screenwriting-skills
jtydhr88/screenwriting-skills
screenwriting-skills is an agent skill project by jtydhr88 on GitHub: The most systematic screenwriting-theory set here: structure, Truby, scenes, dialogue, series bible, writers' room, with cases from Japan, Korea, France, the US and Chinese opera. It covers adaptation, characters, episodes, script and review, and its README says it works with Claude Code and Codex. 1.7k stars, last updated 2026-10-03, MIT license.
Skill body is in Chinese; README is in five languages
Editor's notes
The 26 skills are distilled from 47 craft books and 23 volumes of scripts, scores and plays, install through the plugin marketplace in Claude Code or Codex, and answer in whatever language you ask in. The orchestrator sw-workflow keeps project state in story-bible.md, runs features through stages 0 to 7 and series through S0 to S7, and names the skill to call at each step. The mainland-China layer covers the document chain from concept to script and adapting novels into 30 to 50 episode dramas. The README states that vertical short drama and AI manju are not planned.
- Type
- Screenwriting fundamentals
- Stages
- Adaptation · Characters · Episodes · Script · Review
- Agents
- Claude Code · Codex
- Format
- Agent skill
- Language
- Chinese
- GitHub stars
- ★ 1.7k
- Last updated
- 2026-10-03
- License
- MIT
- SKILL.md files
- 26
- Checked by hand
- 2026-10-13
In the author's words
Professional agent skills for screenwriting, television writing and dramaturgy
Skills in this repo (26)
Names and descriptions come from each SKILL.md frontmatter; Chinese descriptions are shown in our English translation.
- chekhov-dramaturgy
Writing plays and screenplays in the Chekhovian mode (Chekhov's dramatic method) — distilled from the complete plays (Fatherlessness/Platonov, Ivanov, The Wood Demon→Uncle Vanya, The Seagull, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, nine one-acts) plus Chekhov's own letters, Stanislavsky's and Nemirovich-Danchenko's rehearsal notes and criticism by Jiao Juyin/Tong Daoming. Covers the four-act mood-based s…
- ozu-screenplay-style
Writing screenplays in the style of Ozu Yasujiro and Noda Kogo — distilled from six complete screenplays (Late Spring, Early Summer, Tokyo Story, Floating Weeds, Late Autumn, An Autumn Afternoon). Covers the "family member leaves" master plot, off-screen events…
- succession-series-writing
Writing a Succession-style ensemble series — distilled from Jesse Armstrong's complete shooting scripts for all four seasons, 39 episodes (Faber 2023), with his introductions and footnotes, plus Frank Rich's and Lucy Prebble's essays on the writers' room. Covers the invisible-act three-…
- sw-american-case-studies
Case studies of American screenwriting — Mei Feng's readings of the Hollywood Western (value pairs, four oppositions), screwball comedy (strong heroine, buddy vs adversary two-hander), Billy Wilder (disguise, Lubitsch touch, meet-cute), Hitchcock and his writers, Adaptation, Mildred Pier…
- sw-character-conflict
Character creation, protagonist/antagonist design and dramatic conflict for scripts (character / antagonist / conflict) — merged from Lajos Egri (three-dimensional character, orchestration, unity of opposites, pivotal character, rising vs static vs jumping conflict, transition), William Indick's Psychology for Screenwriter…
- sw-chinese-opera-banqiang-cases
Worked full-length scripts of banqiang-system Chinese opera with their creation records (a banqiang full-script corpus). Primary texts; Weng Ouhong's The Jewelry Pouch (the revised score edition, 65 arias, 15 self-account-vs-score checks), Wang Zengqi et al.'s Shajiabang (the 1965 text, not the 1970 one; 36 arias, a 12-row two-version diff), Tian Han's The White Snake (the 1955 boo…
- sw-chinese-opera-banqiang
Playwriting for banqiang-system Chinese opera (banqiang: Peking opera, Yu opera, Yue opera, Qinqiang, Ping opera, Shanghai opera, Huai opera, Sichuan tanxi), where sung passages are paired seven- or ten-character lines varied by metre (banshi) rather than filled into fixed tune patterns. Covers genre (singing plays / acting plays / martial plays), the main line, technical structure and staging layout (paichang), how role types (hangdang) and a named star…
- sw-chinese-opera-qupai-cases
Worked qupai-system opera scripts, act by act. Guan Hanqing's three surviving zaju (The Injustice to Dou E / Rescuing a Courtesan / The Golden Thread Pond — twelve acts, 126 tunes, one mode and one rhyme per act, sung/spoken ratios); Tang Xianzu's The Peony Pavilion (55 scenes, ~420 tunes, closing quatrains assembled from Tang lines, the "Yuanjia" south-north composite suite); Kong Shangren's The Peach…
- sw-chinese-opera-qupai
Chinese opera playwriting for the qupai system — Yuan zaju, Ming-Qing chuanqi, Kunqu, Sichuan gaoqiang — where sung text is filled into fixed tune patterns (tianci) rather than built from paired lines varied by metre. Covers stage vs study (Li Yu vs Wu Mei/Wang Jilie), the switch between qingqu (songs for singing) and juqu (songs for the stage), the zaju branch (four acts and a wedge, one gongdiao mode and one rhyme per act, a single lead singer…
- sw-chinese-series-practice
Mainland-Chinese TV-series craft, documents and production chain — the China layer parallel to the Japanese and Korean/French skills. Distilled from Yao Kougen's An Introduction to TV Drama Writing (2016; series taxonomy, four Chinese script formats, the 3-minute/15-minute/episode-end suspense law, 36 situatio…
- sw-dialogue
