This book offers the first international look at how script development is theorised and practiced. Drawing on interviews, case studies, discourse analysis, creative practices and industry experiences, it brings together scholars and practitioners from around the world to offer critical insights into this core, but often hidden, aspect of screenwriting and screen production. Chapters speculate and reflect upon how creative, commercial and social practices in which ideas, emotions, people and personalities combine, cohere and clash are shaped by the practicalities, policies and rapid movements of the screen industry. Comprising two parts, the book first looks into script development from a theoretical perspective, and second looks out from the practice to form practitioner-led perspectives of script development. With a rising interest in screenwriting and production studies, and an increased appetite for practice-based research, the book offers a timely mapping of the terrain of script development, providing rich foundations for both study and practice.
Part 1: Looking into Script Development: Theories on Practice.- 1.
Originality, and Development of the Screen Idea, Ian W. Macdonald.- 2. How
Government Policy Defines Script Development: Comparative Case Studies of
Screen Australia and the Danish Film Institute, Radha OMeara and Cath
Moore.- 3. Screenplay Development and the Post-Socialist Producer: A
Small-Market Perspective, Petr Szczepanik.- 4. The Persistence of Cultural
Vision: Australian Screenwriting 1994-2013, Glenda Hambly.- 5. Beyond
Stereotype: Collaborative Script Development for Stories about Mental Illness
and Suicide, Fincina Hopgood.- 6. Network Television Writers and the Race
Problems of 1968, Caryn Murphy.- 7. Telling Stories about Yesterdays Hero
for Todays World: The Script Development of Chilean TV series Heroes
(2006-2007), Carmen Sofia Brenes, Margaret McVeigh and Alejandro C. Reid.- 8.
Author and Screenwriter Working Together on an Adapted Script: The Case of O
quatrilho, Clarissa Mazon Miranda.- 9. Establishing a Shared Cultural Domain
within European Co-Production: Nordic Noir as Boundary Object, Rosamund
Davies.- Part 2: Looking out from Script Development: Practice into
Theory.- 10. Holding Ground and Moving Targets: Scripting Urban Terror
in East Africa, Joshua McNamara.- 11. Screenplay Development and Social
Change in Papua New Guinea, Mark Eby.- 12. Uncertainty, Risk and Entering
Unsafe Territory: Exploring the Writing Process of a New Zealand Indigenous
Screenwriter, Christina Milligan.- 13. So Much Drama, So Little Time: Script
Development in Australian Fast Turnaround Serial Drama, Philippa Burne and
Noel Maloney.- 14. Finding the Beats in the TV Sitcom, D.T. Klika15. The
Promiscuous Screenplay: Writing with Anything and Everything, Siobhan
Jackson.- 16. Subjects of the Gaze: Script Development as Performance, Emma
Bolland and Louise Sawtell.
Craig Batty is Dean of Research at University of South Australia, Australia. He is author and editor of over 100 publications on screenwriting, script development and the screenwriting PhD.
Stayci Taylor is a Lecturer in Media at RMIT University, Australia. She is an award-winning screenwriter and researcher, published widely on screenwriting, web series and creative writing.
