15-week Television Writing program

Do you love story-telling, drama, and emotions? While watching a TV serial, have you ever thought that you could give a better plot to a story or can write exciting scripts for TV serials?

Here comes your chance! Make an entry into TV writing with a 15-week long training program. This program will be offered by Film Writers’ Association (FWA) to educate and train aspirants in TV writing within 15 weeks.

The program will be conducted by Vinod Ranganath, among the first daily soap writers of India, who began his career with memorable shows like Swabhimaan, Itihaas and Sea Hawks.

This program will impart in-depth training in television writing. One has to attend three, 3-hour sessions weekly i.e. a total of 9 hours every week.

Attendance is must and students have to meet all the deadlines related to their written assignments.

On the completion of the 15-week programme, every student has to come up with:

• 1 Fiction Bible for a daily soap Opera
•  1 Comedy/Thriller Concept – Story

The program will commence from December 10, 2012 and will end on March 30, 2013.

Eligibility:

• Should be the member of FWA. All those candidates who are not members will have to register themselves as members of the FWA before applying
• All eligible candidates will have to submit a 1 to 5 page analysis of a current TV show on air. They will be interviewed on the same if selected for the interview round, hence they need to write this on their own without outside help
• All eligible candidates will have to submit a 1 to 5 page analysis of a short/long story that they have read

Enrolment process:

The admission process will be held from November 7 – 24, 2012. All the application forms must include two passport size photographs and should reach the FWA office by Registered Post or Courier or personally before the 24th of November.

The program fee is Rs 20,000.

Eligible candidates will be called for the interview in the last week of November 2012 and the list of final candidates will be announced by the first week of December.

Course pedagogy:

There will be two semesters divided in seven weeks each.

The first semester is composed of 65 hours of instruction, analyses, foundation training, workshops & writing under supervision, of which, 12-15 hours of foundation training in the first week, 10 hours will be dedicated to 3 workshops on writing for comedy, 1-2 hours will be given to telefilm or mythology writing.

The second semester is composed of 10-15 hours for 3 workshops on writing thriller, kids’ programs, and non-fiction shows.

Schedule of writing program:

First Semester
Weeks 1-2 : Foundation, Ideation, fix concept for daily soap
Weeks 3-5 : Detailed Character Sketches & Story Lines of Characters
Weeks 6-7 : Detailed story & Milestones for 1-3 months

Second Semester
Week 08: Revision and Analysis of First Semester Submissions
Week 09-11: Submit 1-10 episode screenplay, one line & milestones for 4-6 months
Week 12-13: Write out Pilot episode/Shooting script
Week 14-15: Submit Detailed Story & Characters of Thriller/Comedy

The program will be delivered in English and Hindi. The classes will be conducted in the FWA office on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday from 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm.

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