"It's the Wild West out there": Can web series destabilise traditional notions of script development?

This paper proposes that the concept of 'script development'-already an ambiguous and arguably unexamined term-is further complicated by the rise of the 'webisode', drawing from existing discourse and scholarship on web series, much of which focuses upon (and/or problematises) an assumed amateur/professional binary that would cast online media as 'other'. But, as this paper argues, while this distinction is being debated, a space opens up within which web series creators are making their own rules. In other words, 'the Wild West' landscape of web series, where 'both the newbie and the veteran can create their own shows without permission from, or the approval of, traditional electronic media networks and studios which historically served as gatekeepers' (LA Web Fest Founder Michael Ajakwe, quoted in Liang 2013), might be facilitating new practices of script development which, given the crossover success of many web series creatives, might be infiltrating those of the mainstream.