Script writer

What a script writer does: develops a creative concept, meaning an idea a film can be built from, and then writes it out as a detailed story with plot, characters, dialogue and physical setting. They create dialogue that works in an actor's mouth, and develop a storyboard, breaking the story down into successive scenes and shots. Before writing begins they analyse information sources: documents, accounts, studies and the literature a story grows out of or is adapted from.

In a production the writer is the author of the text, not the person who realises it. The script is handed over, and the director decides how to shoot it. The writer consults an editor, who reads each successive draft, and a production manager, with whom they establish what can actually be made.

The writer also manages feedback: notes arrive from the editor, the director and the producer, and the writer has to separate those that improve the story from those that break it, then write the next draft. Knowledge of literature is the foundation. Someone starting out writes short forms of their own and storyboards other people's ideas.