The script writer is not a writer and is

In Written for the Screen: The American Motion-Picture Screenplay as Text (1997), Claudia Sternberg establishes the film script as a literary text. She argues that it is subject to and suitable for the same analysis and theorization as other literary texts. Sternberg also argues the script is a separate text to any film that may be made based on it. Sternberg then addresses the matter of film authorship, looking for markers of the writer’s presence within a number of filmic texts. However, even if we agree that the film script is a literary text, does it follow that the screenwriter is a literary writer? For that matter, what makes a literary writer? And what are the markers of the screenwriter within the film script? For, even if such markers exist, they may not be indicators of a writerly presence, but rather of an implied director. The paper proposed in this abstract will consider these issues and explore them through direct application to my own screen writing experience.