Spring 2026 Creative Writing Topics
INTRO COURSES
CWL 190.S01 #50976SBC: HUM
Intro to Contemporary Lit with Eskor Johnson
M/W 11:00AM-12:20PM
What does fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction look like in modern literature? How can each of these genres perform your own creative ideas? In this course, we will read and discuss contemporary works of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from authors like Charles Yu, Ada Limon, and Venita Blackburn. The readings will help us discover new understandings of genre and form. We will then practice our own writing around these genres through prompts and exercises. The goal is to learn how to identify story basics, dissect poetry techniques, and combine poetry and fiction strengths to turn formulaic essays into works of creative nonfiction. While we build those understandings around the readings, we will practice the craft ideas we learn. For instance, what does it look like when you try out the figurative language you discovered in Toni Morrison’s Love and apply it to a journal entry? Or what happens when you take David Sedaris’ humor and try to work it into a sci-fi character you’ve been thinking about writing? By the end of the course, you will have a better understanding of contemporary literature and how your own writing fits into these different forms of expression.
Prerequisite or Corequisite: WRT 102
CWL 190.S02 #52599SBC: HUM
Intro to Contemporary Lit: Cultural Studies With Dawnie Walton
TU/TH 12:30-1:50 PM
In this course, surveying 21st-century America through the lens of literature, we’ll study a range of fiction, poetry, and personal essays that explore identity, technology, pop culture, money, and other intersecting aspects reflecting who we are, how we live, and what we value. You’ll learn how to read like a writer, and with the help and insights of your peers, you’ll be able to deconstruct the timeless tools and techniques writers use to evoke a diversity of lived experiences. Expect to read and to analyze, through class discussions and group assignments, work by Hanif Abdurraqib, Megan Fernandes, Danez Smith, Sarah Thankam Mathews, and others.
Prerequisite or Corequisite: WRT 102
CWL 202 Intro to Creative WritingSBC: ARTS
CWL 202.S01 #50977M/W 9:30 AM - 10:50AM
CWL 202.S02 #50978M/W 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
CWL 202.S03 #50979MW 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
CWL 202.S04 #50980M/W 2:00 PM - 3:20 PM
CWL 202.S05 #50981M/W 3:30 PM - 4:50 PM
CWL 202.S06 #50982TU/TH 9:30 AM - 10:50AM
CWL 202.S08 #51016TU/TH 11:00 AM- 12:20 PM
CWL 202.S09 #50983TU/TH 12:30 PM - 1:50 PM
CWL 202.S10 #50984TU/TH 2:00 PM - 3:20 PM
CWL 202.S11 #50985TU/TH 3:30 PM - 4:50 PM
CWL 202.S12 #50986TU/TH 2:00 PM - 3:20 PM
WRITING WORKSHOPS (CWL 300-325)
If you’ve taken CWL 202, you can enroll in any of these 3-credit, 300-level poetry, fiction, scriptwriting, science writing, publishing and creative nonfiction workshops. Creative writing workshops in multiple genres are intended to introduce students to tools and terminology of the fine art of creative writing.
CWL 300 CREATIVE NON-FICTION
CWL 300.S01 #51002SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Creative Nonfiction: Writing Trauma with Kaylie Jones
W 3:30 PM - 6:20 PM
We are living through difficult times, as violence and injustice are everywhere. Writing about how trauma affects us is extremely difficult indeed, whether the trauma is large or small; whether it happened to us personally; or to someone we love; or to complete strangers. We are nevertheless witnesses to our troubled times, and writing down our experiences is a necessary and absolutely valid undertaking. This writing workshop will explore different ways in which students can approach writing about trauma – past and present – big and small. Writing prompts will be offered bi-weekly, focusing on specific tools of the craft with which to approach this difficult subject. The class will be divided alphabetically into two groups, Group A and Group B, so that no more than six submissions will be read and discussed in-depth each week. Your grade will be dependent on your attendance, participation in class discussions, and your willingness to absorb critique and advice. Your final submissions will be a revision of your strongest essay. No unexcused absences will be tolerated.
