripts
*Hands-on experiences are subject to change.
A Day in the Life
Typical Daily Schedule
- 8:00 am – Morning Meeting and Breakfast
- 9:00 am – Welcome and Program Introduction
- 9:30 am – Story and Screenwriting Lesson
- 10:30 am – Daily Script Writing Assignment (Character)
- 11:00 am – Script Writing and Creativity Time (Character)
- 12:00 pm – Lunch
- 1:00 pm – Script Writing and Creativity Time cont’d (Character)
- 3:00 pm – Table Read Character Scripts with the Class
- 4:30 pm – Debrief for the Next Day
- 5:30 pm – Dinner
- 6:30 pm – Evening Activities
- 7:30 pm – Free Time
- 9:00 pm – Prepare for Bed
- 10:30 pm – Lights Out
*The “A Day in the Life” sample schedule is subject to change.
Meet the Academic Leader
Holly Swenson
Academic Leader, Screenwriting Institute
Holly Swenson is a graduate of the Wake Forest Masters in Communication program where she specialized in screenwriting, narrative production, and rhetorical analysis of film. She has written a wide variety of scripts from shorts, to features, to television, and she enjoys writing both original and adapted narratives. For her masters thesis, she adapted and expanded a novella into a 12 hour limited television series including an award-winning and nationally distinguished pilot script. She’s currently partnering with a local filmmaker and Wake Forest professor in writing an original feature. As an all around story nerd, she’s excited for the opportunity to write and work with other fellow story nerds during the program.