Dialogue writing and revision for screen and stage (dialogue / lines / subtext) — merged from Robert McKee's Dialogue (dialogue as action, said/unsaid/unsayable, exposition as ammunition, beat = action/reaction gerunds, flaws of credibility/language/content/design, character-specific vocabulary and grammar, seven s…
- sw-format-adaptation
Screenplay format, page craft, the writing process and adaptation — merged from Wendy Henson (spec format rules), Richard Walter (page craft, revision), Neill Hicks (selling vs shooting script, draft chain), Syd Field (master shot, card method, adaptation as original work), Robert Mc…
- sw-genre-anatomy
Genre anatomy from John Truby's The Anatomy of Genres (genre anatomy / genre beats / mixed genres / transcending genres) — genres as beat systems with a life philosophy underneath; three rules (hit every beat of your genre, mix three or four genres, transcend the primary genre), the ladder and families of twelve genres (Horror, Actio…
- sw-industry-business
The screenwriting business and career — merged from Diamond & Weissman's Bulletproof (buyer's-eye workflow, three Cs, one-page nine-step, set pieces, submission, notes, resilience), Eric Bork's The Idea (PROBLEM seven-element idea test, 60/30/10, television differences), Neill Hicks (mar…
- sw-japanese-screenwriting
Japanese (and other non-Hollywood) screenwriting methods (original-script practice) — distilled from ten Japanese directors and writers in Screenwriting from Zero; Kosawa Ryota (three acts as kishōtenketsu, speed by jumping), Uchida Kenji (beautiful structure, time-axis tricks), Miki Satoshi (small-material notebook, theme emerges l…
- sw-korean-french-screenwriting
Korean and French screenwriting practice — from the international masterclass; Oh Seung-uk (Christmas in August, The Shameless; field research in disguise, "write the emotion", first act and last act first, spaces as skeleton, reading to hostile listeners, surviving producers), Choi Seo…
- sw-premise-theme
Premise, theme, controlling idea, subject selection and logline for scripts (premise / theme / central idea / subject selection / dramatic core) — merged from Lajos Egri's premise-as-tyrant and dialectic, Robert McKee's controlling idea (value + cause) and idea/counter-idea, Neill Hicks' five premise questions, Lisa Cron's "third rail" (desire vs mi…
- sw-scene-craft
Scene and sequence craft (scene / sequence / detail / props / suspense / charm) — merged from Robert McKee's scene design and five-step scene analysis (value turn, beats, text/subtext, turning points, pacing, image systems), McKee's Dialogue scene types (balanced, comic, asymmetric, indirect, reflexive, minimal), Syd Field's sequenc…
- sw-series-case-studies
Case studies of television series writing from primary texts; Sorkin's six West Wing teleplays (act-page tables, eight act-out types); Chase's five Sopranos scripts (the 35-beat A/B/C/D recipe, what a pilot refuses to explain); Fellowes's annotated Downton Abbey season two (19 storylines, 4…
- sw-series-engine-bible
From an idea to a sellable series design; series engine / franchise, story pattern, character webs that keep generating conflict, pilot types, and the documents that sell them (series engine / franchise / story pattern / character web / pilot types / series bible / springboard / pitch). Merged from Rabkin's four-element franchise and story landmines, Landau's tacit…
- sw-series-structure
Episode and season structure for TV series — teasers and cold opens, broadcast four/five/six-act grids with page anchors, three tests for finding the invisible acts in streaming scripts, act-out and cliffhanger taxonomies, Oberg's four information tools, A/B/C/runner weaving and scene-c…
- sw-sitcom-comedy
Half-hour television comedy craft (half-hour sitcom / joke mechanics / predicament machine / multi-cam and single-cam formats) — merged from Evan S. Smith's Writing Television Sitcoms (premise-driven comedy in three levels, nine predicaments, six character mixes, setup/punchline mechanics, toppers, running gags, ten comedic nuances, format rules), Neil Landau's…
- sw-story-structure
Story structure for screenplays and stage plays — merged from Syd Field's paradigm and plot points, Blake Snyder's Save the Cat beat sheet and board, Robert McKee's Story (event/scene/sequence/act, inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis-climax-resolution, subplots, story triang…
- sw-truby-anatomy
Organic story anatomy from John Truby's The Anatomy of Story (organic structure / designing principle / 22 steps / moral argument / four-corner opposition / ghost / scene weave) — the designing principle (story process plus original execution), the seven key steps as the organic spine, all twenty-two steps with the middle-act machinery the beat sheets lack (ghost, fake-ally oppo…
- sw-workflow
Project orchestrator for the screenwriting skill set (script project routing / state saving / story bible) — a meta-skill that adds no new craft knowledge but routes a screenplay or stage-play project through stages (premise → structure → character → scenes → draft → revision → submission) and a TV / streaming series pr…
- sw-writers-room
How episodic television actually gets made by a group (writers' room and production realities) — merged from Goldberg & Rabkin (pitch as audition, leave-behind, cracking the story, beat sheet, notes discipline, production rewrites), Pamela Douglas (John Wells's room, staff-from-hell mistakes, the seven-rung ladder, step deal, t…
Install
/plugin marketplace add jtydhr88/screenwriting-skillsDefault commands use the skills CLI and were not verified one by one; follow the repo README. Read SKILL.md before installing. Install guide →
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