The Italy writing retreat is designed to move each project forward, offering you analysis and discussion with our leader and collaboration with fellow writers. We focus on exchanging ideas and pages so that you feel inspired and productive. We offer practical exercises to hone your writing skills and teach you a few tricks of the screen trade. Our skills-based mini-lessons tackle specifics such as subtext, stakes, beginnings, creating characters that pop, “getting in late and getting out early” from a scene, defining relationships, being precise and concise, and much more.

For new material, we will guide you through assembling a script, from pitch to outline to scenes. If you’d like to perfect an existing project, we will break it down and put it back together again, giving you insight into what works and what doesn’t, so that you can leave with a strong, streamlined screenplay that you’ll feel confident handing over to any agent or studio in town.

Also, you’ll be away from your daily grind working against a backdrop of beautiful landscapes, delicious cuisine and inspiring culture – ITALY! You’ll be able to take a break from writing with town walks, cathedral and underground city tours, wine tastings, and other fun activities.

Customize your Italy screenwriting lab

We offer the full two-week retreat, as well as two single-week options: Week One, to develop a new idea into a detailed story treatment; or Week Two, to turn a story treatment (or outline) into a solid screenplay.

Week 1 Program
If you need to develop your story foundations or character arcs, this is the lab for you. We will share tools to construct characters with depth and dimension. Then we’ll dive deep into the structure of your story, focusing on organic character motivations and narrative momentum. You’ll design each scene with purpose, with clear goals, obstacles, and tension. By the end of the week, you’ll have a solid treatment that will allow you to create rich pages.

Week 2 Program
If you have a solid outline and rich characters, but have struggled to craft scenes and dialogue that spark on the page, this is the lab for you. We will work with tools designed to improve your scene construction and dialogue, and even share formatting tricks. With daily table reads for each writer and comprehensive feedback from the mentor and the other participants, you’ll create pages with confidence. To get the most out of the lab, we will ask you to submit a story outline and participate in a feedback session with the mentor in advance.

Full Two-Week Program
If you’re ready to hit pause on your daily life and embrace the full process of creating or re-engineering your script from concept to pages, this is the lab for you. Over two weeks, you’ll gain new tools and insights to unlock the next level of writing you’ve been reaching for. Following a writers-room format, we’ll work through character and story construction first, then scenes and dialogue that jump off the page. Insightful mentoring and a supportive cohort of writers will lift you to your best work yet.

Space is limited, so don’t delay!