Ghostbusting in screenwriting practice: Rewriting the corrective culture of script development

Edmond's notion of readers as future ghosts: non-existent at time of writing (AAWP keynote 2014) has curious connotations for the screenwriter, whose writing practice is haunted by 'the influence of the producer, director, development executive, potential financiers, and the echoes of many past films and screenplays' (Bloore 2012). In other words, the screenwriter's projected readers might be imagined or extant, but the future ghosts are not readers, rather the audience of the resulting film or broadcast - that is to say, an audience unlikely to read the screenwriter's words. The screenplay's destiny, we might say, is to become a ghost itself. The screenwriter's readers are those who will interpret the screenplay and ultimately filter it through a production process - but, first, in most instances, another procedure, namely, script development. This paper explores those practices of script development, driven by commercial concerns, that may have become entrenched - practices that might unquestionably impose templates and rules 'rather than a discovery driven uncertain process, in search of originality, story and meaning' (Nash 2014). If, as Conor has discovered, the screenwriter has historically been 'immediately alienated from her/his own labour' (2013), then how might new approaches to script development liberate us from (to risk stretching the metaphor) those spectres of ingrained practices? Drawing from an emerging field of scholarly literature on script development, this paper hopes to contribute to discussions around the screenwriter as creative writer, and raise questions around the arguably unexplored potential inherent in collaborative cultures of script development.