One for the team: understanding individual and collaborative pursuits of script development across competing discourses

Abstract

Drawing on interviews from industry professionals, this article explores both the collaborative and, less documented, individual manifestations of script development. Researchers have noted that within screenwriting and screen production, script development practices and processes defy definition over various modes, media, global contexts and production cultures. This article argues that part of this flux is the ways in which individual pursuits of script development are mis/understood and/or dismissed. Screenwriting scholarship often questions the discourses within which individual pursuits of script development are promoted, especially the ‘how-to’ market of screenwriting manuals, using the ‘practical realities’ of the screen industry as a basis for this critique. This article builds on this work to problematise script development as a solely collaborative pursuit. Those interviewed for the research occupy a breadth of script development roles across their respective countries and industries, including screenwriter, script consultant and script editor. While the how-to market often neglects the practical realities of script development by reducing it to the individual pursuit from idea to draft, it is not simply the case that the industrial perspective is always collaborative either, as these professionals reveal. This article investigates the relationship that exists between collaborative practices and the contributions of the individual.