Disrupting the self: script development within the academy

ABSTRACT

Screenwriting within the Academy creates opportunities for female writers to question and challenge traditional and industrial approaches to script development. The two writer-researchers use critical conversation as a form of collaborative reflection to examine how personal experiences inform their script development processes. Situating the creative practice within the context of research reveals how the reflexive approach to script development can unearth broader concerns regarding agency and representations of female characters on screen. Sue Cake identifies how writing narrative comedy became an act of disruption against the neoliberal corporatisation of education. A kind of self-disruption occurred as the insights gained from parodying powerful emotional experiences led to a transformative shift in her perspective of those experiences. For Louise Sawtell, reflecting on key memories and experiences prompted her to develop female-driven narratives that expand the scope of representation for under-represented female protagonists. She weaves memory and imagination together to innovate the form and structure of an anthology film. This article argues that the Academy is a critical site for female screenwriting researchers to explore and disrupt dominant script development practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Script development
• screenwriting
• reflexivity
• creative disruption
• creative resistance
• self-fiction
• female screenwriters
• screenwriting in the academy

Introduction

This article argues that the academy is a critical site of disruption for female screenwriter-researchers to challenge industrial practices that have marginalised the development of stories by and about women. National screen funding agency initiatives such as Screen Australia’s Gender Matters highlight the need to address deficits in female representation both in front of, and behind the camera. Despite the Gender Matters initiative, in 2021/2022 there was a drop in the number of female writers across TV/VOD, feature drama production and online drama production (Screen Australia 2022). In 2023 Screen Australia appointed a fourth Gender Matters taskforce made up of women in the screen industry to advise the agency on work that could be done to achieve gender parity (see Screen Australia 2023), which shows there is still a pressing need for female creatives to find opportunities to tell screen stories.

In this article we argue that the academy provides a location and context for screenwriting that has not received due recognition. Developing scripts within the academy affords opportunities for reflexive or subjective screenwriting less constrained by industrial imperatives. Our article scrutinises these opportunities and the different approaches to screenwriting and script development. Our method reflects critically on conversations conducted over a series of one-hour zoom sessions to identify connections and differences in our approaches to script development within the academy and examine the tensions between our creative practice and industrial approaches. This method draws from the field of scholarly reflective practice that argues for the value of critical reflection in examining dominant paradigms and taken-for-granted practices (Bolton and Delderfield 2018; Chambers 2003; Johns et al. 2013; Kreber 2004). Much like our exploratory approach to creative practice, we were initially unconstrained in the topics for discussion. Taylor (2007) suggests documenting reflection in writing creates an artefact that can in turn be reflected upon to ‘strengthen the analytical capability of transformative learning’ (182). As our reflections and discussions progressed, we identified three key questions that focussed our analysis: (1) Why do we write? (2) Where does the inspiration for our characters come from? And (3) What is our approach to structuring our narratives? For Sue Cake, the process of writing narrative comedy is an act of disruption which enables her to examine and parody discourses surrounding organisational change management and neoliberal approaches to education. For Louise Sawtell, using consecutive stories to explore the experiences of an asexual woman, creates opportunities to transgressively reinscribe representations of different types of relationships in female-driven narratives. Considering why we write is an important first step in understanding how our practice disrupts and challenges dominant frameworks of script development.

Writing inside the academy

In an essay published in 1946, George Orwell identified four main reasons for writing: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose (1946). In Negotiating with the Dead (2002, xix–xxi), Margaret Atwood collected more than seventy motives from writers including revenge, coping with depression, the desire to amuse, to reflect society’s ills, and to act out anti-social behaviours. As she suggests, ‘any search for a clutch of common motives would prove fruitless’ (Atwood 2002, xxi). Creative writing as research within the academy, requires the writer to clearly articulate a motive in the form of a research problem. However, as Haseman and Mafe (2009) observe, researchers may not always be aware at the outset, precisely where their creative practice-led research might lead with some researchers not knowing until the end of a project.

Often the writer is embedded in the process as the subject with new knowledge and understandings found through the act and outcomes of writing creatively (Harper 2008). Screenwriting, and script development, as creative practice-led research, has ‘an equally important emphasis on the artist-practitioner, the creative product and critical process’ (Sullivan 2009, 47). Screenwriters in the academy can disrupt industrial approaches, giving them space to test ideas and experiment with practices, processes and structures that are separated from the production cycle. As Batty et al. point out, ‘script development in the academy offers a way of freeing oneself of the shackles of industry to pursue ideas and practices based on personal, philosophical and/or practical interests’ (2016, 151). In the dialogue that follows we explore what it means to write in the academy and its potential to disrupt normative or prescriptive scriptwriting and development practices.

