Screenwriting and Storyboarding

Course Description

Screenwriting is the upper-division course in which a student learns to write for the screen — a form with its own format, its own economy of information, and a discipline that almost nothing in general writing instruction prepares you for. In the Florida statewide course numbering system it sits at FIL4102, titled Screenwriting and Storyboarding I.

The statewide description covers three things: it "introduces the basic processes and techniques involved in screenwriting and storyboarding," together with "the analysis of already published works in other media for adaptation to film/video."

⚠ The statewide title joins two things with "and" — screenwriting and storyboarding — and it is worth checking whether a course delivers both halves, because a conjunction in a title is frequently a promise that only one side keeps. Here it does: the University of West Florida, the only Florida public institution carrying this number, titles it Screenwriting for Film, TV, and Digital Media with no mention of storyboarding, but its description lists "script formats, storyboarding, and story pitches" among its topics. ✅ Both halves are there; the title simply leads with the larger one.

⚠⚠⚠ This course carries a Gordon Rule WRITING designation — and that changes the grade you need

UWF records this course as Gordon Rule designated, on the writing half, and its catalogue entry says so in UWF's own wording: "Meets College-Level Communication Skills Requirement."

⚠⚠ The consequence is concrete and it catches people out every year: a Gordon Rule course must be passed with a grade of C or higher to count. A C-minus does not satisfy it at most Florida institutions — which is stricter than the ordinary passing standard, and stricter than the grade that will still appear as a pass on your transcript.

Two further things follow:

• ⚠ The designation is made by the INSTITUTION, not by the course number. It is recorded at UWF. If you take a comparable screenwriting course elsewhere, do not assume it carries the same designation — check your own institution's list.
• It tells you something useful about the course itself. A writing-designated screenwriting course is a writing course: expect substantial drafting, rewriting and assessed prose, not a seminar about films.

⚠⚠ Two exclusion rules to check before you register

UWF attaches two restrictions that are easy to read past and expensive to discover late:

• ⚠ Credit may not be received for both FIL4102 and MMC4103. If you have already taken the mass-communication writing course, this one may not count.
• ✅ The course may be repeated for up to 6 semester hours — so it can be taken twice for credit, which is genuinely useful for a student building a portfolio of scripts. ⚠ Confirm how many your own degree will count, and note Florida's excess-hours provisions for credit beyond what a degree requires.

⚠ Screenwriting is numbered more than one way in Florida

If you are looking for this course and cannot find the number, that is why. Florida Atlantic carries FIL4106 Script Writing at 4 credits — "formal elements of writing for film and television; preparation of proposals and scripts with emphasis on conception, structure, characterization and format" — which is the same subject under a different statewide number. Register by the description, and expect the number to change if you transfer.

⚠ Note also the statewide prerequisite field for this number, which reads INTRODUCTION TO MOTION PICTURE/ — prose rather than a course identifier, and truncated mid-phrase. There is no course to go and find under that name; it is a data defect. UWF lists no prerequisite for the course at all.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Write in correct screenplay format, and understand that format is a professional gate rather than a stylistic preference.
• Develop a premise into a structured narrative — acts, sequences, turning points — and defend the structure.
• Build character through action and behaviour rather than through description or exposition.
• Write dialogue that carries subtext, and recognise dialogue that only carries information.
• Show rather than tell — the central discipline of the form, and the hardest habit to acquire.
• Complete a full cycle of developing, planning, writing and rewriting a narrative work for the screen.
• Give and receive workshop criticism usefully, and revise on the strength of it.
• Storyboard a sequence, and explain how visual planning changes what the script needs to say.
• Deliver a story pitch — concisely, aloud, to people who have not read the script.
• Analyse a published work in another medium for adaptation, and identify what must change.

