Final Pitch

Working local directors will come on campus for a pitch-fest. They’ll be considering your play as a real option for a future production. Your pitch should be as professional, carefully honed, and impressive as possible.

Final Script

You need to complete one full length stage play, (or) one feature-length screenplay, (or) one television pilot (along with a series “bible”), (or) some equivalent package of dramatic writing as agreed upon between you and the teacher at the outset of the semester. You will turn in this assignment through google docs.

Reading

You are required to read several plays by one playwright / screenwriter or within a genre that is similar to the work that you’re completing in the class. You’ll share what you read with the class in an oral report.

You will also be asked to do some reading in the first weeks of class -- this reading will count toward your grade in the PARTICIPATION portion of the course.

Final Script Proposal

You will develop a proposal about your final project. This proposal must be approved by the professor on the date due. While your final play may develop in ways you cannot expect, you should work hard to follow through on the proposal that you complete early in the semester.

Your proposal, like your three proposals, should include a title, a teaser and a long paragraph that describes the world of the story, the key characters, the main actions that drive the story forward, the climax and the resolution.  Your proposal should also communicate the TONE of your story, the genre of it and even suggest some comparison plays or movies that have some things in common with your script.  You can even COMBINE two stories or movies in order to communicate the unique way that your story straddles genre, tone or story type.

By the time you turn this proposal in, you should have a very clear, coherent vision for your play, screenplay or script.

Course Participation

You are expected to attend one play and one movie screening with your classmates. You will also be expected to read the scripts for both of these dramatic pieces. You are expected to attend all workshops of other writers, come prepared and give helpful feedback to one another. You will also be a “lead respondent” in at least one workshop. Your performance as a lead respondent will be weighted more heavily than your weekly workshop responses. You should read more about writers workshops on the course blog.

Course Participation points will be gained five ways:

1.) by performing your lead respondent duties with excellence.
2.) by giving regular good feedback (written and oral) to writers in the workshop.
3.) by engaging in course discussions of readings.
4.) by attending class regularly.
5.) by attending special writer-events throughout the semester.

Short Play / Screenplay

You will write a ten minute play or a short screenplay. If you're writing a stage play, you must have more than one character in this story.

You may write about anything that you wish.

You may adapt someone else’s work for this assignment.

You will use your Weekly Eight to complete this assignment.

If you're writing a screenplay for your final project, you should write a screenplay for this assignment.  If you're writing a stage play?  Write a stage play for this assignment.

The scripts written for this assignment OFTEN go on to be produced as Open Frame films and as short plays in our biannual Short Play Fest (through Introduction to Theatre class).  You may want to write the script in such a way that would make such a production more likely. You're not at all obliged to -- but there's nothing like SEEING your work produced to inspire more creativity.

Three Proposals

I believe that discovering WHAT story you will write will be one of the most difficult things that you will have to accomplish this semester. And unfortunately, you need to discover it RIGHT AWAY.

 A few of you have come into the class with a clear sense of what you would like to write so this part of the semester may seem easier. I would ask you to still engage with these first assignments with as much vigor as your classmates.

 Sometimes it is wise to save our very favorite ideas for our SECOND script, meaning we should build skills this semester on a different story. I do want you to include the idea you hope to write in your three proposals, but I do not want you to finally settle on it until you’ve had a bit of feedback and worked to come up with several more ideas. You will use your Weekly Eight for this assigment.

Your three proposals should include (for each) a title, a teaser and a long paragraph that describes the world of the story, the key characters, the main actions that drive the story forward, the climax and the resolution.  Your proposal should also communicate the TONE of your story, the genre of it and even suggest some comparison plays or movies that have some things in common with your script.  You can even COMBINE two stories or movies in order to communicate the unique way that your story straddles genre, tone or story type.

Course Objectives

For students to:

Write a script.

Understand the structure of scripts.

Develop habits of regular writing.

Learn to diagnose weaknesses in writing.

Be aware of the useful tools that exist for dramatic writers.

Engage each other’s work in a stimulating and profitable forum.

