Heart and Mind on Screen and Page

Storytelling has evolved over the thousands of years separating pre-literate tellers of tales from the contemporary novelist, graphic artist, or filmmaker. It has discovered new forms, audiences, means of expression, and genres. However, through all these changes, we can still see the recognizable bones of story, its elements and structures.

This program is for students who want to understand the elements and structure of stories in order to make better stories, and who want to develop a deep, practical understanding of the structures that govern forms such as film, television, and the short story. Thus we will learn the grammar and practice of screenplay writing and the conventions governing it. However, students who want to tell stories are welcome, whatever their chosen expressive mode--prose, poetry, graphics, film, television, videogame script.

The program will particularly focus on movies and television, forms that pose unique challenges and opportunities regarding story and dramatization. They are inherently collaborative media that demand specialized talents and skills from a writer, who must work within limits imposed by time, space, money, and the myriad complexities of production, as well as the formulaic expectations that have come to govern the 50-minute television drama or 22-minute comedy and the 120-minute film.

The program will also pay attention to short stories, probably the most demanding of story forms, in order to learn from its masters how to combine economy of expression with great power.

Students will begin the quarter by describing in detail a storytelling project they want to complete and will write a project proposal in consultation with the instructor detailing their goals.

Students will read stories and view films and television episodes. They will read analytical treatments of story from Aristotle to Robert McKee. They will participate in analysis seminars and story workshops, where they will submit their work for group critique and do a series of workshop exercises. They also submit work in progress to the instructor for ongoing critique and guidance.

The instructor is an author of science fiction and scriptwriter (with William Gibson) of episodes of The X-Files.