Screenwriting: Between Art and Craft

This paper discusses the teaching of screenwriting and storytelling in terms of art and craft. It argues that since Romanticism established itself in the 19th century as the dominant Western view on art and culture, it has driven a wedge between people’s notions of art and craft, promoting the former and demoting the latter. This rift has impeded the teaching of screenwriting and storytelling in general. Following this, art historians and sociologists of art have suggested developing a “third system of art,” one that reintegrates the artist and the artisan, the art and craft-based values. This essay develops the basic tenets of a “technical approach” to the teaching of screenwriting. This technical approach sits in-between a Romantically biased “free-wheeling” approach and a mechanistic, “rule-based” approach. It is argued that a technical approach to screenwriting or storytelling could help materialize such a “third system of art” and benefit the practice, teaching, and study of screenwriting and storytelling.