Go Into The Story goes to Paris

Reflections on my recent three day master class with 120 French writers, creatives, and movie and television professionals.

Over a year ago, I was approached by Laurent Lemarchand. Would I be interested in doing a writing workshop in Paris? Having worked for many years in the French film industry, Laurent shifted his focus to providing resources for screenwriters in his home country. I invited Laurent to the London Screenwriters’ Festival in September 2018 to catch my one-day writing workshop there. Our conversations led to this: Go Into The Story Master Class in Paris. It turned out to be a remarkable experience.

For over a year, the La Guilde Francaise des Scénaristes, the equivalent of the Writer’s Guild of America here in the United States, has been featuring translated versions of my Go Into The Story posts on their website. The Guilde co-sponsored my recent workshop and indeed, they hosted a get together on the Tuesday night before my first session the following day.

Several dozen Guilde members showed up for the soiree and I enjoyed meeting many writers who work in the French film and TV industry. In fact, I was the guest of the Guilde’s ongoing interview series: SECRETS DE SCÉNARISTES, hosted by David TheFilmTalker.

Then it was on to the three day Go Into The Story workshop — The Art of Character Driven Storytelling:

• Day 1: The Protagonist’s Journey as Metamorphosis
• Day 2: The Protagonist’s Family of Characters
• Day 3: The Protagonist’s Narrative Imperative

Four sessions per day. 9:30 in the morning until 6 in the early evening. 120 French writers, creatives, and movie and television professionals. Two language experts who took turns translating my words into French which participants listened to through headset microphones.

It was a challenge for me to slow down for the translators as I get excited whenever I talk about screenwriting and storytelling, but in the end, everything worked out well. Indeed, before, during, and after our sessions, dozens of attendees approached to tell me how much they had learned and appreciated the sessions. In fact, three writers told me the workshop had brought clarity to their current writing projects including this email:

I am supposed to meet my publisher tomorrow to tell her about my story. But, before the masterclass, I was quite stuck… And guess what? Today, I got up early, and I created, in one day (!!) almost the entire structure of my novel!

The trip to Paris was both exhilarating and exhausting. The former because so many of the workshop participants were obviously excited about learning how to work with their characters in order to find the story. Exhausting, but in a good way, the kind of feeling at the end of the day you may have when you have put everything out there, but for a good cause.

I would like to thank everyone for making my experience in Paris a wonderful one. Cheers to Laurent for inviting me to lead the master class and Ludo for acting as host for the Guilde events. It is exciting to interface with writers from different parts of the world, and the enthusiasm and passion I saw in the French writers with whom I spoke bodes well for their film and TV business.

In 2018, I made appearances in Austin, Texas; Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles, California; Cologne, Germany; and London, England.

In 2019, I have already appeared in Paris, France; scheduled to appear at events in Austin, Minneapolis, Portland, Los Angeles, and London.

If you are interested in character driven storytelling, I’m ready, willing, and able to talk about it at length as I have enormous passion for the subject. Contact: GITSblog at gmail dot com.

Merci Paris. J’espère te revoir bientôt!

La Guilde Francaise des Scénaristes

Twitter: @GuildeScenar.