Why we write

Sue: One of the first provocations from my doctoral supervisor when I pitched my concept for a narrative comedy television series was: ‘Why write it here?’, meaning, why write it within the context of research. I didn’t have an immediate answer and I didn’t understand what creative writing as research was. I just knew I was compelled to write. I’ve often used creative writing to express thoughts and feelings that I struggled to articulate rationally. As Nelmes (2007) and McVeigh (2014) have identified, the motivation to write a screenplay is often triggered by a conscious or subconscious desire to share a powerful emotional experience. Writing narrative comedy screenplays for a proposed television series called Fighting Fit, allowed my unconscious mind to bring unresolved experiences to the surface. The story world provided a metaphor for examining tensions between my professional teaching values and the increased manifestation of neoliberal corporate values in my workplace. Including critical reflection in my research methodology enabled me to perceive how the screenplays performed a kind of creative resistance. (For a more extensive discussion of how writing narrative comedy performed creative resistance, see Cake 2018.) Writing narrative comedy was a deliberate choice that allowed me to create a comic premise based on warped interpretations of various management theories, played out within the context of a gym struggling to maintain relevance in a new world of 24/7 access and online training. Sound familiar?

Louise: I feel like I’ve reached a point in my writing practice where I no longer know why I write. It’s such an inherent part of who I am, no matter the outcome, and I have a different rationale for writing each new script. The process excites me. I am interested in writing stories about women and I started screenwriting when I was still performing. I wanted to write roles for women, for me. As I wrote in my PhD, ‘I moved into filmmaking when I began to feel the lack. As a filmmaker, I could make up the female characters I could never be in life’ (Sawtell 2019, 15). During my practice-led PhD research project, I broke conventions to purposely disrupt through a personal, experimental and feminist script development process that will continue in future projects within the academy. I like to view my research as a creative exploration, rather than trying to solve a problem.

Sue: Creative exploration is a great way of framing it. In the later stages of writing my exegesis, the research problem finally crystallised to the point where I could articulate how I was applying humour in my screenplays to resist neoliberal corporate values. I often use humour to deal with stressful situations and research shows it can be a useful coping mechanism (Wilkins and Eisenbraun 2009). Westwood and Johnston (2012) have also identified how humour has been used to resist management practices that attempt to impose organisational values on individuals. I lampoon these practices in an episode of Fighting Fit where the characters subvert the manager’s attempt to engage the team in formulating organisational values, resulting in some fruity acronyms. (There’s only so much you can do with ‘care’, ‘understanding’, ‘nurturing’, ‘teamwork’ and ‘supportive’.)

Louise: I’m reminded of a time when I chose to use humour as a way to write through the feelings I had about sex in my early twenties, something I am needing to re-address with my current script, I feel like I’m the only one. I set myself the task of writing as much sexual innuendo into the story as possible. It resulted in a short screenplay about a superhero called Bazoomgirl, who would fight for the rights of women, often using her breasts as weapons. I found that I could take this act of creative exploration, using humour as a device, into future script development.

Sue: Theorising my creative practice involved disentangling the research outcomes woven through both the screenplays as artefacts and the process of writing them, embodied in me as the writer-researcher and documented in the exegesis. Embodiment is something I want to highlight here because it was in the process of teasing out the themes threaded through my scripts that I was able to identify a transformative learning experience Creative writing drew on affective knowledge and personal experiences viewed through a comic lens. Academic writing drew on critical reflection and rational thought. When these two forms of writing and ways of thinking and feeling collided, I experienced a fundamental shift in how I viewed my experiences of change management. This represents a kind of self-disruption made possible by engagement with writing narrative comedy as research.

Louise: Similarly, the research outcomes for my practice include the screenplay and process of writing, but, while your artefact and exegesis were separate, I discovered that scenes and critical reflections could work in parallel. Through this new methodology for script development that experiments with form, formatting and presentation, the screenplay and the author can be given agency, ‘treated in their own right’ (Baker 2013, 1) outside of an industrial context. When I privilege a personal and process-driven script development as my screenwriting research practice, the work becomes ‘more than the proposed film’ (Sawtell 2019, 18). New knowledge about the craft could be explicated through reflection and an experimentation in formatting, while the theme of the story could be explored in the scenes and parallel narratives. In my current project, I feel like I’m the only one, where I draw on personal experiences, this self-reflexive practice within and alongside the scenes has helped me to transform fact into fiction for greater dramatic effect.

