Screenwriting Courses

There are many ways of becom­ing a pro­fes­sional screen­writer, and gain­ing a Screen­writ­ing MFA can some­times be one of them.

Many of today’s pro­fes­sional writ­ers are grad­u­ates of screen­writ­ing pro­grams and since the 1970’s they have become one of the pri­mary entry routes into the industry.

How­ever, they are expen­sive. And gain­ing an MFA doesn’t mean you’re guar­an­teed work. Far from it.

On the whole, though, we rec­om­mend attend­ing a screen­writ­ing MFA, or even a short writ­ing course, as it is a great way of focussing the mind, learn­ing to hit dead­lines and mak­ing connections.

World­wide there are lit­er­ally hun­dreds to choose from but, if you can, we’d rec­om­mend attend­ing one of these — the 6 best screen­writ­ing courses in the world based on course struc­ture, rep­u­ta­tion, fac­ulty, con­nec­tions, loca­tion and alumni.

Uni­ver­sity of South­ern California

Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Los Angeles

Amer­i­can Film Institute

New York University

Chap­man University

Colum­bia University

Alter­na­tively, another option is to enrol on one of the stag­ger­ing amount of short courses and sem­i­nars avail­able. UCLA, for exam­ple, offer excel­lent online and short courses. 

If you’re going to study screen­writ­ing you’d bet­ter have an impec­ca­ble knowl­edge of film. Fill those gaps in your movie knowl­edge here.