Interrogating writing practices: perspectives from the screenwriting industry

This article contributes to the developing body of research on screenwriting practice by outlining a set of perspectives from the screenwriting industry that speak of writers, their practices and their creative works. Drawn from interviews undertaken with screenwriters, script editors, script executives and script consultants, these perspectives relate not only to issues specific to screenwriting and screenwriting pedagogy, but also to the discipline of creative writing more broadly. Taking as our approach the argument that some works "aimed at helping screenwriters with their screenplays [are seen as being] beneath academic value", whilst as the same time there is a need "not to theorize practice per se, but to interrogate and intellectualize practice in order to generate new knowledge and new ways to practice" (Batty 2014), our intention here is to speak directly to creative practice concerns by presenting viewpoints from the field. We have themed these concerns into the following discussions, which we posit as useful for practitioners, educators and students alike: Screenwriting and Education; Screenwriting and the Human Condition; Becoming a Screenwriter; Being a Screenwriter; and Screenwriting and Collaboration.