Script development and the hidden practices of screenwriting: perspectives from industry professionals

This article contributes to the emerging body of research on screenwriting practice by drawing together perspectives from industry that reveal an often hidden aspect of the creation of a screen work – script development. Using the same set of interviews that informed a previous work, this article mines those same discussions for insights relating specifically to what is to date a largely unexplored element of screenwriting practice. The perspectives we draw together – from our pool of screenwriters, script editors, script executives and script consultants – serve to both highlight the ambiguity that troubles the term ‘script development’, and also contribute to wider research seeking to define both the concept and the practice for screenwriting scholars and practitioners from an industry outlook. It has been 10 years (at the time of writing) since Peter Bloore wrote of his research that, ‘none of the books available about the film industry and scriptwriting really covered the reality of development [and none] really dealt with the development process as I knew it’. His book is still one of only a few attempts to address this gap in screenwriting research, and so by focussing specifically on the people who experience it, the intention of this article is to try and articulate how we might better understand extant practices of script development.