A Screenwriting Super-Class
Pen It by Hunter Ridgway

Managing the Complexities of Multidimensional Screenwriting: An Outlining-Focused Survey of Fundamental and Advanced Elements of Screen Storytelling

“The One-Day Skill Boost”
Join Hunter Ridgway, an award-winning screenwriter, lawyer, and former senior political professional, for a day-long examination of elemental and innovation-supporting building blocks to a great dramatic story. This “super-class” covers a broad spectrum of writing points and sub-points, presented in an order logical for the step-by-step building of a multifaceted and engaging script. In a sense, the class is really about pre-writing outlining, the ramp-up process to penning an interwoven set of stories and sustaining threads that can hold up a compelling motion picture.

The Pen It class includes topics related these imperative screenwriting questions:

What makes a high-quality screen story concept?
How can screenwriters consistently write visually?
What’s special or different about the world within cinema versus the real world?
How can screenwriters do more than tip their hats to inner stories within their action stories?
How do you keep a story moving in an attention- and emotion-holding way?
How do you keep audience-sympathized goals and quests engagingly thwarted?
When and how can story structure make a story better?

When is bad good? When and why is imperfectness better?
What makes a good mix of characters?
How and in what ways can a story expand as it progresses?
When is change story-consequential?
How can screenwriters complete stories with multiple bangs on multiple levels?
How can writing style enhance the significance of a screenplay?
And more!

See the OUTLINE of the (outlining-focused!) class HERE: Class Outline

Get to know Hunter Ridgway

Hunter Ridgway Bio

Class Reviews
Reviews of Pen It by Hunter Ridgway

This class gives you a ton of great tools and ideas that are useful when writing a script. While it will be impossible to remember everything you have heard, the […]

I absolutely enjoyed the class presentation. During the course of the day, I was able to work on specific points and elements of a script that is a work in […]

Very great and insightful workshop. The handout gives you all the necessary tools needed to start your screenplay. Hunter has of excellent examples during the course discussions that help give […]

Pen It By Ridgway is an informative class for those with scriptwriting experience. I’d liken it to Cliff Notes for writers. The class is filled with all the best notes […]

Read All Reviews

Upcoming Screenwriting Classes

Saturday, June 20, 2026 virtually via Zoom.

Saturday, July 25, 2026 at the Culver Hotel in Culver City, CA.

Saturday, August 22, 2026 at the New Yorker (by Lotte) Hotel in New York.

Click the button below to register:

The way the one-day classes typically work

(If you are deaf, blind, or unable to turn the pages of the required Pen It by Hunter Ridgway In-Class Workbook, please contact [or have someone on your behalf contact] [email protected] before registering for a class.)

Announcements

NEW PIBHR classes
in New York City,
Culver City (greater
L.A.), and online
just announced for
2026!!

Bulletins

For the new virtual class,
participants must advance-
order a PIBHR Workbook
from the Bookshop at
BookBaby.com. See
PURCHASE PAGE for
details. (In-class
participants will be given
a Workbook at their class.)

Assumption Document for every class

Even though Pen It by Hunter Ridgway covers many fundamental elements of screenwriting, it does not start at the absolute beginning of screenwriting how-to. Rather, it picks up after some basic tenets. It assumes knowledge of some ground-level components of solid screen story writing. Follow the link below to the Pen It Assumption Document, and please read it before the class.

Assumption Document