Sue: Transforming fact into fiction reminds me of something Bolton proposes in relation to writing fictional accounts of problematic experiences. She suggests, ‘[I]t can offer an intelligible research summary of the huge body of data that qualitative research tends to provide’ (2018, 104). The data I collected was documented in a journal which was instrumental for theorising the iterative interactions between the creative writing and the research. Smith and Dean (2009) propose practice-led research is an ‘iterative cyclic web’ (2) where both the creative work is a form of research and the process of creating the work ‘generates insights which might then be documented, theorised and generalised’ (7). Undertaking screenwriting as research within the academy embodies ‘“artist-like processes” which occurs when a creative practitioner acts upon the requisite research material to generate new material which immediately acts back upon the practitioner who is in turn stimulated to make a subsequent response’ (Haseman and Mafe 2009, 219). Critical reflection on the iterative development of my screenplays forced a growth in reflexivity.

Louise: The reflexivity that comes through our lived experience of the research requires two types of knowing. As Gibson explains, artist-researchers ‘have the chance to entwine the insider’s embodied know-how with the outsider’s analytical precepts … these two modes of knowing must be both felt and spoken’ (2010, 11). I am continually confronted by these reflections that are felt and spoken when I write a script in the academy.

Sue: Confrontation is a strong term and appears to be a relatively common experience in the research journey. When I was coming to terms with my research methodology, a journal entry highlighted what Brookfield refers to as the ‘loss of epistemological innocence’ (1994, 210). I expected that writing within the academic context would afford me time and space to immerse myself in my creative practice. Instead:

I find myself having to know my place as a doctoral student. This means justifying every utterance with evidence, using theoretical frameworks to corral my thought processes, applying methodological approaches to conform to academic rigor. And in the process, the heart of my creative practice has stopped beating. (Unpublished Reflective Journal 2014)

This intensely unsettling experience is also documented by Haseman and Mafe and is, they suggest, ‘foundational and constituting’ and can be ‘difficult, messy and at times a very frustrating endeavour for the creative researcher’ (2009, 218). In terms of why we write within the context of the academy, it was precisely the interactions between creative writing and research that enabled an unexpected and welcome transformative shift.

Louise: There has also been a shift in my practice since entering the academy. Sullivan discusses ‘the uniquely human process of making meaning through experiences that are felt, lived, reconstructed and reinterpreted’ (2009, 50) that happens through practice-led research. I have a unique opportunity within the academy to practice new approaches to challenge current script development processes as described in this poem from my PhD:

A form that is not broken.

I look at my history of cinema,

viewing, then making.

Within a tradition first:

screenwriting and directing.

Then I push a little harder.

Boundaries are broken, blurred.

Now, an experimental filmmaker. Experimenting.

Challenging existing systems.

New ways of seeing the story.

A new form is created. (Sawtell 2019, 17)

The form developed at the time was a fictocritical screenplay (see Sawtell 2019) that merged the creative, critical and personal narratives alongside the scenes, but my new project will work with a slightly different approach that still highlights the process and fictional story.

In summary

So, being institutionalised isn’t such a bad thing. We argue that writing inside the academy affords both creative boundaries and creative freedom. Applying academic rigour to interrogate the development of our screenplays has highlighted why we write which in turn has forced us to develop a critical reflexivity that informs our approach to script development.

Using character to disrupt normative approaches to script development

So far, we’ve discussed how the self is present in the writing process when research has been integrated into our respective screenwriting practices. We have both noticed a transformation in script development from industrial to reflexive since entering the academy. If the self is ever-present in the research, how much of ourselves is embedded into the fictional characters we are creating? While there might be every intention for the characters to have their own lives within the narrative, writers bring their own experience and perspective to each aspect of the story. Jason Lee links the psychology of the screenwriter to the work created, claiming that elements of the writer will be transferred into the character through ‘a combination of their own experience and their imagination’ (2013, 13). Often the challenge for a screenwriter is to create characters with unique voices and perspectives, particularly when writing multiple protagonist narratives, ensembles or creating comic characters that hold very different views to both the writer and each other. However, as Baker observes, screenplays written within the academy often reflect the ‘distinct vision of a single writer-researcher’ (2013, 4). Sometimes this vision might be based on our experience of seeing the world, whether semi-autobiographical in I feel like I’m the only one, or through humour in the fictional world of Fighting Fit.

