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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.

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1. Introduction 2. Theoretical Approaches 3. The orthodox poetics of screenwriting 4. The real world and screenwriting as work 5. The Screen Idea Work Group: Emmerdale 6. The individual, their creativity and the poetics 7. Hitchcock´s forgotten screenwriter: Eliot Stannard 8. God is in the details: the text object 9. The poetics of the screen idea: Nostromo 10. Screenwriting studies References Appendices Notes Index

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´The Emmerdale chapter is lively, informative and illuminating.´ - John Whiston, Creative Director, Serial Dramas, ITV Studios

´I much enjoyed reading your searching analysis of the evolution of the Nostromo screenplay.´ - A. A. Reeves, Director, David Lean Films

´Fascinating exemplary scholarship on Eliot Stannard.´ - Emeritus Prof. Charles Barr, author of The English Hitchcock

´A rigorously methodical, carefully structured and closely argued explication of a wide-ranging yet particular approach to the field.´ - Steven Price, Journal of Screenwriting 6.1

´For those of us involved with the teaching of screenwriting or script appreciation, Ian W. Macdonald´s Screenwriting Poetics and the Screen Idea should be required reading for ourselves and our students. Apart from many other excellent qualities, it contains a tremendously useful chapter on the screenwriting manuals, in which he synthesises, with admirable clarity, their various approaches to the prevailing orthodoxy of the three act structure in only 25 pages. Hours of classroom time can now be instantly replaced with one reading from MacDonald!´ - Jonathan Powell. Professor, Media Arts, Royal Holloway. Previously Head of Drama, BBC TV.

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Dr Ian W. Macdonald worked for the BBC, IBA, London Weekend Television, and the British Film Institute before becoming Head of the Northern Film School at Leeds Met in 1992, joining the University of Leeds in 2006. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Screenwriting and co-founder of the Screenwriting Research Network (www.screenwritingresearch.com).

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