undergradly.
Major · Visual & Performing Arts

Writing for the stage, the screen, and the streaming era

Playwriting and Screenwriting trains you to build dramatic stories — scripts for theatre, film, and television — through scene work, dialogue, and full-production craft. About 436 bachelor’s and associate’s degrees are awarded each year across 38 colleges, almost all of them concentrated in BFA programs that double as access points to Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta production ecosystems.

Schools offering
38
Annual completions
436
Typical degree level
Associate's + Bachelor's
Median earnings (5yr)
$40k

About this major

Playwriting and Screenwriting prepares you to write dramatic works for theatre, film, and television — building stories through scene construction, dialogue, character work, stage and camera direction, and the editing and revision cycles that turn a draft into a producible script. The CIP definition emphasizes the full production craft: line and moment analysis, script reading, script editing, and the creation of full productions. Most programs use workshop-based classes where students read each other’s pages weekly, supplemented by directing, editing, and producing exposure so writers learn the disciplines they will collaborate with later.

The major fits students who already write fiction or one-acts in their spare time, who can take blunt revision notes without flinching, and who want to study story structurally rather than analyze it from the outside. Strong applicants tend to enjoy reading plays and screenplays as objects of craft, not just as entertainment, and are willing to fail publicly in workshop on the way to learning what works. Patience for revision matters more than fluency in a single first-draft sitting.

About 436 degrees are awarded annually across 38 colleges, with the highest concentrations at Los Angeles Film School, Loyola Marymount, Chapman, NYU, SUNY Purchase, Savannah College of Art and Design, and the University of Southern California — programs clustered near production economies. The two career destinations the packet tracks are Writers and Authors at $72,270 median and Postsecondary art, drama, and music teaching at $80,190 median. Both numbers describe established practitioners; new graduates typically work below them while building credits.

Section 3 · Careers

Where this major leads

Occupations most often associated with this major, from the federal BLS+O*NET crosswalk. Job-growth projections and median wages are national.

Occupation Median wage Job growth Typical education
Writers and authors $72k +3.6% Bachelor's degree
Art, drama, and music teachers, postsecondary $80k +1.7% Master's degree
Section 4 · Earnings

Earnings at a glance

Median graduate earnings from the federal College Scorecard, 5 and 10 years out.

Median 5-year earnings

$40k

Associate's vs Bachelor's — early-career earnings

Associate's

$31k

Bachelor's

$40k

Who this major is for

You may thrive here if you already draft scenes or one-acts on your own time and want a workshop structure that pushes you to revise weekly, if you read plays and screenplays as craft objects and can quote what made a scene work, if you accept that the major’s value comes from the fellowship and assistant pipelines surrounding it as much as from the diploma, if you are willing to take a writers’ assistant or script coordinator job after graduation rather than a staff writing slot, and if you want training that translates to game narrative design, podcast scripted fiction, or audio drama as readily as to film and theatre.

Think twice if you expect a stable starting salary — bachelor’s completers report $40,139 median earnings five years out, and most working writers spend years below the BLS Writers and Authors median of $72,270 before reaching it. Reconsider this route if you dislike public critique, since workshop reads put your pages in front of peers every week. Pause if your plan stops at the diploma without an internship, fellowship, or move toward a production hub. Look elsewhere if you want a single high-probability career outcome rather than a craft training that leaves you to engineer your own path.

Section 6 · Where to study

Top colleges for Playwriting and Screenwriting

Ranked by annual completions at the associate's or bachelor's level — a proxy for program scale.

College Location Assoc. Bach. Total
Los Angeles Film School Hollywood, CA 0 78 78
Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, CA 0 64 64
Chapman University Orange, CA 0 62 62
New York University New York, NY 0 58 58
SUNY at Purchase College Purchase, NY 0 35 35
Savannah College of Art and Design Savannah, GA 0 35 35
University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 0 31 31
Drexel University Philadelphia, PA 0 12 12
Point Park University Pittsburgh, PA 0 10 10
Hofstra University Hempstead, NY 0 8 8
Section 7 · Explore sideways

Related majors to explore

Drama and Dramatics/Theatre Arts, General

8,737 completions/yr

Acting

1,531 completions/yr

Musical Theatre

1,121 completions/yr

Technical Theatre/Theatre Design and Technology

708 completions/yr

Dramatic/Theatre Arts and Stagecraft, Other

208 completions/yr

Theatre and Dance

116 completions/yr

Directing and Theatrical Production

114 completions/yr

Costume Design

35 completions/yr
Section 9 · Frequently asked

Common questions

What do Playwriting and Screenwriting majors actually study day-to-day?
Coursework centers on scene writing, dialogue, structure, and script analysis, paired with workshops where you read each other’s pages out loud and revise weekly. Most programs run table reads of student scripts, teach the formatting conventions of stage and screen separately, and require a thesis script — typically a one-act play, full-length play, feature screenplay, or pilot — by senior year. Production-adjacent classes in directing, editing, and producing show up in most BFA tracks because writers in television and theatre work alongside those crafts daily.
Do I need a bachelor’s, or is an associate’s enough for Playwriting and Screenwriting?
The packet shows a meaningful split: associate’s completers report median five-year earnings of $30,561, and bachelor’s completers report $40,139 — about a $9,600 difference. Neither number is high, and both reflect the wide gap between the few graduates working as paid writers and the many supplementing with day jobs. Bachelor’s programs also tend to host the fellowship pipelines, agent showcases, and faculty connections that matter for breaking in.
What kinds of jobs do Playwriting and Screenwriting graduates end up in?
The BLS lists Writers and Authors at $72,270 median with 3.6% projected growth, but that figure averages established novelists, journalists, and corporate writers alongside dramatic writers. The other path in the packet — postsecondary art, drama, and music teaching at $80,190 — typically requires a master’s degree. In practice, graduates split across writers’ assistant and script coordinator roles in television, regional-theatre commissions and residencies, freelance treatment and copy work, and adjacent fields like video-game narrative design, podcast scripted-fiction, and branded content.
How competitive is the job market for this major?
Tight, even by arts-major standards. Writers Guild of America membership requires accumulated paid credits, which is the chicken-and-egg problem most graduates hit first. Fewer than five percent of MFA-level dramatic-writing graduates support themselves through screenwriting or playwriting alone within five years of graduation; the rest combine writing income with teaching, assistant work, or unrelated day jobs. Post-2023 strikes shortened writers’ rooms and tightened staffing, though the WGA contract added AI-use restrictions that protect human writing credits.
What if I love writing scripts but don’t want to chase Los Angeles or New York?
The pivot lanes are real and growing. Video-game narrative design hires writers at studios like Naughty Dog, Larian, Obsidian, and Insomniac, often remote. Podcast scripted-fiction networks — Wondery, Pushkin, Realm, QCode — and Audible Originals commission audio drama that uses the same dialogue muscles. Interactive fiction (Choice of Games, Inkle), branded-content writing for agencies, story consulting, and journalism or criticism all draw on the same training without requiring a coastal address.
Is generative AI going to take screenwriting jobs?
AI tools can produce competent first-draft scenes, treatments, and formula-driven plot scaffolds, and the WGA negotiated specific AI-use restrictions in its 2023 contract for that reason. The work that compresses fastest is procedural-style episodic structure, generic treatment writing, and rote coverage. The work that holds value is distinctive voice, in-room collaboration, network and agent relationships, original intellectual property, and prestige drama. Training matters more for the protected category than the displaced one.