You know how you go through school hearing about the cool things your friends are have at their schools that you don’t? Gourmet lunches in the cafeteria. Half day every other Wednesday. New bathrooms on the second floor.

Yeah, well, read this, and let’s all stamp our feet in jealousy.

(For the lazies: It’s an article published back in May by the LA Times about a high school teacher in California who developed an lit class focused on screenwriting. The final is a full-length screenplay. Not like that’s totally sweet or anything.)

Most of us had to learn screenwriting on our own. That is, at least up until college. You have maybe one or two scripts that you bought at a bookstore (Good Will Hunting, for me), but you have no idea where to find more. You don’t have someone to help you with formatting. All the books (and blogs) about screenwriting are boring. Where’s your mentor?

Now let’s put our jealousy aside and talk about how great this is. Screenwriter Blake Snyder and teacher Peter Cook got together and somehow convinced the school for permission to develop a curriculum and got a grant from Final Draft. The rest is recent history.

Gotta love Cook’s philosophy “storytelling is storytelling is storytelling.” Because it’s true. Every medium of writing complements another. Screenwriting gets you in the habit of chiseling away as much as possible. You want it bare bones. It’s likely all of us are guilty of taking the adjectives too far. At least I’m hoping I’m not the only one. Screenwriting is a great exercise for this because the goal is efficiency.

Likewise, where a novel has more room for inner thoughts, screenwriting doesn’t always allow this angle on a character. If a scene isn’t working, you could write it out in prose for a new perspective. Everyone’s just helping each other out.

OK, done with my boring points. This is seriously.freakin’.sweet. Just another reason to find a way back into high school. Come on, I never had any cool classes like this. I’d be like, “Pssh, yeah I’ll take that assignment.”

It’s never too late. I’ll leave you with the words of eighteen-year-old Jessee Joseph: “If you’re interested in it and you’ll make a career out of it or it’s just a serious hobby, it becomes easier. Everyone in there’s pretty engaged.” Now doesn’t that feel like a forceful kick in the ass?