The Story Workshop Institute arranges Story Workshop programs and workshops, intensives of different durations (two week, one week, weekend and so on) for schools, businesses, arts and community organizations.

Writing and creative problem-solving training play an important, sometimes crucial part in a great many jobs. Story Workshop students have found their training to be crucially helpful in getting jobs and advancing on the job in such areas as advertising, trade journalism, trade magazine editing, newspaper journalism, scriptwriting for television, film, and radio, technical writing, and many other jobs such as banking, lawyering, and psychotherapy, in which writing and creative problem-solving are centrally important abilities. The following statements from Story Workshop participants concern the value of their Story Workshop training for professional advancement. Two of the quoted graduates are minority, one female, one male. The comments of these students are characteristic of the experience of Story Workshop students in undergraduate and graduate programs.

"The Story Workshop emphasis on voice and form has been the strongest influence on my newswriting. The recognition that voice can lead not only to the strongest imagery but also to the discovery of form itself has also been of crucial importance. I find myself returning to the Story Workshop dynamics again and again." - Eric May, Staff Writer, Washington Post

"The technique of seeing things in my mind and describing what I see in words, which I developed in the Story Workshop classes, is extremely important to writing a successful screenplay. A screenwriter has to convey emotions simply through what can be seen externally of the story--through observations of how characters look, their behavior, and, naturally, through what they say. If I'm having trouble conveying the content of a scene or the emotional state of a character, I'll stop and look at the scene--look around it--until I find something physical that will allow me to get that meaning or emotion across. These are skills that I first discovered in Story Workshop classes." - Charles Robert Carner, Screenwriter, ["The Fixer" (Showtime, 1998), "Vanishing Point" (Fox, 1997), "Blind - Fury" (Tri-Star), among others.]

"Lots of people think that reporting leaves no room for creativity, but the reader needs to 'see' the person and/or the scene or both. I must always be aware of my audience, and [the] Story Workshop [Approach] helped me to start thinking in those terms. Story Workshop teachers always prodded students to see what comes next--reporters must always think that, too, because editors love accuracy first, and then they scream, 'Details!' My first freelance job at the Chicago Defender I got by submitting Story Workshop stories, along with other kinds of writing. Eventually they hired me full-time." - Sandra Crockett, Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times

"The writing techniques taught in John Schultz's workshops--model tellings, story within a story, how it happens--certainly have enlivened my nonfiction writing, from news reports to features. But perhaps the biggest gains I've realized from the workshops are in the areas of confidence and discipline. It's much easier to conquer a blank pad when you believe you can judge the power of an image and the strength of the message you have to tell." - Marilyn Mannisto, Managing Editor, Journal of Cancer Management