Screenwriting 101

I came to DePaul going for a BA in Film production and I knew I wanted to change over to a BFA, but I didn’t know what to make my concentration. Though I quickly found it out once I took this class that it was what I wanted to do with my concentrations.

I took SCWR 101 in my winter quarter for the 2020-21 school year with Lee Madsen as my professor. The class itself was really enjoyable and it wasn’t too much stress on my workload overall. The structure of the class was basically, getting a writing prompt, write a mini script, and then meet with people in class to discuss and critique each other.

I’ve always loved writing stories and this was just the class for that. Just being able to freely write with limited parameters, and just enjoy myself. In most film classes I’d been in, especially during the pandemic, I never had good technology to pull off projects I wanted to do. Though in this class, I didn’t have to worry about any of that. I just got to write to my heart’s content without a worry about a budget, what equipment I had on hand, or even how I’d go about filming and editing the clips. It was just me and my computer writing, which I loved.

I also got amazing feedback from my peers about what I wrote so I could really improve my writing. It was also the first group of people that I really made a meaningful connection with, given the pandemic and everything. After critiquing, we would sit for hours just chatting and having fun. It really gave me an actual feel for what the college is like and how it feels to connect with people. The pandemic has made for a unique year, but this class really made everything better and it was just a blast.

Overall my classmates were very welcoming and enjoyable to be around and my professor offered helpful feedback on my work and altogether made the class very engaging. This class has been my favorite at DePaul so far and helped me to lock in on what I wanted to do for my major.

~ Tessyi