The genius of improv applies to much more than just comedy—it can help you level-up your writing in any format and any genre. We’ll discuss honoring each other as poets, playing at the top of our intelligence, a hat on a hat, panel of experts, and many more improv-based concepts and games. Together, we’ll go far beyond “yes, and” to gain new tools that will help you strengthen your live pitching abilities, surpass your writer’s block, and make you a powerful force in any writers’ room.
Some of the topics and techniques we’ll cover include:
- Develop multidimensional characters who always play at the top of their intelligence
- Why questions don’t help (but assumptions always do)
- Always make the reader feel like a genius, even in hard-to-grasp subjects (scientific, historical, alien language, etc.)
- Use “group mind” to find radically innovative solutions to any story issue
- Become the #1 expert in the world you’ve designed
- The Nautilus Technique—build your story’s rules from the inside out
- Apply the “one weird thing” rule to make even smaller roles pop
- Roleplay to create dialogue that feels genuinely natural and organic
- Increase conflict through comedically and/or tragically misguided agreement
- 5 ways to honor and lift up even the “worst” ideas, making yourself an invaluable contributor in the room
…and a whole lot more. I hope to see you there!
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Timothy Michael Cooper is an award-winning filmmaker, comedy writer, and script consultant. He wrote and directed the Writers Guild Award-nominated Concierge: The Series, starring Kate McKinnon. His short comedy Lemon premiered at Tribeca, played at dozens of international festivals and on United Airlines, and is currently in development as a sitcom. Plus, he’s been part of the writers’ room for the Writers Guild Awards for the past six years, writing monologue jokes and sketches for numerous hosts/presenters.
Through his company, Blueprint Screenwriting Group, he’s taught hundreds of writers. His clients and students have sold their scripts to major studios; staffed on multiple network and cable TV shows; screened/won at SXSW, Sundance, Tribeca, Cannes, etc.; and got their movies and shows made across the globe.
Timothy is a proud member of the WGAE, the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective Writers’ Workshop, the Hollywood Radio & Television Society, and the WGAE Softball Team.
About the Fundamentals of Screenwriting Series
The Fundamentals of Screenwriting with Timothy Michael Cooper is a WGA East seminar series that aims to live up to its name – to teach the fundamentals for screenwriters that need a refresher or journalists and other screenwriting novices looking to learn for the first time.
