Screenwriting Poetics and the Screen Idea

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.

Dr Ian W. Macdonald worked for the BBC, IBA, London Weekend Television, and the British Film Institute before becoming Head of the Northern Film School at Leeds Met in 1992, joining the University of Leeds in 2006. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Screenwriting and co-founder of the Screenwriting Research Network (www.screenwritingresearch.com).

1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Approaches
3. The orthodox poetics of screenwriting
4. The real world and screenwriting as work
5. The Screen Idea Work Group: Emmerdale
6. The individual, their creativity and the poetics
7. Hitchcock's forgotten screenwriter: Eliot Stannard
8. God is in the details: the text object
9. The poetics of the screen idea: Nostromo
10. Screenwriting studies
References
Appendices
Notes
Index