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…

The article describes a collaborative project co-taught by a creative writing teacher and the theater department's technical director that required students to write an original script and perform it as toy theater or shadow theater.

This article draws on the experiences of two young adults, Sean and Jerome, who participated in a writing workshop at a juvenile detention center. The young adults composed screenplays to explore how writing could call on their unique perspectives and life experiences to amplify their beliefs. While some educators emphasize a skills-based…

Identity studies relating to writing in educational setting have tended to focus on the analysis of non-fiction texts. Aligning a Bakhtinian view of language with the concept of identity as participation in "figured worlds" [Holland et al. 1998, "Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds". London: Harvard University Press], this…

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…

This article presents a pedagogical experience that addresses the use of an instructional strategy called screenwriting aimed at improving the teaching of writing in an educational context. This pedagogical intervention took place in a private English language school, where three adult students willingly participated to create their own short…

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…

Guidelines on creating scripts, chosing writers, and developing staff." (Editor)

The distinctive philosophies of Bertolt Brecht and Jean-Paul Sartre concerning man's existence directly influence their attitudes toward character, action, and the total drama. Both playwrights reveal that drama is an inseparable and reciprocal molding of content and form. The relationship between their ideas and their expressions of them is so…

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,…

Designed to guide students through the process of writing a film script, this book is an analysis of eight classic screenplays and one novel written in cinematic style, which may serve as models for screenwriting. Each chapter in the book, except the last, is devoted to one script emphasizing a certain aspect of screenwriting. The focus is on how…

Describes what happened when an elementary school creative writing class gained access to a video portapak. (RB)

Horton Foote was among the television writers who helped make NBC's "Television Playhouse" the most popular live dramatic program on the air during the "Golden Age" of television drama, the period between 1952 and 1957. Foote felt a strong affinity for the land and people of his youth, and modeled the imaginary towns of…

Four play scripts written by elementary school students. (RL)