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Teaching Screenwriting Through Script Development: Looking Beyond the Screenplay

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The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production

Abstract

This chapter focuses on screenwriting pedagogy through the lens of script development, asking what might be gleaned from industry that helps students to learn about aspects of writing for the screen beyond the screenplay itself. In other words, is script development a more viable pedagogy for teaching and learning the craft of screenwriting, one that exposes students to the wider world of industry and career ‘success’ than merely focusing on the writing of a script? The chapter draws on a dataset of 14 interviews with industry professionals from Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. The interviewees have worked in a variety of roles in the screen industry across these countries, including as screenwriters, script consultants, script editors, story editors and storyline writers; and as screenwriting educators in universities, colleges and private training and consultancy settings. They represent a rich and diverse dataset for the discovery of new insights into what this chapter argues could be an important and distinctive screenwriting pedagogy.

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Correspondence to Craig Batty .

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Batty, C., Taylor, S. (2019). Teaching Screenwriting Through Script Development: Looking Beyond the Screenplay. In: Batty, C., Berry, M., Dooley, K., Frankham, B., Kerrigan, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21744-0_35

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