Writing The Biodrama

Online self-paced writing course

Do you want to write the next Oppenheimer, Amadeus or Elvis?

Got a real story that deserves the stage or screen? Audiences can’t get enough of true-life drama, but no scriptwriting manual tells you how to actually write one. I spent years and three scripts finding out, interviewing Academy Award nominees along the way and packaged it into this self-paced course.

Sign up for course $99

Most scriptwriting manuals won’t help you overcome the particular problems facing the bio-dramatist. I found this out when I was commissioned to write a main stage play on an Australian national sports hero back in 2016. This gap in the literature had me devote years of my life researching the unique creative processes required to write a script based on a real person. I ended up writing three scripts and interviewed dozens of prominent screen and stage writers including Academy Award Nominees and who also had to create their scripts without outside guidance.

For a limited time, the course that has received many five star reviews is now available at $99, down from its regular price of $249!

But that’s not all! As a bonus, if you complete the ten-week course and have an outline of your biodrama/biopic, I’ll provide personalised feedback for FREE. This is a rare opportunity usually valued at $200! Because I deeply believe the world needs more real-life stories.

Don’t miss this chance to elevate your storytelling skills and bring your biodrama/biopic to life.

– Dr Tee O’Neill

Lesson preview:

Writing the biodrama Course Outline

A ten-module course for anyone who has ever looked at a real life and thought: that would make a great play or film or tv series.

You have a person. Maybe they’re a grandfather, a war criminal/hero, a forgotten scientist, a pop star, your own mother. Something in their story won’t leave you alone. This course exists to turn that haunting into a script.

Ten modules. Ten weeks, or however long you need. Run it as a boot camp — one module a week, no excuses — or move through it at the pace your life allows. Either way, the course doesn’t finish until you do.

Each module holds five to seven short lessons. Some are videos with a writing exercise or a piece of research to chase down. Some are audio, just your ear and a provocation, or a timed writing sprint with nowhere to hide. A few are text-heavy — the ones you sit with, read properly, then answer back to on the page.

The promise: do every video, every prompt, every exercise, and you finish with a full outline for your bio-drama. Push yourself, and you could walk away with a first draft of a script you’re genuinely excited about.

Before you write a word, you need to know what you’re standing on. This module covers the legal ground you’re building on, unpacks why the bio-drama has such a hold over audiences, and gets you writing early and fast, straight from the subconscious, before the inner critic wakes up. You’ll also reverse-engineer your favourite bio-drama to see exactly how it was built.

  • Welcome
  • The Legality of It All
  • The Power of the Bio-Drama
  • Unearthing Your Subconscious — begin writing early and fast
  • What You Can Learn from Your Favourite (and Least Favourite) Bio-Dramas
  • Your Very Favourite Bio-Drama: Reverse Engineer It
  • Know Your History

The question every bio-drama writer has to survive: why this person, why you, and what your answer reveals about the play you’re actually capable of writing. This module tests your subject for dramatic viability, walks you through the ethics of writing someone else’s life, and hands you the Sam Smiley questions every serious biographical playwright should be asking.

  • Suitability 1: Your “Why” — What It Reveals
  • Suitability 2: Dramatic Viability
  • Suitability 3: Story Within a Story
  • Suitability Ethics 1: The Right Writer
  • Suitability Ethics 2: Unconscious Bias
  • Sam Smiley Questions

The question every bio-drama writer has to survive: why this person, why you, and what your answer reveals about the play you’re actually capable of writing. This module tests your subject for dramatic viability, walks you through the ethics of writing someone else’s life, and hands you the Sam Smiley questions every serious biographical playwright should be asking.

  • Suitability 1: Your “Why” — What It Reveals
  • Suitability 2: Dramatic Viability
  • Suitability 3: Story Within a Story
  • Suitability Ethics 1: The Right Writer
  • Suitability Ethics 2: Unconscious Bias
  • Sam Smiley Questions

Not research for research’s sake — research that builds empathy and finds the shape of a life. You’ll move from wide to narrow, dig into childhood and origin for the surprises hiding there, and learn to read a location, and a social moment, for dramatic gold.

  • Getting Inside Your Character: Empathy
    Finding the Shape of the Life
  • Research Stages: Wide to Narrow
  • Surprising Ways In: Childhood and Where They’re From
  • Go to the Script Location
  • Using Recognisable Social Events

Every real life has a spine, if you know where to find it. This module isolates the moment that set everything in motion, the wound underneath the public story, and the hero’s journey hiding inside a biography — plus an oral storytelling exercise that will change how you hear your subject’s story before you ever put it on the page.

  • The Highly Examined Life
  • The Inciting Incident
  • The Emotional Wound
  • Oral Storytelling Exercise: Tell Your Story of Their Story
  • The Hero’s Journey in Bio-Drama (worksheet)

You’ve gathered enough. Now you learn when to stop researching and start shaping — pulling the short story out of the sprawling life, testing what a crowd of voices can tell you that one voice can’t, and using the halfway worksheet to check the outline that’s forming under your hands.

