A Maryland screenwriter taught students at AACC Thursday about landing jobs, getting out there and making works in the field of creative writing.

Kevin Michael West spoke at the Kauffman theater to more than 20 students about the business side of screenwriting and how to get started with life after college.

West told students how to reach agents, send query letters, make attractive scripts and to reach the right business partners- even teaching students how to tell if someone is beneficial to their cause or not.

“He gave really concrete ideas about how to be better in the craft,” Jeanette Twigg, a first-year entrepreneurship program major, said. “He had a ton of information- how to talk to screenwriters, how to talk to producers, how to get a job and websites to go to.”

West taught students about how to undergo the process of writing scripts. He told them to write everyday and to write bad scripts before you write good ones. West also told students how to mix the craft and make something original and unique.

“I don’t know if there is any words to describe it,” Seth Hegger, a third-year theater major, said. “It was just fantastic from beginning to end.”

West majored in creative writing and literature at Emerson college in Boston, Massachusetts. He completed his MFA in film production at USC, Los Angeles.

He has written successful plays such as “Top and Bottom,” played in Los Angeles and New York, and “The DOMA Diaries,” his successful work which spoke out for the LGBT community. He has many short films that can be found on his website.

He currently teaches screenwriting at the college of William and Mary. 

West, 38, lives with his husband in Frederick, Maryland.