Foundation Courses and Special Workshops

Creative Writing Home Foundation Courses and Genre Workshops Course Pathways Novel Track Creative Nonfiction Track Tutorials Writer's Seminar in New York Summer Program in Taos

Foundation Courses

Highly recommended for all students, these essential courses provide the foundation for any writing path. Taught by professional writers and published authors, these intense workshops will heighten your skills regardless of your chosen genre.

Improve Your Grammar!
Focusing on the careful review of English grammar so necessary to personal, professional, and creative writing, this course emphasizes contemporary usage, sentence structure and punctuation. No prerequisites.

Creative Writing Introduction
The prerequisite. Explore your inner poet, screenwriter, travel author, short story writer in this course that teaches the basics of the craft. "Writing Well" and "Improve Your Grammar!" aren’t required, but they are highly recommended.

Workshops
Heighten your “writing time” with a variety of workshops emphasizing different genres and aspects of the craft, taught by guest authors and staff.

Ignite Your Creativity
Through the Artist’s Way, explore a more creative lifestyle, learn a variety of highly effective skills designed to ignite passion and capture new ideas. Learn to release the inner artist, dare to leap and then, explore your inspirations and the self-respect that naturally comes from this catharsis! Recommended for all writers, regardless of genre No prerequisites.

Screenwriting I Workshop
Pursue the dream of your words on the golden screen with Billy Wilder protégé, Rex McGee who is currently adapting his film Pure Country into a Broadway musical. In this five-week workshop on the art and craft of writing for motion pictures and television, learn structure, dialogue and how to develop your own story ideas into feature film scripts.

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*Formula For Success:

The SMU Writer’s Seminar in New York serves as a culmination of the SMU Continuing Education Creative Writing Program, and as such, carries several prerequisites. These prerequisites help our students move from course to course within the program along pre-determined “paths” that contribute to their success and help to ensure that students gain certain skills before moving on to the next level. In addition, following these prerequisites helps to ensure the highest level of quality for the SMU Writer’s Seminar in New York applicants.

For complete program information, including program “paths,” course dates and times, and New York Seminar prerequisites, please visit www.smu.edu/creativewriting.