The Origin
of the 16 Steps
How a career of writing, teaching, and directing led to a system that makes screenwriting clearer, faster, and more human.
The idea of teaching the systems I was learning in writing rooms began about ten years ago, when I was living in Los Angeles and working as a writer’s assistant for my father, screenwriter-director-producer Bobby Moresco.
(If you’d like to hear more about my personal journey as a writer’s assistant and daughter navigating Hollywood, you can listen to this episode of my podcast, or read this article I wrote for Creative Screenwriting Magazine , typos included, though they weren’t there when I submitted it.)
I would spend my days working as a staff writer alongside seasoned professionals, writing what I was hired to write, then spend my nights in writing groups with emerging writers, writing what I wanted to write. The contrast between those two worlds astonished me.
Not in the way you might think. It wasn’t that one group was more talented than the other. It was that the professional writers spent all day talking about what makes a great story, while the emerging writers spent all night talking about page count and act breaks.
Most screenwriting manuals teach you how to write a screenplay. In the professional writers’ rooms I had the privilege of working in, I was being taught how to tell a story.
After my dad won back-to-back Oscars (for Crash and Million Dollar Baby) while simultaneously showrunning a series on NBC (The Black Donnellys), our office was flooded with script submissions. Part of my job as his assistant was to do coverage on all of them. Somewhere around my thirtieth unreadable screenplay, it hit me: I need to step in at the exact moment between “I want to write a screenplay” and opening a how-to manual and say:
"STOP. Before you write a screenplay, you need to learn how to be a storyteller.
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It wasn’t until a global pandemic shut the world down that I finally had the time and space to do this. And so, in 2020, Writing By Structure was born. I turned the system I had learned in writers’ rooms, working alongside incredible writers, directors, and producers (on projects that got made, and dozens that didn’t but that I’m still proud of) into a teachable program: “16 Weeks to a Screenplay.”
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Since then, I’ve been teaching writers that FINDING YOUR STORY FIRST, THEN PLOTTING, AND ONLY THEN WRITING is how you become a storyteller first, and execute cinematically on the page as a screenwriter, second.
There’s nothing quite like that eureka moment when a writer finally “gets it.” After spending four weeks clarifying the story they’re truly trying to tell, and another four weeks plotting it carefully on index cards to make sure there are no holes, they sit down to write... and the words pour out of them like poetry.
That eureka moment is what keeps me teaching this system, and it’s why I’m so excited to be partnering with Final Draft, so writers everywhere can experience that moment for themselves.
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Now, I can cut writers off at the pass, no matter where they are in the world.
Mission. Accomplished.
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Explore the 16 Step System for Yourself
See how each module works and
begin your own writing journey.
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Amanda Moresco
I am a screenwriter and story development specialist with over twenty years of experience in film, television, and theater. My work includes contributions to Academy Award winning films such as Crash and Million Dollar Baby, multiple television series, short films and most recently, Maserati: The Brothers (filmed in Rome with Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Alba, and Andy Garcia).
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What drives me across every project is my passion for story structure, character development, and cathartic arcs. I’ve learned that my greatest strength lies in partnering with writers, directors, producers, and production companies to help sharpen vision, and ensure stories resonate on screen.
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Whether working with Academy Award level productions or first-time filmmakers, I bring the same commitment: helping storytellers find the clarity and power inside their work.