CWL 300.S02 #50987SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Creative Nonfiction: Into the Void: Creative Nonfiction and the Art of Invention with Jennifer Epstein
TU/TH: 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Some stories come to us only half-told. We might remember flashes—a room, a scent, a single line—but not the full heft and dimension of the moment. Or maybe there are facts that were never ours to begin with: family histories that went unspoken, events that went unrecorded, or recorded by undependable narrators. In this workshop, we’ll explore how nonfiction writers use imagination to approach those gaps. How do you write toward something you can’t quite see? How do you honor truth when memory falters, or when there was never a clear record at all? Drawing on memoir masters like Melissa Febos, Ocean Vuong, and Maxine Hong Kingston, we’ll experiment with using fictional techniques—scene, dialogue, sensory texture—to rebuild and fill the voids, and in the process explore how sometimes absence is the most powerful part of the story.
CWL 300.S03 #51018SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Creative Nonfiction: Memoir Portraits with Robert Crace
TU/TH 2:00 PM - 3:20 PM
"Portrait: A pictorial representation of a person… one painted from life." Whether you’re creating your own self-portrait, ghostwriting another’s, or piecing together the story of a group, portraiture is a style of memoir that presents its own creative challenges. Portrait essays ask us to live somewhere between investigative journalism and artistic expressionism. How do you write a subject’s story when it is cornered in contradictions? How do you untangle memories when they are split and knotted? This is creative writing, so how do you portray artful representations of your portrait subject? In this class, we will examine and practice different portrait techniques through writing exercises, readings, and workshops. We will learn how to artfully investigate, select specific meanings from a subject’s larger picture, and draft portraits painted from life.
CWL 305 FICTION
CWL 305.S01 #50988SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Fiction: Beyond Fanfiction: Exploring Intertextuality in Creative Writing with Jennifer Epstein
TU/TH 9:30 AM - 10:50 AM
Fan fiction isn’t new. Long before Twilight inspired Fifty Shades of Grey, writers were riffing on each other’s stories—in fact, Twilight itself was influenced by Wuthering Heights. Intertextual fiction—writing that responds to or transforms an existing narrative—has been around at least since Virgil reimagined Homer’s epics in The Aeneid. In this workshop, we’ll explore just what it is that makes writing stories around other stories and artworks so compelling. We’ll consider how Jean Rhys, in Wide Sargasso Sea, gives Jane Eyre’s “madwoman in the attic” her own voice and story, how Kamila Shamsie brings Antigone into the age of immigration and surveillance in Home Fire, and how Helen Oyeyemi reimagines Snow White to explore race, colorism, and identity in Boy, Snow, Bird. We’ll discuss our own favorite books, and why we think they’re our favorites, and how to write our way into them through in-class prompts, reflections, and our own intertextual short stories. Maybe we’ll even take Wuthering Heights (already reworked into a terrific 80’s Kate Bush song), recast it with a broody high-schooler and a vegetarian vampire, and then recast that with a bookish virgin and a broody billionaire with a taste for whips. (Though actually, we won’t—that’s been done.) Best of all, we’ll dive so deeply into the stories that intrigue us that we’ll inhabit their worlds for a while, finding ways to make them truly our own.
CWL 305.S02 #50989SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Fiction: Epistolary with Robert Crace
TU/TH 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Letters, group chats, journal entries, department memos, cave paintings… The epistolary form provides a unique stage for story. As writers, we get to kick the narrator to the curb and reveal the who-what-when-where-why through our characters’ written interactions. As readers, we get to eavesdrop on intimate exchanges, uncovering the story that lies beneath. In this class, we will look at modern epistolary forms like social media posts, group chats, Discord channels, Reddit threads… We’ll check on historic examples from Shakespeare and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We’ll also look at the recent excerpts from Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and Ocean Vuoung’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members. Through interactive prompts, writing exercises, and workshops, we’ll practice ways to best stage our ideas through the epistolary form.
CWL 305.S03 #50990SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Fiction: Oulipo: Prompts with Purpose with Robert Crace
TU/TH 3:30 PM - 4:50 PM
Prompts can be more than creative warm-ups or language games. Sometimes the right prompt can unlock the treasures hidden in our work. In this class, we’ll learn to craft prompts that help us navigate obstacles like flat characters, stale plots, overwhelming outlines, and reluctant revisions. We will practice building realized drafts from our prompt work and examine the Oulipo movement—the historic foundation behind these exercises. While prompt work may exist backstage, it can make a huge difference when it’s time to send our words out into the spotlight.