Sue: There are six main characters in Fighting Fit and while they are the product of my imagination and experience, they only occasionally reflect my own beliefs. One of my journal entries highlighted how I disassociated myself from my characters:

In the light of some of the feedback on episode one from the Critical Community, “ … it was surprisingly dirty. You naughty girl!” What do the words on the page say about me? I rely on the connection between myself as writer and the words on the page but then there is also a disconnect in the way the pool of personal experience, research and observation swirls around and constructs itself on the page. It is me and it is not me. It is another. (Unpublished Reflective Journal 2015)

My fictional characters represent a vehicle for ‘conveying the ambiguities, complexities and ironic relationships that inevitably exist between multiple viewpoints’ (Bolton and Delderfield 2018, 104). Bolton is referring to reflective narratives that fictionalise problematic experiences to explore different perspectives. For example, writing from different perspectives, such as that of a patient, can assist medical practitioners to develop greater empathy. In the context of writing comic characters, where each character has a strong comic perspective, the notion of writing to explore different viewpoints highlights interesting connections between reflective and creative writing scholarship.

Louise: This idea of fictionalising problematic experiences resonates in my own practice. During the early stage of script development where my work is extremely personal and driven by individual interests and concerns, I can disrupt conventional screenwriting approaches by placing myself in the picture as a reflective practitioner. At this stage of the process, a complete draft of the story has not been written and I am discovering which parts of my life reflect the feelings that the main character, Audrey, will experience as an asexual woman in I feel like I’m the only one. While I choose not to identify as asexual, ‘a person who does not experience sexual attraction’ (The Asexual Visibility & Education Network 2023), or any other sexual orientation, there have been times, particularly in my youth, when my feelings about sex remained hidden, as they do for Audrey in these uncomfortable situations. Transferring my extreme unease about the sex talk in the schoolyard required highly sexualised imagery from a teenage Audrey’s (and my) perspective, even if these exact actions did not happen to me:

A long ice block moves in and out of KELLY’s mouth. Slurping. Melting. In and out.

A pink tongue slides around the rim of an ice cream cone. One long lick. SARAH sucks the ice cream up into her mouth.

A tiny spoon dips into a shallow tub of ice cream. AUDREY AT 14 rolls the spoon around the slowly melting chunk. She can’t avoid the slurps, licks and sucks. (Unpublished script 2023)

As I searched through my past to develop Audrey at 14, I focused on this time of transition. When other teenagers were forming identities within sexual relationships, I would sit mute, listening to the confronting sex talk, never acknowledging I wasn’t ready or interested. To me, this moment represents what the character must be feeling; that she might be the only one. In a similar way, Baker explored memory and identity through creative practice research when reimagining the past in the screenplay, I’m Going to Set You to Boiling, Baby, acknowledging that ‘the way we understand our memories is fundamental to how we understand ourselves and our identities’ (2022, 340). By focusing on a personal story, I am able to represent an identity that has limited representations within mainstream culture. For me, choosing to focus on five different moments of an asexual woman’s experience can challenge traditional narratives about love and relationships before and after an identity has been discovered.

Sue: Writing the first episode of Fighting Fit was an exploratory process. I knew I wanted to create a character whose misguided and often exploitative application of managerial processes disrupted the everyday operations of a gym. Once I had the comic premise (a gym on the verge of closure populated by dysfunctional trainers), I then began to refine my characters. With regards to writing comedy, Vorhaus (1994) suggests it is each character’s comic perspective, their unassailable belief in their own abilities, skills and qualities, that drives the comedic conflict. The characters in Fighting Fit each hold distinct comic perspectives. I actively avoided ascribing redeeming qualities or vulnerabilities to my lazy, incompetent, narcissistic, main character, Tom. I wanted him to be an insufferable boss and my contextual review had identified precedents, particularly within British comedies, such as David Brent (The Office 2001–2003), Basil Fawlty (Fawlty Towers 1975–1979) and Gordon Brittas (The Brittas Empire 1991–-1997). However, when an actor performed Tom during a table reading, my perspective of the character, and the multitude of alienating experiences that informed his development, shifted. The actor’s performance reminded me that my job is to show how my characters are experiencing life, warts and all, and without judgement. I had also forgotten that narcissists could be extremely charming. This made Tom a more layered and enjoyable character to write, particularly when his charm offensive repeatedly fails to win over Carol-the-cougar. The table reading brought all the character’s comic perspectives into sharp focus. The actors’ performances made the process of writing and rewriting episodes much easier. (For a detailed discussion of the table reading see Cake 2021).

