Writing for the Screen and Stage at Northwestern University

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Overview The Writing for the Screen and Stage program of Northwestern University has six core courses, which introduce you to a set of “transportable” media writing concepts, as well as specific idioms/genres. You’ll build a significant portfolio — at least a short screenplay, play, TV episode, and full-length thesis project of your choosing. You’ll understand not just the art and craft of media writing, but also the business of media writing as we’ll practice pitching, taking meetings, writing query letters, and understanding contracts. You’ll choose from a range of topics courses, such as developing the pilot, writing the teen film, experimental adaptation, and interactive narrative. Along the way, you’ll meet artists and executives from TV, stage, film, and new media.And when you finish, whether you pursue writing for Film, Stage, TV, or some emerging form that you help define, you’ll be eligible to join the Northwestern University Entertainment Alliance, an organization devoted to promoting the careers of recent grads. It’s becoming well known throughout the country: Northwestern fosters a profound sense of artistic community and professional camaraderie. I want to find another Master Course Career pathsThe recent graduates have been staffed as writers on television shows such as Heroes Reborn, Late Night with Stephen Colbert, The Late Show with Seth Meyers, Major Crimes, and Murder in the First. They’ve also had plays produced at major venues such as The Second City, Victory Gardens Theatre, Steppenwolf, the Flea Theatre, and the National Playwrights Conference at The O’Neill Center and received honors and grants like the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work, the Princess Grace Award, and the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival Award. In addition, their plays have been published by Dramatic Publishing and Samuel French, their films have been accepted to festivals like Newfest: New York LGBT Film Festival, the Ashland Independent Film Festival, and the Rhode Island Film Festival, and they’ve been hired as professors at major universities such as Kenyon College, The University of Wisconsin, and the University of Mississippi.

The Writing for the Screen and Stage program of Northwestern University is founded upon these five principles, principles that have also guided Northwestern's highly successful undergraduate Creative Writing for the Media Program.