CWL 305.S04 #50991SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Fiction: Adventures in POV with Dawnie Walton
TU/TH 2:00 PM - 3:20 PM
***This course may not be repeated***
Of all the decisions you’ll make writing fiction — who are these characters, and what do they want, and what and/or who is keeping them from it? — your point-of-view choice is among the most consequential, and involves so much more than whatever dominant pronoun you use for the story. POV is the perspective through which the narrative unfolds, a filter that colors nearly everything else — from the tone of the prose to the story’s scope, even what descriptions you linger over or leave out entirely. In this workshop, emphasizing first- and third-person-limited, we’ll discuss your narrators and their relationship to the stories they’re telling, all toward helping you clarify, control, and deepen POV. And we’ll aspire higher by studying fiction that experiments with POV in thrilling ways — whether playing with unconventional perspectives (including wild animals!) or flipping the assumed limitations of the chosen “person” into strengths. Expect to read work by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, Elizabeth McCracken, Jamil Jan Kochai, Emma Donoghue, Yiyun Li, Adam Haslett, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
CWL 305.S05 #50994SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Fiction: Looking at the World Sideways: Writing Experimental Forms with Marissa Levien
T 3:30-6:20 PM
You've tried your hand at linear storytelling, you've heard about the three-act structure and the hero's journey. But what happens when you want to get weird? At its worst, experimental storytelling can feel like an exercise in indulgence, but at its best, it can crack open your imagination and show you truths that simply cannot be explained in a straightforward way. So how do you write the good stuff? That's what we're here to learn! In this course, we'll read a diverse variety of experimental works and then we'll experiment for ourselves, generating new writing and workshopping as we go, receiving feedback from our peers and honing our craft. Whatever your writing style, traditional or experimental, you'll find that your craft is bettered by writing outside the box. It helps to go a little mad sometimes.
CWL 305.S06 #51014SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Fiction: What Makes an Ending? with Stephen Aubrey
M/W 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
How does a story know when it’s over and what makes an ending feel earned, surprising, or true? We will attempt to answer these questions by examining the many ways stories come to a close, from the neatly resolved to the ominously open-ended. We’ll consider what kinds of closure short fiction can offer, how an ending can reframe everything that came before it, and why the final sentence so often determines whether a story lingers in the reader’s mind or fades from memory. By the end of the semester, we’ll aim to write endings that feel not merely finished, but inevitable.
CWL 305.S07 #51015SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Fiction: “Anatomy of a Scene” with Eskor David Johnson
M/W 2:00 PM - 3:20 PM
***This course may not be repeated***
Scenes are a fundamental element of fiction, the parts of our stories where something is actually happening. But what makes a good scene? Do they always need conflict? How many characters can we handle on the page at once? What should the “goal” of a scene be? In this course we will begin addressing these questions, and approach writing with an emphasis on movement and action. We will try our hand at the various forms human interaction can assume, both in real life and on the page, including argument, agreement, romance, eavesdropping, and miscommunication. In our discussions we will borrow from the vocabulary of filmmaking—such as blocking, zoom in/out, pacing—and look at their counterparts in written storytelling. Readings will include Andre Dubus, J. D. Salinger, Ralph Ellison, Anton Chekhov, Esther Yi, Adam Johnson, Kristin Roupenian, and Renata Adler. Writers will also maintain a dialogue journal throughout the semester.
CWL 305.S08 #51019SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Fiction: Flash Fiction with Robert Lopez
M 3:30 PM - 6:20 PM
Brevity is the soul of wit, so said Polonius. We will aim to write narratives that deliver an emotional impact inside very strict parameters. Every writer will come up with flash pieces of 300, 600, and 1000 words and we will see how much we can achieve within these constraints, which are often liberating. We'll read flash writers like Kim Chinquee, Kathy Fish, Jamaica Kincaid, Diane Williams, Abigail Thomas, Eula Biss, Justin Torres, and others.