Optional Outcomes

• Write for television — the teleplay, act breaks, the writers' room, and the constraints of an ongoing series.
• Write for digital and short-form media, where the economy is different again.
• Complete an adaptation of a short published work.
• Prepare professional materials — logline, synopsis, treatment, query.
• Understand the business: options, spec scripts, the WGA, and what registration does and does not protect.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Script format — slug lines, action, dialogue, transitions, and why the page-per-minute convention exists.
• Story structure — three-act and its alternatives; sequence construction; the turning point.
• Character — want and need, obstacle, arc, and revealing character through choice.
• Dialogue and subtext; writing distinct voices.
• Scene construction — entering late, leaving early, and giving every scene a job.
• Visual storytelling — carrying meaning in image and action rather than speech.
• Storyboarding — planning a sequence visually; shot and coverage thinking.
• Adaptation — analysing source material in another medium and deciding what survives the move.
• Rewriting — the part of the work that is actually the work.
• Workshop — reading others' pages critically and taking criticism on your own.
• Pitching — the logline and the verbal pitch.

Optional Topics

• Teleplay structure and writing for series television.
• Short-form and digital narrative formats.
• Genre conventions as a writer's tool.
• Professional practice — the spec market, representation, contests and festivals.
• ⚠ Rights and copyright — what you may adapt, and what you may not.

Resources & Tools

• Story, Robert McKee — the most widely assigned text, and the one most often argued with.
• Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, Syd Field — the origin of the three-act vocabulary most courses use.
• Save the Cat! Writes a Movie, Blake Snyder and Jessica Brody — structural, commercial, and widely used in workshops.
• The Screenwriter's Bible, David Trottier — the format reference.
• Adaptation: Studying Film and Literature, John Desmond and Peter Hawkes, for the adaptation half.
• Final Draft is the industry standard; WriterDuet, Fade In, Highland and the free Trelby and Fountain format are all usable alternatives. ⚠ Check what your section requires before buying anything — Final Draft is expensive and student pricing exists.
• Read produced screenplays. Studios post scripts free during awards season, and the Internet Movie Script Database and Script Slug hold large archives. ⚠ Reading twenty screenplays teaches more about format and economy than any textbook.
• Storyboard templates; simple drawing tools. Storyboards are about clarity, not draughtsmanship.

Career Pathways

• Writers and Authors (SOC 27-3043) — the direct category, and it includes screenwriters.
• Producers and Directors (SOC 27-2012) — ⚠ in practice a great many writers reach production by writing something and then making it.
• Media and Communication Workers (SOC 27-3099); Public Relations Specialists (SOC 27-3031).
• Technical Writers (SOC 27-3042) and corporate or instructional scriptwriting — ⚠ the least glamorous and most reliably paid application of this skill, and Florida's corporate, medical and theme-park sectors buy a great deal of it.
• Special Effects Artists and Animators (SOC 27-1014) — storyboarding specifically.
• Postsecondary Teacher (SOC 25-1121) with an MFA.
• Florida context: ⚠⚠ be honest with yourself about the market. Screenwriting as a career is concentrated in Los Angeles, and Florida is not a spec-script market. What Florida does have is steady demand for scripted content in other registers — theme-park and attraction media in Orlando, commercial and Spanish-language production in Miami, corporate and training video statewide, and a real independent and documentary community. The transferable skill is structure and economy, and it pays here even where feature screenwriting does not. Use the repeat allowance to leave with finished scripts, because a completed screenplay is the only credential this field recognises.

Special Information

Course format and hours

A writing workshop: drafting, circulating pages, critique, rewriting. 3 credits and 45 contact hours; 45 follows Florida's 1:15 convention and no institution publishes a contact-hour figure.

⚠⚠ The scheduled hours badly understate this one. A workshop course is assessed on pages produced, and pages take as long as they take — plus reading everyone else's. Treat it as one of the heavier 3-credit courses in a term, and do not stack it with another writing-intensive course if you can avoid it.

Offering Notes

One Florida public institution carries this identifier. No contact hours published.

• University of West Florida (UWF) — Screenwriting for Film, TV, and Digital Media, 3 credits, Department of Communication. "Study and practice of writing for narrative mass media, including screenplays, teleplays, and digital media formats. Study of various approaches to the craft of developing, planning, writing, and rewriting narrative works for the screen. Additional topics include script formats, storyboarding, and story pitches." ⚠⚠ Gordon Rule writing designation (UWF's label: "Meets College-Level Communication Skills Requirement") — C or higher required to count. ⚠ May be repeated for up to 6 semester hours. ⚠ Credit may not be received for both this and MMC4103. No prerequisite listed.