  • 51 Things
  • Vox Populi
  • Research: When to Stop
  • Using a Recognisable Social Event
  • Outline: Shape of the Life, Part One
  • Outline: Short Story, Part Two
  • The Halfway Mark Examination (worksheet)

The architecture of a bio-drama, and the discipline of real-life time versus stage time. You’ll work through narrative structures, the causal “because” that drives character, the scene your play cannot skip, and how the choices your subject made in real life become the traits the audience sees on stage.

  • Appease or Provoke: Consolation or Devastation
  • Narrative Structures (worksheet)
  • The “Because” in Character Development
  • Time-Compressing Real Life
  • The Obligatory Scene
    Characteristic Traits Born from Decisions

A bio-drama without real conflict is a Wikipedia page with lighting. This module builds your conflict muscle, maps the events driving your action, and shows you how to build an antagonist who is amalgamated, powerful, and earns their place on stage.

  • Conflict Muscle
  • Action Event Mapping
  • Two Images from Your Research
  • One Paragraph to Tell Their Story
  • Antagonist: Amalgamated and Powerful

The heart of the craft: turning a living, breathing, complicated human into a character an audience will believe. You’ll pin down their dominant trait, find the humour that makes them bearable to spend two hours with, and start giving them a voice that is unmistakably theirs.

  • Real Person into Dramatic Character
  • The Biographical Character’s Dominant Trait
  • Finding the Humour
    Dialogue: How Your Bio-Character Speaks, Part 1
  • Dialogue: Words and Their Power, Part 2

Where character meets language, and where scenes get their heat. You’ll look at the devices that lift a flat scene into a powerful one, the craft of a good ending, and the “inspired by or based upon” question every bio-drama writer eventually has to answer for themselves — before moving, almost without noticing, from a red-hot outline into the first draft of a script.

  • Meeting Word and Character
  • Devices to Amp Up Your Scenes
  • The Power of a Good Ending
  • Inspired By or Based Upon? (worksheet)
  • From Red-Hot Outline to First Draft, Seamlessly

The last stretch. You’ll take a rough draft through three passes into a first draft proper, sit through your first script read-through, and learn how to actually use the feedback you get without losing your own play in the process. The module closes with what happens after the reading, and what rehearsal and production demand of a bio-drama specifically.

  • Rough Draft into First Draft, Parts One–Three
  • The First Script Read-Through (worksheet)
  • The Fine Art of Utilising Feedback on a Bio-Drama
  • The Draft After the Reading
  • Rehearsal and Production Phase
    Conclusion, and Farewell

By the end: a full outline for your bio-drama, built module by module, exercise by exercise. Work hard, and you’ll have a first draft in hand as well — one you actually want to keep writing.

“A very well put-together course, delivered with great warmth and wisdom. This programme will help you with all stages of writing a biodrama, from finding inspiration, researching and structuring your play, as well as further considerations such as getting feedback and navigating the potential legalities. The course framework is brilliant for guiding you through different ways of researching your subject. Constructive writing exercises and provocations then ensured that the research was put to good purpose and related directly to the play. An extensive reading/viewing list was provided, illustrating one of the key questions: how much to remain true to the facts, and what licence there is to fictionalise. The whole course very much supports you to lean into your instincts and the story you want to tell. The course quickly became the highlight of my day, and has helped me produce a first draft with clear ideas and a strong structure. Would definitely recommend.”

Charis Ainslie

“I signed up for this course because although I had written a lot for theatre before, I had never previously embarked on a biographical project. I was interested to learn how approaching these sorts of projects would differ, and I had a few ideas for biographical projects that I had previously felt too daunted to start. I was a little worried that because I didn’t have a project fully defined in my head before I started, that I wouldn’t be able to make the most of the course, but I needn’t have worried. This course is suitable for any level of experience, whether one is a seasoned writer, or just starting out, and whether you are using it to help develop an idea you already have, or to just learn more about writing biodrama in general to help identify new ideas – the course is equally useful. From the very beginning, this course feels supportive, and encouraging and takes you step by step on a journey to developing biodrama, encouraging you to challenge yourself and explore areas you might never have explored before. I was impressed by how much material there was, I learnt so much, and yet it didn’t feel daunting or overwhelming. There is so much learning in each module, and I found the exercises helped push me out of my comfort zone and explore writing in new ways, whilst feeling supported at every step. I enjoyed the mix of audio clips, video clips and text, and the use of examples from biodrama theatre and films really brought the concepts to life. It has given me a new interest and appreciation for the huge variety of biodrama out there. I started the course with a project in mind that I had not developed at all. At the start I really doubted myself if I would be capable of turning that idea into a full biodrama, and I doubted whether I would be able to find sufficient research on my subject. But this course helped me explore the subject in ways I’d never thought of before, and helped me really connect with the subject on a much deeper level than I expected. Through this, I discovered a treasure trove of research as well as a deep connection with the story I’m going to tell. The parts of the course on structure I know will help me shape this story into one that people want to watch, and I’m now really excited to develop this idea further. Not only that, but the skills and learning I’ve taken from this course, I know I’ll be able to apply to other future projects. It’s already inspired me and excited me to look for other biodrama project ideas. I’m extremely grateful to have done this course – I have learnt so much, and taken so much value from it. I’ll be recommending it to other writer friends.”