CWL 305.S09 #51038SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Fiction: The Art of Revision: Revision as a Mindset with Mira Dougherty-Johnson
M/W 9:30 AM - 10:50 AM
We talk about revision all the time, but what do we actually mean? In this hands-on workshop, we will demystify the arduous but necessary process of revising, reframing revision as an ever-present opportunity to remake our work. Instead of avoiding revision at all costs or breezing through to fix a comma or two, we will endeavor to get to a place where we can see our writing with new eyes. As the word implies, revision is about becoming a visionary. Revision demands true metamorphosis. How will we achieve this? By practicing all sorts of modes of defamiliarization, exercises based on various craft elements, and also by looking through the eyes of our peers. This exploratory, playful, and collaborative approach to revision will help us remain engaged and enthusiastic through the process of meddling with our work. We’ll still be able to take that linear, polish approach to revision when we need to, but we’ll be much more confident and equipped to deep dive into the potency of our imaginations and harness writing’s most useful and elusive force: constant transformation. Writing is rewriting, after all!
CWL 305.S10 #54909SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Fiction: Writing NYC: A Lab in Setting with Karen Bender
MANHATTAN CAMPUS
F 12:00 PM - 2:50 PM
In this class on Stony Brook's Manhattan campus, students will develop material inspired by the most written about city in the world. Students will read some short stories and novel excerpts set in New York City, including work by John Cheever, JD Salinger, James Baldwin and Tama Janowitz, learning about how writers wrote about NYC-and we will go on some field trips to experience the city and discuss how to write about the city now. We will learn about elements that create great writing about setting. Students will generate material and write one short story during the semester, and the second half of class will involve workshops of this material. A lab in reading, writing and learning about New York.
CWL 310 POETRY
CWL 310.S01 #50992SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Poetry: World Poetry with Derek McKown
TU/TH 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
***This course may not be repeated***
“It is a test…that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
–T. S. Eliot, Dante (1929).
In this course we will examine 20th & 21st-century international poetry in translation by poets from around the world to approach an understanding of how voices and experiences resonate and individuate cross-culturally, and how our own social, political, and cultural locations influence our readings of this poetry. We will investigate such themes as violence, war, tradition, nationhood, alienation, racism, imprisonment, exile, love, and beauty. We will also consider the ways in which translation affects both the transliteration of texts and their interpretations by non-native speakers by questioning what is lost and what is gained in the process of linguistic exchange. What are the boundaries and borders of poetry? Of language? You will generate poems through exercises.
CWL 310.S02 #50993SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Poetry: with Julie Sheehan
M/W 2:00 PM - 3:20 PM
In this poetry workshop, we’ll survey and practice the great powers of poetry, while also cycling through a few different workshop models for critiquing poems. Alongside your own work, written from weekly prompts, we’ll look at examples drawn from contemporary poetry. By semester's end, you will have a clutch of poems that display your working knowledge of the tools most often wielded by contemporary practitioners: metaphor-making techniques like particularity and transformation of image; collage techniques like parataxis and line; and applications of sound, such as repetition and form. This is an excellent workshop both for poets seeking to hone their craft and for writers in other genres who are curious to explore the power of poetry.
Prerequisite: CWL 202
CWL 310.S03 #51003SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Poetry: Cartographies of Poetry with LB Thompson
TU/TH 12:30 PM - 1:50 PM
In this study of the genre of poetry, students will generate in-class writing designed to cultivate particular techniques, read and consider contemporary poems and works of art, engage in constructive discussion of original drafts in progress, and create collaborative pieces together. The themes and strategies we will pursue include: perception, inquiry, mapping, artifact, scale, received poetic forms, rhetorical shapes, negation, and metaphor.
CWL 310.S04 #51036SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Forms of Poetry: Modern and Contemporary American Poetry with Christine Kitano
M/W 9:30 AM - 10:50 AM
In this class, we'll trace the American poetic tradition from Whitman and Dickinson up to now. We'll focus on the basic elements of a poem in order to identify how (and why) styles shift over time. In addition to a few canonical texts (“Song of Myself,” “The Waste Land”) we'll also read lesser-known poems as we make our way through the 20th and 21st centuries, all with an eye toward what a writer in 2026 can learn from previous iterations of the American tradition. This poetry class will introduce you to the elements of a poem and provide a historical and aesthetic overview of American poetry. Class assignments will include both creative and critical responses.
