NotitiesScreenwriting
Bridget Conor
Screenwriting is a unique blend of writing and filmmaking, characterized by its interaction with various roles such as directing and producing. It offers distinct attractions, including form, structure, and collaborative possibilities, while emphasizing the importance of self-exploration and imaginative depth in artistic creativity.
Screenwriting is a form of work routinely characterized as riven by the unassailable dichotomy between craft and creativity. (Location 83)
Screenwriting work bridges the discrete categories of ‘writing’ and ‘filmmaking’ and what is interesting when trying to define screenwriting work is the porosity of these roles, the ways in which this profession interacts with other types of work: directing, producing, playwriting, fiction writing and journalism. Many people who define themselves as screenwriters also define themselves as other kinds of writers, or as writers in different mediums, or as producers as well as screenwriters, or as screenwriting teachers and script consultants or script readers. (Location 99)
Screenwriters often practice a number of these modes of creative production simultaneously but screenwriting is understood as offering a number of particular attractions and benefits: form and structure, craft and collaborative possibilities. (Location 106)
It distinguishes the artist as someone whose ‘inner’ voice emerges from self-exploration, and whose expressive power derives from imaginative depth. Artistic creativity has become synonymous with this sense of exploration and expressive power. As a form of radical subjectivism, it neglects other modes of creativity, such as the creativity sparked by dialogue and collaboration, or the creativity in popular cultural traditions. (Location 184)