The Curriculum

01. The Narrative Engine - Week 1

Learn to identify and build the dramatic engine that drives your story. Structure is not optional — but it is learnable. We begin by diagnosing what makes a story move: the collision between want and obstacle, the architecture of escalation, and the invisible machinery that keeps an audience leaning forward.

You will leave this phase with a working structural map of your story — not a formula, but a diagnosis of what your specific narrative needs to function.

Bridge engineered between cultural specificity and global audience. Your story does not need to be flattened. It needs to be tuned.

This phase teaches you how to preserve the cultural DNA of your story while building the structural bridges that allow it to travel — across languages, markets, and platforms. We study how African cinematic craft speaks to global audiences without losing its roots.

One-on-one mentorship with experienced writers and development professionals who understand both your cultural context and the production marketplace.

Each writer is paired with a mentor who has worked in the industry and understands the specific challenges of writing from the margins. This is not generic feedback. This is surgical, specific, and grounded in the realities of getting stories made.

 
Engineered challenges designed to expose structural weaknesses and force solutions under pressure. Each is timed, reviewed, and builds a specific professional capability.
  • Antagonist Inversion — Your antagonist is now the protagonist. Do they have sufficient dramatic force to carry a story?
  • Compression — Reduce a feature screenplay to a 10-minute one-act. What survives the cut? What is essential?
  • Engine Swap — Remove the protagonist’s stated motivation. Can the story still generate drama through action and conflict?
  • Cultural Pressure Test — Explain your cultural foundation to someone from a completely different background. Fix the transmission.
 
Simulate the professional writers’ room environment. Learn to pitch, defend, revise, and collaborate under deadline.

You will work in small teams to break story, argue structure, and defend creative choices. This is where you learn that writing is not a solitary act — it is a team sport with rules, politics, and the constant pressure of the clock.

 Hear your work performed by professional actors. Discover what lives on the page and what dies there.

A table read is the most honest feedback loop in screenwriting. When actors speak your dialogue, the flaws become audible. When an audience listens, the structural gaps become visible. This phase is about learning to hear your work as it will be experienced — not as you imagine it.

Every fellow delivers a professional pitch to a panel of industry professionals. This is not a presentation. This is an audition.

You will pitch your developed story to a room of producers, development executives, and broadcasters. You will be questioned, challenged, and pushed to defend every choice. The best pitches do not just sell a story — they sell the writer who built it.