Minor in TV Writing
Built on VISUAL STORYTELLING and VISUAL COMPOSITION.
Discover a creative path toward enhanced engagement with subjects in your major, and learn how to pitch yourself and your stories to producers and networks.
Our Minor in TV Writing offers students a creative path toward enhanced engagement with subjects in their major field of studies. Students will explore creating stories for the world of episodic and narrative television, learn to analyze current trends, and engage in creative and intellectual exploration of the issues and emotions that excite them. The minor is designed for students who wish to develop their creativity and expand their writing abilities while pursuing other studies.
WHY STUDY TV WRITING?
Our program draws from our MFA in Television Writing.
With our emphasis on VISUAL STORYTELLING and VISUAL COMPOSITION, a Minor in TV Writing provides the visual literacy skills necessary in today’s marketplace. This distinct minor is designed to empower the aspiring TV writer to break into this growing and dynamic field and to offer students the necessary background to pursue writing on a graduate level. Here, you will learn how to pitch yourself and your stories to producers and networks. You will be guided in storytelling technique designed to harness your imagination as you create compelling, authentic, and original stories for today’s audiences.
Faculty and graduate teaching assistants come from Stony Brook University’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Television Writing. This stand-alone, exceptional MFA is one of a handful in the country to offer in-depth graduate studies in the burgeoning field of TV writing.
WHAT YOU'LL WALK AWAY WITH
- An enhanced writer's voice. Storytelling instinct, confidence, and the critical eye to develop an original story and write with clarity, specificity, and purpose across genres and formats.
- Writers’ room fluency. The ability to develop stories collaboratively, break episodes, give and receive notes, and contribute with confidence in a writers' room.
- Character and series-building craft. The tools to create compelling characters, sustain conflict, and build the worlds, relationships, and story engines that keep a series going.
- Visual storytelling across disciplines. The ability to apply visual storytelling to any discipline using the moving image to communicate ideas in science, history, journalism, or any field.
- A finished body of work. A capstone pilot, film, screenplay, or industry internship that proves what you can do.
Our alums enter a variety of fields, such as: public relations, digital content firms, film, television, art, nonprofits, market research agencies, event companies, medicine, law.
Come to a CREATE Event!
Join us at a CREATE Event! We have mixers, workshops, watch parties, and more. We welcome all students to hang out with us and learn more about our department.
THE MINOR IN TV WRITING: 21 CREDITS
A minor built to complement any major.
The minor in TV Writing is offered in conjunction with the minor in Filmmaking through the undergraduate Creative Writing and Film Program. TV Writing minors graduate with a SPEC SCRIPT and a REVISED PILOT SCRIPT, building a strong portfolio of creative work.
Three foundational courses open the door to everyone: FLM 101 - Introduction to Filmmaking and Television: Visual Storytelling, FLM 102 - Introduction to Film and Television Composition: How Films and TV Shows Say What They Mean, and FLM 215 - Scriptwriting for Film and Television.
Advanced Workshops. Choose three advanced seminars from FLM 201, FLM 203, TVW 220, TVW 221, and FLM 302.
Survey Courses. One upper-level course (FLM 310, FLM 320, or an approved equivalent) that trains you to study television and film the way that seasoned professionals do.
Capstone. Finish with a capstone: an independent pilot episode, film, feature-length screenplay, a hands-on industry internship, or an approved equivalent.
MEET THE DIRECTOR
Karen Offitzer directs the Minor in Filmmaking & TV Writing. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and a Master's from NYU, and is the founder and former Program Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at National University. Her short documentary work has earned grants and awards, most notably for I Am Not Who You Think I Am, which follows the lives changed by a year of free humanities education for people who were homeless and working poor. Her short fiction and nonfiction appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Phoebe, Sonora Review, and Sweet Lit, and her book Diners is a pictorial chronicle of America's roadside eateries.
Get in Touch
Karen Offitzer, Director
Filmmaking & TV Writing
Melville Library N3022
karen.offitzer@stonybrook.edu
Chryso Tsoumpelis, Undergraduate Program Coordinator
Creative Writing, Filmmaking, & Television
Melville Library N3019
chrysovalantou.tsoumpelis@stonybrook.edu