Writing Courses Open New Chapters in Students' Lives

You don’t have to be a professional writer to make your mark in NYU-SCPS continuing education writing courses. Indeed, some of the most satisfying stories are of students who were anything but wordsmiths. They took a course or two on how to write a play or poem, a novel or nonfiction, and then went on to write an exciting new chapter in their own lives.

Last semester, nearly 1,000 students enrolled in SCPS Writing and Speech classes. And these aspiring writers were a diverse group, according to Adam Sexton, associate director of humanities, arts, and writing programs.

“Lots of lawyers,” he says, “and people from finance, a Finnish documentary filmmaker, a Japanese computer programmer for the UN, a former aide to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. We even had a curator from New York’s Museum of Sex.”

Many of the people who sign up for writing classes, Sexton explains, are in jobs that don’t let them express themselves creatively. In SCPS classrooms they can “let it all hang out,” exposing their work to a small, supportive class that critiques them with a “we’re all in the same boat” empathy.

Even when students enter classes having studied writing somewhere else, they often find that SCPS courses fill in important gaps.

Jeffrey Stanley, who teaches Playwriting I, gives one example—the emphasis he puts on structure in crafting a play. He maintains that structure is all too often neglected in playwriting courses these days. But Stanley devotes part of every class meeting to analyzing the structure of plays and movies—“even the Dirty Harry movies.”

An NYU graduate himself and a well-known writer-director, Stanley says it’s especially satisfying to work with students who “just love theater, but come from non-theatrical fields.”

“I had one student in corporate communications,” he remembers. “He was so grateful for my lessons on narrative structure that when he published a book—on corporate communications—he included me among the people he gave special thanks to.”

While every SCPS writing instructor shares the School’s commitment to bringing out the best in their students, they each have their own pet techniques.

Carol Bergman, who teaches Nonfiction Writing I, asks her students not only to do essays and memoirs for class critique, but also to keep a journal about the experience.

“It was cool,” one student recalls. “You had to think about what writing really is—it encouraged you to find your own voice.”

Which, when you think about it, is what all SCPS writing courses try to do.