In this course, students will come up with an idea for a film, write a treatment or short story, and shape this story into a script. Through the workshop process, story ideas will be subject to critique, and students will be encouraged to develop their early drafts. Lectures will address theoretical and practical concerns involved in writing stories and film scripts, and will examine several stories and film scripts as examples. The course will include some consideration of the practical processes involved in the production of screenplays.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

1. Write a screenplay treatment, and a screenplay utilising correct and effective style and formatting,
2. Transform a story into a treatment, and develop the treatment into a screenplay, integrating suggestions from writing workshops, and/or utilising analysis of published or other students’ creative work to modify your own.
3. Discuss the development of a published story into a produced screenplay and completed film, using scholarship on writing process and/or adaptation studies, and making a coherent argument about the relationship between text and film.
4. Describe, analyse and make editorial suggestions for peers’ prose and screenplays.
5. Reflect on your own creative work in relation to its translation of prose to screenplay, your writing process, and screenplays or films in similar styles or genres.

Item                                                                            Weighting                   Assesses Outcomes

Portfolio of Creative Work                                        60%                             1,2 & 5

Comprising drafts and rewrites of treatment

and screenplay

Written and oral comments on peers’                          15%                             4

work

1,000 – 1,500  word essay                                        25%                             3 & 5

One 1-hour Lecture and one 2-hour workshop per week