Script development and academic research

This article seeks to bring screenwriting research and screenwriting practice studies into closer proximity. It outlines arguments for seeing them as distinct fields, but suggests that doing so has contributed towards significant misunderstandings between practitioners and researchers. They are united in relying on both textual and non-textual materials, including anecdotal and first-person testimony; they face common problems in aligning these materials with traditional scholarly standards and overcoming the fragmentation of a field that is currently dominated by individual case studies; and they share some of the methodological and theoretical concerns of adaptation studies, with the term ‘script development’ itself risking the marginalization of intermedial and non-linear iterations. It concludes that collaboration between practitioners and researchers is essential if the study of script development is to flourish.