David Breckman

Instructor Biography:

Screenwriter, producer, director; WGA/DGA member. Mr. Breckman worked for eight years as writer/producer/director on the award-winning mystery series Monk (USA), starring Tony Shalhoub and as a writer on Saturday Night Live. He has also written screenplays for three major studios, most recently Universal Pictures as well as pilots for ABC, NBC and USA.

Instructor Statement:

Character counts for a great deal in screenwriting -- in all writing, actually. But as David Mamet once observed, nobody ever asks the question "Who's it about?" when trying to decide what movie to see on a Saturday night. The question they invariably ask is "What's it about?" In other words, plot counts for a great deal too, and movies are primarily plot-driven, depending for their power on incident, on story, on making the audience ask "What's going to happen next?" One naturally needs strong characters the audience can identify with, but without something interesting for those characters to do, and have done to them, the audience gets bored; they stop caring. My class will give you the tools you need to build a sturdy, three-act narrative that will keep your audience caring... keep them interested... keep them glued to their seats wondering "What's going to happen next?"