Whether for marketing plans or poems, plays or pitches, journalism or jive talk dialogue, the Writing Minor provides the space to explore and practice writing as a fundamental aspect of your major, your career, and/or your reason for being. Please consult the Writing Minor Courses and their Prerequisites for more specific information.
Professional writing centers on the hands-on training in writing and speaking for diverse fields, including journalism, new media, marketing, business, and entrepreneurship.
The flagship course for Professional Writing is WRI 130 (Topics in Professional Writing). To get started on this curricular track, start with WRI 30 (Intro to Professional Writing) and/or WRI 90 (Intersections) as pre-requisites to WRI 130. To fill out your minor, you can mix and match other upper division writing courses, including repeating WRI 130 as its topics change. Note that you can take WRI 30 and WRI 90 simultaneously or in any sequence you want -- you can take WRI 90 before WRI 30 or vice-versa.
Creative writing focuses on harnessing your imagination to manipulate the experience of diverse readers of poetry, fiction, drama, screenplays, imaginative essays, and similar works.
For this curricular track, you’ll take WRI 25 (Intro to Creative Writing) andWRI 90 (Intersections) to get into the special topics courseWRI 125 (Topics in Creative Writing). In addition, once you've taken WRI 125, WRI 150 (Seminar in Creative Writing) becomes available. Note that you can repeat WRI 125 for upper-division credit as topics change. Similar to the Professional Writing track, WRI 25 and WRI 90 can be taken simultaneously or in any sequence.
If you are a transfer student or are coming later to the writing minor, a broad-based style study option is encouraged.
For this track, you choose one lower division course (WRI 25, WRI 30, WRI 40 or WRI 90) and four upper division courses1.
If you are unsure of a track for your minor, a good place to start is WRI 90, as this course allows you still to choose a narrower track later.
1 Courses approved for satisfying the upper division requirement also now include WRI 104, WRI 112, WRI 121 and WRI 114.