Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Jill Nelmes -- History of the form. Entertaining the public option : the popular film writing movement and the emergence of writing for the American silent cinema / Torey Liepa -- Screenwriters who shaped the precode woman and their struggle with censorship / Jule Selbo -- Screenwriting in Britain 1895-1929 / Ian Macdonald -- Development, craft and process. An impossible Task : scripting The Chilian club / Andrew Spicer -- Boards, beats, binaries and bricolage : approaches to the animation script / Paul Wells -- The flexibility of genre : the action-adventure film in 1939 / Ken Dancyger -- Alternatives to the conventional screenplay form. Let the audience add 2 + 2 and they'll love you forever : the screenplay as a self-teaching system / Adam Ganz -- The screenplay as prototype / Kathryn Millard -- A similar sense of time : the collaboration between writer Jon Raymond and director Kelly Reichardt in Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy / JJ Murphy -- On screenwriting outside the West / Sue Clayton -- Theoretical and critical approaches . Character in the screenplay text / Steven Price -- Realism and screenplay dialogue / Jill Nelmes -- Analysing the screenplay : a comparative approach / Mark O'Thomas -- Beyond McKee : screenwriting in and out of the academy / Barry Langford.