Nina Tolstoy

“Having written fiction, I wanted to try my hand at a biodrama. I struggled with finding the balance between historical truth and dramatic fiction, at which point I was lucky to get the opportunity to join Tee’s course. I jumped on it and was impressed and inspired by it. If you are serious about writing your biodrama, and eager to commit time and effort to the process, this is the course for you. You won’t just get a few pointers or examples, you’ll get complete and extremely well founded guidance as well as supportive company for your writing process. From first ideas right up to a workshop production and final draft. The online format allows you to work at your own pace. You can rest assured that all thinkable aspects will be covered. You’ll learn new techniques to construct your biodrama and be gently seduced to apply the ones you already knew but were too lazy to apply. Tee is passionate about biodrama, the writing process and the playwright, which shines through at every step. Vastly different from the workshops that are out there, this course is based on a comprehensive study of the genre and the craft, so you’re not just adopting one person’s process. Highly recommended!”

Diederik Rep

“The biopic, the biodrama, comes in for a lot of stick from critics— but the truth is, it is a hugely popular genre of film and theatre, with some of our best dramatists, film directors, and stars queuing up to make them! But it is a genre that has its own, very specific, difficulties and challenges when you come to write one. Tee’s ‘Writing the Biodrama’ is the first course I have encountered that not only tackles these challenges head-on, it also embraces just how fluid, how creative and how awesome the biodrama can be. What is unique about this course, is that it doesn’t dwell on the negatives. Yes, some biopics can be formulaic; some can sacrifice character to facts and incidents — but when they are done with passion and creativity, the biodrama just soars! In a very detailed, very precise, step-by-step way, Tee confidently guides each student through the world of the biodrama and encourages creativity and innovation at every step, while carefully showing some of the pitfalls and problems so that you can avoid them. Blessed with her own great experience in writing biodramas, Tee gives detailed and reflexive observations on her own work — while also offering great insights and examples from other world. Believe me, by course end, you will have a Film and Book Wishlist of enormous size and scope, as you follow up on Tee’s recommendations. I am still checking out some of the films she references even now! What is fascinating about this course its how it isn’t afraid to tackle the technical and ethical problems associated with bio dramas, without getting too bogged down with them. It is easy to be paralysed when faced with dramatising a real life, but Tee encourages and drives you to make an insightful, compelling and innovative drama at every step. The exercises are instructive, contemplative and challenging, as you really have to work your creativity. You get to discover new ways to investigate and to realise your characters, that move far beyond the rather dull formulas of the established screenwriting gurus. Even if you are not merely a biodramatist, Tee’s course will help make you a better writer— learning new ways of idea generation, plotting, structure, that excite and subvert some of our existing paradigms. The focus is on creativity — as Sorkin says, a biodrama is a ‘painting and not a photograph’ and Tee embraces this challenge to be creative, to have your own distinctive voice and take on a character, and to push the boundaries of the genre. Best of all, Tee is such an engaging and enthusiastic presenter — no, make that your co-creator, your writing buddy, your encouragement. She believes in the power of writing compelling bio dramas, and absolutely gives you the belief that you can write one too. The style is relaxed, easy, packed with detail, friendly and in wonderful bite-sized segments that you can sprinkle throughout your writing week. Trust me, by the completion of the course your ‘idea’ will be fleshed out, solid, and in a shape to develop and refine. The return on your investment is quite possibly going to be the best script you have written. I can’t recommend the course highly enough. Tremendous value, so much food for thought, and you will be high on inspiration!”

Mike Gibas

“I recently completed Tee O’Neill’s biodrama writing course and I must say, it exceeded my expectations. The course is well-structured with a perfect blend of short video lectures, audio lectures, and practical tasks. Tee’s approach to teaching biodrama is not only informative but also engaging and inspiring. What I appreciated most about the course is Tee’s ability to break down complex concepts into simple, easy-to-understand terms. She also provides numerous practical exercises that allow for hands-on learning and reinforce the concepts covered in the lectures. Tee’s passion for biodrama shines through in every aspect of the course, and it’s contagious. I found myself feeling more excited and motivated to work on my own biodrama project with every passing lesson. In addition to providing valuable instruction on how to write biodrama, Tee O’Neill also shares her own personal experience of writing biodrama and the challenges she faced in the process. Through her insights, Tee gives a unique perspective that helps students gain a deeper understanding of what it takes to create a successful biodrama. Tee is candid about the ups and downs of her own writing journey and doesn’t shy away from discussing the obstacles she encountered along the way. She shares how she navigated difficult subject matter, and this personal touch adds another layer of richness to Tee’s course. It’s a testament to her commitment to helping others succeed in the field. Students who take her course will not only gain valuable instruction but also a sense of community with a fellow writer who has been through the same challenges they may face in their own writing journey. Overall, I highly recommend this course to anyone interested in learning how to write biodrama. Thank you, Tee, for providing such a valuable and enriching learning experience! Anna Halas, playwright and theatre translator (Ukraine/UK)”

Ana Halas