Pitch, Pilot & Revision: Professional TV Writing Intensive
Please note that the TV Writing Intensive will not run in the Summer 2026 term. Intro to TV Writing - Pilot (Session A) will run as a standalone course. TV Pilot Revision has been cancelled.
The Professional TV Writing Intensive offers students a concentrated and encompassing introduction to the field of television writing and is designed to prepare students to join the professional worlds of half-hour comedies and one-hour dramas across platforms.
Course Components
Intro to TV Writing - Pilot
TV Pilot Revision
Students will also get access to special master classes where they will learn about TV writing, production, post-production, and development processes from multiple professional points of view. Guests will include working writers, producers, directors, editors, and actors from the field based in NYC, LA, and abroad. Master classes will cover such topics as:
- Writing for Actors: How to create characters actors want to play
- Getting the First Gig: Strategies to get hired on a Writers Room as an Assistant or as a Staff Writer
- Pitch Practice: How to pitch yourself, your show, and in the Writers Room
- The Series Bible: How to build out a series for multiple seasons
- Development: From Pitch to Greenlight
- Representation: Finding and Choosing Agents/Managers
- Columbia’s MFA: Inside the Screenwriting Path
Students interested in taking both classes must register for both courses separately. Either course may also be taken on its own.
For more information, please contact [email protected].
Courses
Intro to TV Writing - Pilot
Instructor: Matt Fennell
Each student develops an original series concept and an accompanying pilot script. There is a focus on the pilot as both a successful episode and a blueprint for an ongoing series that has an engine to sustain dynamic stories for multiple seasons. In a step-by-step process, students will learn the structure of a television episode, move from series concept to pilot story, to outline, and lastly to writing a complete script. Comedy, drama, dramedy, animation, ½ hour, and 1 hour series are covered.
Additional course work includes examinations and analysis of successful teleplays, well established series, and the role of the writer/executive-producer in the medium.
* The Intro course has no prerequisites.
TV Pilot Revision
Instructor: Stephen Molton
Students take a completed original pilot script into this class to learn the craft of revision. The course will review the basics of writing scripts for TV with an emphasis on character, structure, and an eye towards the current marketplace, while workshopping drafts. We will also prepare for a professional career in the writers room, pitching completed original pilots, and work towards revising this sample for staffing as well as selling. Students will learn strategies to revise their completed pilots, reverse outline structural changes, add depth to character, punch-up dialogue, and create gripping pages from fade in to fade out. Students will complete 3 revisions by the end of the course.
* Registration for the Revision course requires coregistration with the Intro course OR submission of a satisfactory script draft.
Columbia students do not need to apply, but they do need to register. All visiting students will need to apply to the School of Professional Studies and register upon acceptance.