Eight Pages A Week

Every week you must turn in 8 pages of NEW work. This assignment is the core of the class. Most of the other assignments draw on the resources you will gain from this assignment. During any week of the semester, you may count the assignments that you turn in for that class as part of your eight pages for that week. (So for instance, during week four, when you turn in your ten minute play, you won't need to write any additional pages for that week, since the assignment itself will take you over the required 8 pages.

You should turn in your pages through google docs. Please upload your celtx pages as PDFs to google docs and share them with the email account specified in your paper syllabus. My feedback will also be provided through google docs. I will be giving you the most feedback at the beginning of the course. and (orally) in the workshops. While I will check all of your 8 pages, I will not respond very closely to most of that material. I will have regular office hours to eet with you individually about your writing process and products; it's up to you to schedule those meetings.

You may turn in pages of a script, you may turn in pitches for new scripts, you may turn in plot outlines, you may turn in character studies. All scripts should be written in CELTX and all materials must be submitted digitally.

Eight pages means eight whole pages – type written 12pt. Times Roman Font, 10pt. Arial Font- you’re free to go over your eight, but if you turn in seven pages with a paragraph at the top of the next one- I won’t count it. Please try to develop habits of good, error-free writing, but know that I won't be counting off for spelling and punctuation issues. I may make you aware of problematic patterns and issues with form and formatting, but points will not be deducted.

If you turn in eight pages of a new work each week for 13 weeks, you have an A for this portion of the class. 12 weeks of pages is a B. 10-11 weeks is a C. 10 weeks is a D. less than 8 weeks of pages constitutes failure for this portion of this course.

I really believe that consistency is a key to success in any kind of script-writing.

Writers Workshops

A great deal of our class time will be spent in "writers workshops." A writers workshop is a very specific and unique model of pedagogy used in most writing programs around the United States (and often abroad). In a workshop, a group of writers gathers to read one of their members work -- usually aloud -- and then the group responds to the work. During the process, the writer usually remains silent, trying to understand as fully as possible the responses of this audience to the work.

In our writing workshops, the writer will be allowed to ask two or three questions of the respondents. These questions should *not* be explanatory or argumentative; these moments are a great opportunity to find out the answers to puzzling story problems or tricky writing conundrums. The great respect for each other's work and its possibilities will guide all of our responses and questions during this time. The writer is strongly encouraged to take copious notes during this time.

Before each writing workshop, a Lead Respondent will be assigned to the workshopped material. The Lead Respondent is responsible to read the treatment and proposal and all of the script that has currently been written. The Lead Respondent will write their own summary of the work no longer than one page, and read it aloud before the response to the pages begins. The summary of the work should not include evaluation, but work to provide context to the scene being workshopped. The Lead Respondent will, however, write a paragraph of evaluative material, suggesting the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the material. Unexplored possibilities and confusing points should be identified in this paragraph. The Lead Respondent will receive a grade for their summary and feedback. All members of the class will be responsible to be a Lead Respondent two times. Lead Respondents will be paired with writers randomly and no respondent / writer will be repeated.

Writers will be scheduled to workshop during the second week of class. Writers will be responsible to select a 6-8 page section of their script to be read during the workshop. Writers must deliver their proposal, their script (as much as is finished) and their workshop selection to the Lead Respondent one week prior to their workshop.

You are expected to attend all workshops of other writers, come prepared and give helpful feedback to one another. You can read more about helpful feedback here.

Course Expectations and Policies

I do think that a creative writing classroom should be fundamentally different than many other types of classrooms. There are few “experts” in creative writing that have the ability to transmit their craft to another- there are a lot of writers with differing levels of experience, understanding, and acceptance. As of this moment you are a playwright or screenwriter. Nothing magical. No rite of initiation. You just have no other choice for this semester. So I expect us to have mutual interests – developing our skills as writers and readers, honing our artistic senses, and creating scipts that are beautiful and profound.