CWL 315 FORMS OF SCRIPTWRITING
CWL 315.S01 #54908SBC: HFA+, WRTD
Against Aristotle with Stephen Aubrey
M/W 9:30 AM - 10:50 PM
For over two millennia, Aristotelian structure has dominated Western storytelling. Over time, however, we have seen how too similar sensibilities have led to too predictable stories. In this class, we’ll first look at what makes the ideas of Aristotle and his acolytes so seductive before investigating alternative ways of imagining and telling stories. Through both examining alternative structures such as circle plays and postdramatic theater and trying our hands at alternative methods of composition like collage and devising, we will search for new forms of a very old practice.
CWL 320 INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTS
CWL 320.S01 #51013SBC: EXP+, WRTD
Writing Toward Submission - Christian McLean
R 3:30 PM - 6:20 PM
Beyond the traditional workshop where students discuss published stories and generate new ones, students in this course will also work up to submitting their story to a literary magazine. Through the semester, while writing and workshopping, we will build an awareness of the literary landscape by reading short stories from contemporary literary magazines and journals. Students will research additional magazines, build a lit mag database, and by the end of the semester, they will submit a finished short story, a cover letter and bio to two magazines (based on submission guidelines). Acceptance or publication in the literary journal is not factored into the course grade, but feels better than an A+. We will only be writing short stories in this course. We will not work on the start of novels or novellas or poetry or plays. Please understand that before you enroll. In workshop we’ll explore each other’s writing in a constructive way to bolster both the story and writer. We’ll pull techniques and concepts from class readings, have lively conversations about writing and build a community that will (hopefully) exist beyond the end of this course.
CWL 325 SCIENCE WRITING
CWL 325.S01 #51012SBC: STAS, WRTD
Forms of Science Writing: Portals and Mirrors with Mira Dougherty-Johnson
M/W 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
In their methods and approaches, science and writing ask us to observe and then to make sense of our observations. Through the process of inquiry, both science and writing require us to pay careful attention, to make conjectures, to test our ideas, and to reimagine what we think we already know. In this course, we will read in a variety of genres in order to help us explore what it means to use science as a way to write creatively and writing creatively as a way to understand science. Some literary techniques we will practice together include automatic writing, Chekhov’s Guns and MacGuffins, character flaws and unreliable narrating, and layers of meaning in dialogue. Some of the scientific themes we will study together include medicine, ecology, astronomy, physics, psychology, and geology. Through writing exercises, reading discussions, and workshopping our original pieces, we’ll traverse new territories and reveal new truths.
Prerequisite: 1 SNW and 1 SBS; CWL 202
CWL 325.S02 #51037SBC: STAS, WRTD
Forms of Science Writing: Life Forms with LB Thompson
TU/TH 11:00 AM -12:20 PM
This hybrid seminar/workshop explores texts with themes from the sciences rooted in observation of natural forms. We will use Biomimicry (Dr. Benyus) to translate literary forms from natural patterns, shapes, and organizing principles. Craft texts encouraging formal invention from nature such as Meander, Spiral, Explode (Alison, J) will guide our practice. We will blur genre categories and invite visual and other media as we study and create. What we make and shape and individuals and collaborators will arise from our close-readings and veracious practice of composing observations and inquiries. Reading intensive.
Prerequisite: 1 SNW and 1 SBS; CWL 202
CWL 330-340 “READ LIKE A WRITER” COURSES
CWL 335.01 #51004SBC: HFA+, USA
Topics in American Lit for Writers: Children's Litwith Emma Walton Hamilton
Online/Asynchronous
**This course may not be repeated**
Most of us can think of the book that changed our lives—the one that turned our world upside down, showed us we weren’t alone, made us a reader. For many of us, that book was one we read as a child or a teenager. Childhood and young adulthood are unique transitional stages of development with major physical, intellectual and emotional changes. They are times of tension, of questions, of defining ourselves in relationship to the world around us. By addressing these issues head on, children’s literature is uniquely valuable and relevant to the lives of its readers. The Topics in American Literature: Children's Lit course is a survey of the four principal forms that comprise contemporary children’s literature: picture book, chapter book, middle grade and young adult (YA). The focus is on children’s and young adult literature as meaningful and respected genres within the publishing industry and in the library, educational, and book-selling community, and the craft elements, standards, and objectives of each form. Topics covered for each form include basic history, current events, craft elements, and industry standards. Coursework includes readings for each form, engagement with the posted course material posted each week, book presentations, quizzes, and weekly posts in the online discussion forum.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Despite being delivered in asynchronous online format, this is a rigorous course of study with a substantial workload. Students looking for an easy A or who are merely interested in fulfilling a requirement are strongly encouraged to choose a different course. In addition, the course is self-directed and requires excellent time management skills. Please study this syllabus carefully and plan accordingly.
