Craig Batty

Zara Waldeback

"This fresh and lively approach to scriptwriting incorporates both creativity and critical appraisal as essential methods in writing for the screen. Offering a solid foundation in fundamental concepts, it enables students to develop practical writing skills and provides powerful tools to make script development an effective and satisfying process."--BOOK JACKET.

Creative and Critical Approaches

Writing for the Screen

Elizabeth Ellison

Donna Lee Brien

Alison Owens

This book offers important insights into the challenging yet rewarding journey of undertaking a PhD. Written by students, for students, the book explores a range of case studies from creative arts and humanities doctoral students, embracing a cognitive, emotional and transformational metaphor of the journey. The volume is organised around themes and concerns identified as important by PhD students, such as building resilience and working with supervisors, and includes personal stories, case studies, scholarly signposts and key take-away points relevant to all doctoral settings. With perspectives from all stages of the doctoral journey, this book is sure to become a valuable support to students and supervisors alike, as well as those working in research education and training.

Student Stories from the Creative Arts and Humanities

The Doctoral Experience

This revised and refreshed edition guides the contemporary screenwriter through a variety of creative and critical approaches to a deeper understanding of how to tell stories for the screen. With a renewed focus on theme and structure, the book is an essential guide for writers, script developers and teachers to help develop ideas into rich dynamic projects, and craft compelling, resonating screenplays. Combining creative tools and approaches with critical and contextual underpinnings, the book is ideal for screenwriting students who are looking to expand their skills and reflect on practices to add greater depth to their scripts. It will also inspire experienced writers and developers to find fresh ways of working and consider how new technology is affecting storytelling voices. Comprehensive and engaging, this book considers key narrative questions of today and offers a range of exercises to address them. Integrating creative guidance with rigorous scholarship, this is the perfect companion for undergraduate students taking courses in screenwriting. Encouraging and pragmatic, it will provide a wealth of inspiration for those wishing to work in the industry or deepen their study of the practice. New to this Edition: - Refreshed and revised edition to meet the demands of contemporary screenwriting - New case studies, models, tools and approaches to writing for the screen - Updated areas of industry practice, including web series, transmedia, VR and long-form storytelling - Includes practical approaches and creative exercises that can be used in the classroom

Stayci Taylor

The Palgrave Handbook of Script Development provides the first comprehensive overview of international script development practices. Across 40 unique chapters, readers are guided through the key challenges, roles and cultures of script development, from the perspectives of creators of original works, those in consultative roles and those giving broader contextual case studies. The authors take us inside the writers’ room, alongside the script editor, between development conversations, and outside the mainstream and into the experimental. With authors spanning upwards of 15 countries, and occupying an array of roles – including writer, script editor, producer, script consultant, executive, teacher and scholar, this is a truly international perspective on how script development functions (or otherwise) across media and platforms. Comprising four parts, the handbook guides readers behind the scenes of script development, exploring unique contexts, alternative approaches, specific production cultures and global contexts, drawing on interviews, archives, policy, case study research and the insider track. With its broad approach to a specialised practice, the Palgrave Handbook of Script Development is for anyone who practices, teaches or studies screenwriting and screen production.

The Palgrave Handbook of Script Development

"The Handbook of Script Development provides a creative and critical guide for those who study, teach and work on the development of stories for the screen. The larger, international perspective is highly valuable in todays media climate where screenwriters sell stories to streaming services with an eye on collecting viewers from all over the world. Such a cross-cultural product requires exposure to new ideas in how scripts are developed which is exactly the perspective I discovered in these pages." --- Dr Rosanne Welch, Executive Director, Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting The Palgrave Handbook of Script Development provides the first comprehensive overview of international script development practices. Across 40 unique chapters, readers are guided through the key challenges, roles and cultures of script development, from the perspectives of creators of original works, those in consultative roles and those giving broader contextual case studies. The authors take us inside the writers room, alongside the script editor, between development conversations, and outside the mainstream and into the experimental. With authors spanning upwards of 15 countries, and occupying an array of roles including writer, script editor, producer, script consultant, executive, teacher and scholar, this is a truly international perspective on how script development functions (or otherwise) across media and platforms. Comprising four parts, the handbook guides readers behind the scenes of script development, exploring unique contexts, alternative approaches, specific production cultures and global contexts, drawing on interviews, archives, policy, case study research and the insider track. With its broad approach to a specialised practice, the Palgrave Handbook of Script Development is for anyone who practices, teaches or studies screenwriting and screen production. 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. Craig Batty is Dean of Research (Creative) at the University of South Australia. He is an award-winning educator and researcher in the field of screenwriting, and is also a writer, script editor and script consultant.