I see these mutual interests as being different than some classes where teachers and students have competing interests. Everyone sees everyone else as an obstacle or a barrier or a proving ground. Just get through it and then… Unfortunately the grading system is a product (I think) of this mentality and we are forced (whatever that means) to employ it. So my idea is to try to separate our evaluations of each other’s work from the grading system, and simply rely on the grade system to provide extrinsic motivation to get the work done. (Because remember, the hardest part about being a writer is actually doing the writing.) So essentially if you do the writing (on time!), respond to your peers writing, attend a play and a movie, and read a few scripts– you’ll get an “A”. If you fail to turn in assignments, fail to read and respond to other’s work…you’ll get something less than an “A”.

Because we’ll be developing a common vocabulary as a community of writers and our responses to one another should be informed by previous conversations – attendance is mandatory. You may miss two class periods with no consequences; please reserve these skips for extreme cases like sickness or family emergencies. Your third skip will lower your overall grade a third of a letter grade. Each skip beyond your third skip will drop your grade another third of a letter grade.

Becoming a playwright demands that you become a truth – teller. Sometimes when you are responding to each other’s work telling the truth will be difficult. You are still responsible to tell the truth. But telling the truth means much more than being accurate and insightful in this class. Telling the truth means believing that there is truth in each other, and that our interactions may be just the thing to make that truth become more apparent. Respecting each other means appropriate words, helpful words, encouraging words, honest words; it also means pushing each other to think harder. You can and should question each other’s writing and the things that are said in class; but questioning is a big responsibility. You should work to make sure that your questions and input always builds up the other people in the class. Our dialogue must proceed with a great optimism about what each of us are going to become.

The destiny of scripts predetermines their format. Just as you wouldn’t think of sending a handwritten resume & you know full well that people do not exchange 5 x 11 business cards, you should have a working knowledge of the industry standards that professionals expect. All scripted projects must be typed and properly formatted. I am asking you to use CELTX software (a simple way of learning industry formats for stage and screenplays). We will discuss CELTX on the first day of class.

You may contact me using my office phone number x.8523. I prefer that you email me at arudd at malone dot edu (I only check the scriptwriting account for assignments and not as regularly. You may sign up for my office hours using the course google calendar for appointments.

Because playwrights and screenwriters should occasionally venture out of their holes to visit the theater, I will expect you to go to some plays and see some movies. The class will go to a play and a movie together. We will also read the scripts for these works together. Attendance and reading are mandatory.

Of course academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Any form of plagiarism, cheating, or unethical “sharing” will be dealt with according to the student handbook, and will be reported to the academic Dean. In a creative writing class, though, cheating would be more difficult than just doing your own work. But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that…

Course Description

Throughout the semester, we will return regularly to the writer’s workshop model. Students will several times distribute their own writing for a read-aloud. We will all respond to each other’s work both conversationally and more formally, in writing. Formal classroom lecture/ discussion will be shaped by the particular strengths and deficiencies that evidence themselves in your writing.
I will come to class many days with lecture notes prepared. As many of you know, I prefer the rich exchange of student-motivated discussion to more traditional methods of “disseminating” truth. On the other hand, much has been written about scriptwriting, and there are many basic tools that I am confident will benefit you, so occasionally I will have very clear goals about what IS valuable for you to learn. Even on such days, I prefer that students feel free to involve themselves in the ideas through questions, elaborations, and activities.
Together we will read a number of plays & screenplays, view a play and a movie, participate in regular writing exercises, pitch ideas to each other, and give each other honest feedback. These are necessary and sometimes difficult prerequisites of belonging to a writing community.
While there is no course fee, you are expected to pay for your tickets to the theatre and the cinema, however because there are no mandatory textbooks in this class, these costs should be manageable. Please plan for them at the outset. As the semester progresses, I will give you strong recommendations of books which are worthwhile for your purchase.

Course Assignments & Assessments

Your final grade will be assessed based on the following course components. Specific percentage values are available on your paper syllabus:

Weekly Eight Pages

Three Proposals (for a final project)

Final Script Proposal

Course Participation

Reading

Final Script

Final Pitch