Louise: With my background in performance, I have been able to bring an actor’s perspective to the writing that, for me, comes from a personal place. Using personal experience to get to a ‘being’ (Morris 1998) state helps to feel the same emotion as a character. As I mentioned in my PhD, ‘the actress brings her memories to the moment, ensuring that she becomes a living, feeling person in the story with the ability to interact and react to the changes that happen in the scene’ (Sawtell 2019, 250). From the moment that Audrey at forty-four goes through a failed round of IVF, I place myself in the moment when I was in the recovery room. I remember how I felt, waking up to the unknown. Would there be an egg to fertilize? (Three were retrieved.) To make this fictional scene more dramatic, I decide to change the outcome for Audrey in this first draft:

Audrey’s vision is blurry. Lines of beds against the opposite wall. A rustling in the bed next to her. Audrey turns her head, still heavy on the pillow. She tries to focus. The young woman in the bed stares straight ahead. Her hand resting, palm up on her thigh. Audrey focuses on the number written on the young woman’s hand: an 8 with a circle around it. She turns her own hand over. Nothing. (Unpublished script 2023)

I write this scene to show my subjectivity through this character, which can be a strategy used to tell female stories.

As Fivush and Grysman (2019) suggest, personal narratives told by women tend to use a greater emotional range than those by men. Linda Seger (1996), who gathered perspectives from a range of female filmmakers, claims that stories about women ‘change the focus, often emphasising the character’s emotions, behaviour, and psychology above the character’s action’ (118) and when this action is not external, women need to ‘rethink conflict by looking at their own lives’ (134). French filmmaker, Chantal Akerman acknowledges women’s lived experience in her films: ‘If you choose to show a woman’s gestures so precisely, it’s because you love them. In some ways, you recognize those gestures that have always been denied or ignored’ (quoted in de Lauretis 1987, 132). By recognising the smaller moments in a woman’s life, such as Audrey in the recovery room, I create a stillness that could not be expressed through greater action or dialogue that is often seen in character, goal-driven narratives. It is through these quieter moments of discovery that I feel like I’m the only one has the potential to disrupt conventional narratives about female characters.

In summary

Academic rigour provides creative boundaries within which we can closely examine the experiences that frame and inform our character development. Reflexive screenwriting means we are also forced to examine our motivations for writing which in turn can bring greater empathy to our approach to character development.

Degrees of disruption in structuring our narratives

Our personal experiences provided rich fictional fodder and informed character development. Dorothy Smith argues for the importance of connecting our emotions to our lived experiences, ‘particularly rage, that press against human obstacles for change’ (1990, 137). Our positionality as female writers privileges personal experience and in doing so creates opportunities to challenge dominant representations and narratives. But what does it mean to disrupt traditional structures? Glenda Hambly (2020) identifies a cultural disconnect between industry discourses that claim the dominance of the classical Hollywood narrative structure that focuses on single-protagonist, goal-driven narratives and local approaches to script development by Australian screenwriters. She argues ‘it is time the “unorthodox” writer’s voice was heard’ (Hambly 2020, 58). To what extent are we able to develop our writer’s voice within the academy, to resist or subvert industrial approaches when structuring our own narratives?

Sue: The process of outlining or writing scene breakdowns is a common practice in television script development contexts. My approach was different, partly because I was writing narrative comedy where a circularity to the narrative means characters rarely experience long-lasting, transformative emotional arcs, and so there was less necessity to map character development over a season. As the sole creator of the work, I was also not required to participate in story conferences with other writers where the work of storylining or writing scene breakdowns is often shared. However, I knew where I wanted the series to start (Tom’s first day as manager) and where I wanted it to end (the closure of the gym). So, while my approach to structuring the series was broadly book-ended by key markers of narrative progression, my approach to each episode was more exploratory.

