5-DAY CHALLENGE OCTOBER 12-16 | LIVE Q&A SESSION OCTOBER 18
SCREENPLAY STUDY HALL
Instead of just reading great screenplays, learn how to study them.
A 5-day hands-on challenge for screenwriters who want to understand how great screenplays actually work.
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Learn to read screenplays like a screenwriter.
Read screenplays.
You've probably heard this advice countless times.
It's good advice. But what if you don't really know how to read one in a way that teaches you something?
You can read a great screenplay from beginning to end and think:
Wow. That's a great script.
You might even understand what you liked about it. But can you explain how the writer did it?
That's what we're exploring in this month’s challenge.
Welcome to Screenplay Study Hall.
For five days, we're going to take a screenplay apart and figure out how it works.
Not to prove that it follows a set of rules, and not to turn it into a formula you can copy.
We're going to see what's underneath it.
You'll map the screenplay scene by scene, identify its story foundation and major structural turns, track the protagonist's arc, study the relationships and sources of conflict, and then choose a specific craft question you want to investigate.
By the end, you'll have something much more useful than a pile of notes.
You'll have a case study of a screenplay you can reference whenever you need it.
And, more importantly, you'll have a process you can use to study any screenplay you want.
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This isn’t just a screenplay to read. It’s a screenplay to investigate.
A finished screenplay is deceptively seamless.
You experience it as one complete story, so it's easy to miss all the individual decisions that created that experience.
Screenplay Study Hall gives you a way to pull that finished story apart.
You'll ask questions like:
What is this screenplay doing?
How does it work?
Why does it have this effect?
How did the writer create that effect?
Where on the page can I actually see those choices?
And eventually:
What can I learn from this for my own writing?
Think of it as creating an X-ray of a screenplay.
You already know how to watch a movie. This challenge will teach you how to see underneath the story.
How the challenge works:
When you sign up, you’ll receive a welcome email with the first steps to take to prepare for the 5 days of challenge activities. You’ll choose a screenplay to read, and create a scene-by-scene breakdown of it to work from during the challenge. (The earlier you sign up, the more time you have to complete this step before the challenge begins!)
For the five days of the challenge (October 12 - 16, 2026), each day you’ll receive an email detailing the focus for the day and a bit of homework. The schedule covers:
Day 1: Story foundations
Day 2: Major Plot Points and 8-sequence structure
Day 3: Character arc and Theme
Day 4: Supporting characters and relationships
Day 5: Specific craft questions and your Case Study document
I’ll be building a case study right along with you, and each day you’ll be able to see how it’s shaping up.
Then, on Sunday, October 18th, I’ll host a Q&A where we can discuss the challenge, answer any questions you have, and compare notes on the scripts we read.
From the day you sign up you’ll also have access to a casual group chat (hosted on Substack), where you can swap scripts, discuss the challenge, and help each other through the challenge.
WHAT YOU'LL RECEIVE
When you join Screenplay Study Hall, you'll get:
Five daily challenge lessons
A step-by-step process for studying your screenplay, delivered one lesson at a time.A screenplay resource folder
If you don't have a screenplay in mind, I'll provide a selection of scripts you can choose from.
My Bookworm case study
I'll be working through the steps alongside you, so you'll be able to see how I'm approaching the analysis and what I find.
Working documents and examples
You'll be able to see what a screenplay case study actually looks like as it comes together.
A process you can reuse
The goal isn't just to finish this challenge. It's to learn how to do this yourself with any screenplay you want to study in the future.
WHO IS THIS FOR?
Screenplay Study Hall is for you if:
You've heard that reading screenplays is one of the best ways to learn screenwriting—but you're not sure how to get much out of the experience.
You read great scripts and think, “I know this works, but I don't know why.”
You want to get better at analyzing story, structure, character, conflict, or craft.
You'd like to build a library of reference screenplays you can return to when you're stuck.
You learn best by seeing how other writers actually solve storytelling problems.
You're tired of collecting more screenwriting rules and want to study how real screenplays actually work.
You want a practical, structured way to spend a few days studying a screenplay instead of simply reading one and moving on.
You do not need to already know how to analyze screenplays.
That's the point.
I'll walk you through the process.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT FINDING THE "RIGHT" WAY TO WRITE A SCREENPLAY.
There isn't one screenplay template that every great writer follows.
And that's not what we're looking for here.
We're not studying a screenplay to decide whether it follows the rules.
We're studying it to figure out:
How did this writer solve this particular storytelling problem?
That's a much more interesting question.
And the more screenplays you study, the more you'll start to see both the patterns and the possibilities.
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Meet your host
Hi, I’m Naomi, a screenwriting teacher and story consultant with 10+ years of experience helping screenwriters, producers, and directors develop their projects.
I was part of the development team at Maverick Films (Madonna + Guy Oseary’s production company), where I worked on projects like Twilight, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, and The Stanford Prison Experiment.
I also worked with Blake Snyder on his second Save the Cat! book and taught Save the Cat! workshops in Los Angeles.
That experience is where I first fell in love with story structure — not as a set of rules, but as a way of understanding why stories work.
Since then, I’ve continued to study it, refine it, and build my own frameworks based on what I’ve seen actually help writers move forward.
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Common Questions
Is this only for feature screenplays, or can I study a TV pilot?
The process of close reading is just as useful for learning what makes a great pilot script!
I already know three-act structure. Is this just more of the same?
No. Three-act structure is a high-level view of story. The 8-sequence framework zooms in and shows you what’s happening inside those acts, which is where many writers get lost — especially in Act 2.
I already know Save the Cat. Do I really need another structure system?
If Save the Cat has been helpful for you, this will feel complementary, not redundant.
The 8-sequence framework focuses less on specific beats and more on story movement and escalation. Many writers find it especially useful for diagnosing pacing issues and navigating the middle of a script.
Is this suitable for newer writers?
Yes, especially if you’ve already been exposed to basic structure concepts and want a clearer, more practical way to apply them.
Is a replay included?
Yes. A replay of the Q&A will be available for 30 days.
Join Screenplay Study Hall
Spend five days taking one screenplay apart with me.
Build an X-ray of how it works.
Create a case study you can return to.
And learn a process you can use every time you find yourself wondering:
“Okay... how did they do that?”
[JOIN SCREENPLAY STUDY HALL — $XX]
Five days.
One screenplay.
A whole new way to read.