This article explores academic and industry perspectives on the use of dialect, slang, and historical language in screenwriting. It offers a chronological overview of major screenwriting manuals' treatment of dialect and slang (or lack thereof) 1946-2020. It then presents survey data of 53 currently-practicing screenwriters' views on working with…

Writing a screenplay was an assignment that was part of Storytelling Through Film, a program sponsored by the Austin Film Festival, a professional film organization. In six weeks, students in creative writing and English classes first learned about the genre of screenwriting and then wrote original screenplays. The curriculum was a collaborative…

The teaching of film script writing--either as an end in itself or as a means of sharpening the student's visual and narrative awareness--can intensify the student's responsiveness to literature and increase his sense of continuity and consistency of point of view when writing compositions. When developing a silent screen script, students should…

This Film Focus series is a collection of reviews, essays, and commentaries on the Japanese film Rashomon. The plot consists of an attack, a rape, and a robbery, all of which probably occurred during the Middle Ages. Each character relates his own version of what happened, or might have happened, revealing the outward and inner driving forces,…

Based on the Screenwriting 434 graduate-level seminar at the University of California Los Angeles, this book guides readers/students through every step of the screenwriting process by putting them through the actual writing of an original script. Chapters in the book are: (1) Ideas; (2) The Two-Minute Movie; (3) Building Your Characters; (4) The…