Prerequisite: 1 HUM course
CWL 340.01 #52590SBC: HFA+, GLO
Topics in World Lit for Writers: The Meaning of Life with Molly Gaudry
M/W 3:30 PM - 4:50 PM
We’ll consider the meaning of a life well-lived in our discussions of Sanaka Hiiragi’s THE LANTERN OF LOST MEMORIES (Japan), and in response you’ll write a photo-essay featuring important moments from your own life. We’ll think about solitude, geography, and interpersonal connections while reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s WHEREABOUTS (Italy), and in response you’ll write a series of vignettes about where you find yourself now in your own life. We’ll read Mariana Leky’s WHAT YOU CAN SEE FROM HERE (Germany) and contemplate: “What is real life in your opinion?” And finally, we’ll end with Alejandro Zambra’s THE PRIVATE LIVES OF TREES (Chile), and consider to what extent you agree or disagree with the main character’s statement: “We always want to be something else. You’re never happy with what you are. It would be strange to be completely satisfied.” To succeed in this course, plan to read approximately 50 pages per week; help lead two class discussions; and share your own creative writing at least twice. It is my hope that the writing you do this semester will stay in your hearts and minds forever, and that you will never forget this course.
Creative Writing students interested in Scriptwriting (CWL 315) can also enroll in FLM 215 Scriptwriting for Film and TV if they’ve completed CWL 202. To get permission to enroll and count this towards the creative writing major or minor, contact Chryso Tsoumpelis (chrysovalantou.tsoumpelis@stonybrook.edu).
FLM 215 Scriptwriting for Film and TVSBC: HFA+
Study and practice of scriptwriting for film and television through readings, screenings, discussions and regular submission of original work. Repeatable to a maximum of 6 credits as the topic changes.
Prerequisite: FLM 101 or CWL 202
FLM 215.S02 #56317 - TU 11:00 AM - 1:50 PM - TV Writing with Dave Chan
FLM 215.S03 #56290 - TH 12:30 PM - 3:20 PM - Screenwriting with Perry Blackshear
TVW 220.S01 #51011
Advanced TV Writing with Scott Burkhardt
SBC: HFA+, WRTD
F 12:30 - 3:20PM
In Advanced Television students will go over all aspects of writing for television at an advanced level. This will include coming up with original story lines; writing outlines and beat sheets; and ultimately writing an original pilot. Students will also do a late night television writing segment.
In addition students will learn how technology has influenced storytelling in television from it's very inception, the difference between writing for network, basic cable, premium cable and streaming and how to pitch themselves and their shows to buyers and showrunners.
Prerequisite: FLM 215 or CWL 315
Creative writing majors may enroll in TVW 220 if you’ve completed FLM 215 or CWL 315, which will satisfy a workshop requirement. Contact Chryso Tsoumpelis (chrysovalantou.tsoumpelis@stonybrook.edu) for permission and to apply this towards the creative writing major or minor.
FLM 310.01 #56295
Story Analysis for Filmmakers & TV Writers with Will Chandler
SBC: HFA+
TU/TH 12:30-1:50PM
If you’re going to be involved with filmmaking or television, you’ll need to know how to identify the dramatic elements of Story. This course will teach students the skills one needs in the world of visual storytelling - whether as a screenwriter, a story analyst or as an assistant to a producer at a production company, studio or streaming platform. Students will learn how to read, deconstruct and evaluate screenplays and short stories by identifying their elements and writing cogent analyses of the material. Participants will leave prepared to answer the question every future screenwriter, director and creative producer must know: Is this material a film, a limited series or something else? Is it a Recommend or a Pass - and Why?
Prerequisite: FLM 102; one 200 level or higher FLM or Equivalent; CWL 202 -
Contact Chryso Tsoumpelis (chrysovalantou.tsoumpelis@stonybrook.edu) for permission and to apply this towards the creative writing major or minor.
