Screenwriting Poetics and the Screen Idea

by Ian W. Macdonald

Screenwriting Poetics and the Screen Idea is a new and original investigation into how screenwriting works, showing how to understand, study and research screenwriting and screen narrative production. It explores three facets the practices, the creative 'poetics' and the texts to re-conceptualise and join together our understanding of screenwriting and development. These facets serve the 'screen idea', that sense of something that might become a film or television show, and the focus for the beliefs and received wisdom behind the poetics. Macdonald applies a range of film, media and creative theories to the study and research of screenwriting, and includes three new, original case studies: story development in the successful ITV soap Emmerdale, the silent film work of Hitchcock's first major screenwriter Eliot Stannard, and David Lean's last, unfinished 'magnum opus', Nostromo.

282 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2013