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.

A new, original investigation into how screenwriting works; the practices, creative 'poetics' and texts that serve the screen idea. Using a range of film, media and creative theories, it includes new case studies on the successful ITV soap Emmerdale, Hitchcock's first major screenwriter and David Lean's unfinished film, Nostromo.