Schultz originated the Story Workshop method of teaching writing in 1965. He practiced the method at Columbia College, teaching many writers and training teachers in the Workshop techniques. The Story Workshop method "focuses on helping you hear your own individual voice and provides a supportive, interactive, and challenging environment for developing your reading, writing, listening, speaking, critical thinking, and imaginative problem-solving capacities." The Story Workshop Institute was founded to bring the method to elementary and secondary classrooms and other forums for writing instruction.

Schultz covered the 1968 Democratic National Convention for the Evergreen Review and later wrote No One Was Killed (1969), a first-person account of his experiences both in the International Amphitheater where the convention was held and on the streets and in the parks of Chicago where antiwar protesters gathered, rallied, and clashed with police.He also witnessed the subsequent trial of eight participants for conspiracy and inciting riot (the Chicago Seven), which he wrote about in Motion Will Be Denied, (1972), later republished as The Chicago Conspiracy Trial.