Screenwriting – Intensive, Three-Day MFA: The Trade, Craft, and Business

Dates: October 17–19, 2025

Time: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Location: The Studio@620. 620 1st Ave. S. St. Petersburg, FL 33701

Capacity: Limited to 15 participants (in-person class only)

Presented by: Sunscreen Film Festival

You’re not getting a diploma, you're getting the real thing.

In this exclusive, three-day intensive, in-person master class, acclaimed television and feature film writer Henry G.M. Jones (Netflix’s Arcane, Jupiter’s Legacy, STARZ’s Spartacus: House of Ashur, and more) will immerse you in the reality of professional screenwriting, covering the trade, craft, and business of the profession.

Over the course of three eight-hour days, you will work exactly as a professional screenwriter does—pitching ideas, revising pages, collaborating with others, and receiving blunt, practical, real-world feedback. This is not theory. This is the writers’ room.

• The trade of screenwriting: specialized skills, formatting, and professional expectations.
• The craft of storytelling: voice, plot, character, structure, dialogue, and tone.
• The business of the industry: how to navigate relationships, secure work, and build a career that lasts.

• Each participant will bring a completed short film script (no longer than 15 pages) submitted prior to the workshop start date.
• Be prepared to write, rewrite, and possibly start over—this is an active, hands-on workshop.
• Small class size (max 15 participants) ensures personalized feedback.
• Modeled after a professional writers’ room environment.

Henry has written feature and television projects for myriad companies including: MGM, Fox, Paramount, Bad Robot, Universal, New Line Cinema, Amazon, Lionsgate, STARZ, NBC and Netflix. Recently, he wrote on Netflix's JUPITER'S LEGACY, BLACK SUMMER and the Emmy-winning ARCANE. Currently, he’s engaged on SPARTACUS: HOUSE OF ASHUR for STARZ and Lionsgate.

He has a host of other properties in process at studios and streamers in features and television, including: MIDDLE MAN (The Tannenbaum Company producing, Jeffrey Donovan starring, Scott Winant directing); THE ARK, which he co-wrote with Steven S. DeKnight (DeKnight directing); Glen Campbell biopic, GLEN (Michael Morris directing, Mark Johnson producing), and original feature, DEFCON, (Anonymous Content producing, Kevin Durand and Chaske Spencer starring) which Jones co-wrote and is directing himself.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to learn directly from a top-level Hollywood writer in an intimate, hands-on setting.

Seats are extremely limited, secure your spot today.

Message from Henry G.M. Jones, Your Workshop Instructor

First things first, you’re not going to get an actual MFA at the end of this three-day intensive. Shocker, I know. What you will get, however, is real, applicable instruction in the craft on plot, character, structure, story, voice, dialogue, tone and execution from a writer who’s been in the industry trenches for over twenty-five years. No joke, you will learn as much or more in this intensive as you would in the pursuit of a master’s degree on the subject.

How is that possible? Because we will working in practice, not theory. Screenwriting is a trade, craft and a business in the same way that carpentry is a trade, craft and a business.

The trade aspect is that screenwriting is a job requiring specialized training. It’s not simply writing, it’s screenwriting, and there are myriad differences between this type of writing and every other type of writing.

Craft encompasses the individual artistry one brings to their execution of the trade. Much ado is made of the artistry involved in screenwriting to the detriment of the practical dimensions of screenwriting as a profession that actually pays your bills. Artistry is essential but if you are endeavoring to become an artist instead of a tradesman, you’ll have better odds of success scratching lotto tickets.

The business of screenwriting is, well, business. If you’re screenwriting professionally, you are running a business. You need to bring money in to support the business, manage relationships, time and resources, learn when and how to lead, learn when and how to follow, how to secure work, deliver quality product on time and build a customer base. In any business, the customer is king.

Trade, craft and business – that is the screenwriting life. This will be three eight-hour days of blunt, practical, real-world instruction.

REQUIREMENTS:

You must have a completed short film script to take this course. We will be working on your trade and craft through that material. You will be writing and rewriting. You will be generating pages inside and outside of class. You may be starting over from page one. You may be throwing the idea out and generating a new script during the course. However you cut it, you will be working – with me, with others in the course, by yourself, in the morning, at night, full speed ahead.

Your short script will be a microcosm inside which you will learn the principles of trade and craft you can apply not only to feature or television scripts, but to anything you write.

Host or Publisher Sunscreen Film Festival