MA Writing for Stage & Screen

Without a script... No actor commits to a project, no locations are selected, sets built, no venues or studios booked, no deals struck and no seats sold.

Two Year Masters Programme

This two-year Masters program is designed to develop the writing skills essential for the screen industry and the theatre. 

The Course Covers:

• Storytelling and the Aristotelian origins of drama
• Narrative structure, character function and creation
• Exploitation of arena and decisions on location and key narrative tricks and devices
• Practices of the industry
• Converting ideas into saleable products
• Marketing and selling the work
• Connection to the audience
• Dealing with legal and financial issues
• Taking power in relationships with directors, actors and agents. 

Learning Methods

This programme is taught via a mixture of five short but intensive residential part-weeks on campus, combined with periods of off-campus distance learning - at home or anywhere in the world.  Study is geared to the part-time student who prefers to study at their own pace.

Residential periods feature traditional lectures, seminars, workshops, individual one-to-one tutorials, workshopping and performance of the students’ work, the program’s distinctive feature is that students write their scripts at distance but under the continuing guidance of their own personal tutor. 

In addition the program will contain an optional London-based screen industry or theatre placement, according to the student’s preference.

Who Should Take This Course?

Successful writing is built upon a range of skills.  These naturally include storytelling and character creation, but important also for the writer are a broad curiosity, an interest in people, an instinct for observation, and genuine life experience.

This degree is therefore suitable not only for those who have gained a creative undergraduate degree, but also those who have studied or worked in other areas of activity.  In fact all areas of human activity have proved to be material for a skilled and determined writer – of any age, culture or background.

Employment Opportunities: Where Next?

This MA in Writing for Screen & Stage trains not only those who wish to write,  of equal importance to the industry are many other essential roles: script editors, developers, producers, directors, agents and distributors of the future are also key to the success of the industry, and all require a keen understanding of the writer’s craft.

Therefore the program will develop transferable script skills which can be deployed in all areas of origination and creative analysis and which enhance the employment prospects of anyone who wishes to work in a very wide and varied industry.