Creativity is becoming increasingly important in an age of advanced audience sophistication. It's no longer enough to follow standard writing techniques - becoming a first-class screenwriter demands not only a command of craft, but an understanding of how to unleash and harness creativity. "The Creative Screenwriter" offers a wealth of inspiring writing exercises designed to help you produce better, more exciting scripts. Each essential area of screenwriting is covered in its own chapter, from learning how to build stories and finding good ideas, to deepening characters and experimenting with structure, to enhancing scene writing and improving pitching. Finally, a range of innovative DIY Script Surgeries encourage you to find solutions to common screenwriting problems, such as overcoming writer's block, managing the rewrite and selling your work. This is a book to return to again and again. It is a guide for aspiring screenwriters who want to develop a powerful writing practice; a manual for teachers and students seeking discussion and reflection; a bible for professionals wanting to hone their craft and solve script struggles. It will rekindle the creative spark; remind you of why you love writing; and help to express the stories you want to tell – and sell!

Exercises to Expand Your Craft

The Creative Screenwriter

Susan Kerrigan

Aimed at students and educators across all levels of Higher Education, this agenda-setting book defines what screen production research is and looks like—and by doing so celebrates creative practice as an important pursuit in the contemporary academic landscape. Drawing on the work of international experts as well as case studies from a range of forms and genres—including screenwriting, fiction filmmaking, documentary production and mobile media practice—the book is an essential guide for those interested in the rich relationship between theory and practice. It provides theories, models, tools and best practice examples that students and researchers can follow and expand upon in their own screen production projects.

Creative Practice as a Mode of Enquiry

Screen Production Research

Marsha Berry

Kath Dooley

Bettina Frankham

This handbook is an essential creative, critical and practical guide for students and educators of screen production internationally. It covers all aspects of screen production—from conceptualizing ideas and developing them, to realizing and then distributing them—across all forms and formats, including fiction and non-fiction for cinema, television, gallery spaces and the web. With chapters by practitioners, scholars and educators from around the world, the book provides a comprehensive collection of approaches for those studying and teaching the development and production of screen content. With college and university students in mind, the volume purposely combines theory and practice to offer a critically informed and intellectually rich guide to screen production, shaped by the needs of those working in education environments where ‘doing’ and ‘thinking’ must co-exist. The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production fills an important gap in creative-critical knowledge of screen production, while also providing practical tools and approaches for future practitioners.

The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production

Screenplays ... How to Write and Market Them is an accessible yet comprehensive book aimed at those with a keen interest in writing feature film screenplays. Using case studies, creative exercises and interviews from the industry, the book will guide readers through the necessary stages of writing a screenplay, from finding and developing ideas to creating and executing characters to shaping structure and constructing scenes. It will also consider how a screenplay might be sold, or used to raise interest in the writer, looking at areas such as finding and working with an agent, networking, using competitions, and raising private production funds. The book's approach is both creative and reflective, giving readers the opportunity to learn a wealth of creative skills alongside skills that will encourage them to think about themselves as writers and the work that they are developing. As such, the book will empower readers in their own creative processes and allow them to successfully tell the stories they want to tell. Rich with analyses from classic and contemporary films, littered with practical models, paradigms and creative tasks, and enhanced by the views of key industry figures, the book is a must for any aspiring feature film screenwriter.

Screenplays & how to write & sell them

Helen Jacey

What happens when 'happy ever after' isn't quite so simple? Today's attitudes to love and romance are as varied and diverse as individuals, and audiences want and need more sophisticated, authentic films that show how we live and love now. So what does this mean for the screenwriter developing a romcom? And how do they write heart-warming stories for a genre that is constantly evolving, from bromcom to zomcom to famcom? Writing and Selling Romantic Comedy Screenplays offers a fresh approach to creating narratives for this ever-changing genre. Moving away from rigid and limited definitions that have evolved out of mainstream genre films, the book embraces a working definition that crosses cultural and national boundaries to give screenwriters around the world a truly international perspective on writing comedic love stories. It will be the first screenwriting guide to reflect the diversity of approaches in today's films that deal with the human need for emotional and physical intimacy using humour - the contemporary romantic comedy.

Craig Batty

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