⚠ A private institution also carries this number (as Script and Screenwriting, 3 credits). This repository covers Florida public institutions, so that is recorded as a scope fact only.

The alternative number: FIL4106 Script Writing at Florida Atlantic, 4 credits — the same subject, a different statewide number.

⚠ Transfer

Guaranteed transfer to an institution offering the same course — and with a single public carrier that condition is close to empty. Expect the credit to be evaluated by hand.

Two things to send: the syllabus, and the scripts themselves. ⚠⚠ In writing disciplines the work is stronger evidence than the transcript, and any department evaluating a screenwriting credit will want to read pages. Keep every draft, not just the final one — the revision history demonstrates the thing the course actually taught.

⚠ If you are relying on this course for a Gordon Rule requirement, confirm the designation transfers. Designation normally travels within the Florida public system but is institution-specific, and it should be confirmed rather than assumed.

Position in the curriculum

A 4000-level course with no prerequisite at its carrier, so it is more accessible than the number suggests. It pairs naturally with the production sequence — a script you wrote is the obvious thing to shoot in a production course — and with film analysis courses, which teach you to read structure in finished films. Take it early enough to use the repeat allowance if you want a second script.

Dual enrolment and general education

⚠ It carries a Gordon Rule designation at UWF, which is the general-education fact that matters here; see above for the C-or-higher condition. Dual-enrolment high-school credit at this level is uniformly elective across the prefix.

AI Integration

⚠⚠⚠ Screenwriting is the course in this prefix where generative AI is most capable, most contested and most professionally consequential — and it deserves a straight answer rather than a general warning.

Where the tools are genuinely useful, and using them this way is defensible: formatting and reformatting; checking a structure against a beat sheet; generating alternative loglines to react against; brainstorming names, locations and premises; researching a world or a period you are writing into; and — the most practical use — acting as a reader you can ask "what do you think this scene is about?" to find out whether your subtext is landing or has vanished.

Where they fail, and it is what the course assesses:

• ⚠⚠⚠ Generated dialogue is on-the-nose, and on-the-nose dialogue is the single fault this course exists to cure. Models write characters who say what they mean, because that is what the training text does. Subtext — a character saying one thing and wanting another — is the craft, and it is precisely what the tools cannot sustain.
• Structure comes back as the template, not as a story. Ask for a three-act outline and you get the beats in the expected places with nothing underneath them. Recognising that hollowness is itself a skill the course develops.
• Specificity is the first casualty. Good screenwriting lives on the exact detail — the particular object, the particular gesture. Generated prose reaches for the general, and general is death on the page.
• ⚠ It cannot rewrite, because it does not know what you were trying to do. Rewriting means holding an intention and changing the execution; a tool asked to improve a scene will change the intention too.

⚠⚠⚠ The professional and legal position, which a student entering this field needs to know now:

• The 2023 WGA agreement addressed AI directly, and the industry's rules about disclosure and about what AI-generated material can be credited as are live, negotiated and still moving. ⚠ Do not assume today's answer is next year's.
• ⚠⚠ Authorship matters for copyright. The US Copyright Office has held that purely AI-generated material is not protectable by copyright — which for a writer is not an abstraction: it bears on whether you own what you wrote and whether you can sell it. Keep your drafting history.
• Competitions, fellowships and agencies increasingly require disclosure, and some prohibit AI-generated submissions outright. Read the rules of anything you enter.

Academic integrity, and it is sharper here than in most courses: ⚠⚠ this course carries a Gordon Rule WRITING designation, which means the state requirement it satisfies is a requirement that YOU can write. Submitting generated pages does not merely breach a policy — it defeats the designation the credit carries. Follow your instructor's stated policy, disclose tool use, and keep your drafts. A revision history is the cleanest possible demonstration of authorship, and it is worth building the habit now, because you may need it professionally.