Louise: Ordinarily, I would work in an exploratory way to develop a story, but I applied for some initiatives that required I feel like I’m the only one to have an outline. While I had the basic structure for the screenplay, I was still able to explore how the character transformed from moment to moment. I decided this film would feature five moments across five decades of an asexual woman’s experience – sex talk in the schoolyard (age 14), dancing at a club (24), starting a romantic relationship (34), going through IVF (44) and caring for a foster child (54). The choice to include five stories in a feature film reflects the challenges faced before and after a woman identifies as asexual at the mid-point of the story and the complexity of this orientation. This approach to structure closely matches what Aronson (2010) calls ‘a parallel narrative’. While I feel like I’m the only one does not follow parallel events in its current structure, Aronson (2010) identifies the ‘consecutive-stories narrative’ (a category within parallel narratives) as an approach to present separate stories, one after the other, and asserts that hybrid structures are continuing to develop all the time. Recent Australian examples, Here Out West (2022) and The Turning (2013) follow a consecutive-stories structure, with a focus on different protagonists across each new story. Also known as anthology or omnibus films, these kinds of structures could be viewed as ‘episodic cinema’ (David Scott Diffrient 2014), with a range of different stories, perspectives and authors contributing to the work. The possibilities of this narrative category for my screenplay allow each episode to be developed or screened separately, while still being linked together through a character who has grown before each new story. During the later stages of the script development process I am also interested in weaving these moments together to see how they could be structured in a more complex way.

Sue: I experienced a tension between my writing process within the academic context and the expectations of my editor for progressive story documents such as scene breakdowns. He was previously an executive producer and script editor on Mother and Son (1984–1994), and his background meant he privileged the industrial perspective for developing television scripts. Initially, I sent him a full draft of episode one and incorporated his feedback in the revisions. For subsequent episodes, he asked for scene breakdowns. But once again I used the exploratory approach to draft scenes and sequences. It was more enjoyable for me to have my characters interact with each other on the page and let them drive the narrative. Narrative comedy is typically dialogue-heavy, so this was where much of the comic conflict arose. The exploratory, discovery-driven approach, possibly a luxury afforded by writing within the academy, was necessary for me to produce beat outlines and scene breakdowns. It also provided an opportunity to test and strengthen my characters’ comic perspectives.

Louise: I also follow my own path of self-discovery and creative exploration when writing a screen story. I abandon the structure of a story to write in fragments or moments to see what might happen. In relation to my PhD, each scene was presented as a separate story. For my current practice, I continue to work with what Margot Nash (2013) describes as a ‘discovery-driven script development process’ where I abandon rules and the three-act structure during the early stages of writing the screenplay. As Nash explains,

I strongly suggest that the mysterious and often messy process where ideas need time to ferment be valued, and that the formulas and rules with their neat answers, which are held up as the secret to success be questioned - particularly during the initial creative process. (2013, 150)

While I have a basic structure for each of the five stories in I feel like I’m the only one, I can still explore each moment as it happens without being influenced by conventional structures. Within the academy I have been able to develop my own methods without conforming to the technical and commercial pressures associated with the profession.

Sue: Many broadcast sitcoms follow a rigid structure of prescribed act breaks to accommodate a network’s needs for advertising revenue. Writing within the academy meant that there was less pressure to conform to a three, four or five act structure. However, feedback from my editor hinted that perhaps I was intuitively applying it: ‘I think you’re getting the hang of sitcom story construction and how simple it can be. The script is in quite good shape for an early draft’ (John O’Grady, Email correspondence to author, 13 August 2016). I did consider a five-act structure, purely because I wanted to play with the idea of a cold open or teaser. I wanted to start and end each episode with a particular image that then became a motif throughout the series, much like the sign outside Fawlty Towers hotel changes over time. At the beginning of each episode of Fighting Fit we see an overweight, middle-aged woman approach the front of the gym, before turning heel and walking away. By the final episode, she actually enters the gym, accompanied by another overweight, middle-aged woman. Just as they’re about to sign up, they look at the membership fees and decide to go and have a wine instead.

Louise: It’s fascinating how we can instinctively incorporate those conventional structures of the genre into our work. When I’m in the moment of writing a story, I like to forget about all I have learnt, to explore how characters act and react. For my current script that features five stories across five decades, I have found it necessary to start and end each stage of Audrey’s life in a similar way with the use of confronting imagery seen through her perspective. Just like the images you use as a device in Fighting Fit to show a progression of time, I will use close ups at the beginning and end of each of the five stories to reflect the character’s feelings in that moment: from the teenage girls replicating a sexual act in the first moments of the story to the smiling face of Audrey at the end. The character’s transformation will be clear within the overall structure of the film, even if conventional approaches to narrative structure have been broken.

Sue: My innovations focused more on stylistic narrative devices within the sitcom format. I wanted to write for the single-camera rather than 30-minute multi-camera format because the flexibility of the field-camera allowed me to exploit some of the more bizarre behaviours I had observed. Mirrors are ubiquitous in many gyms. I had observed bodybuilders using them to check their technique or check out other gym-goers. The mirror is both a visual motif within the narrative and symbolic of the research methodology which used reflection to critically examine sources of inspiration and the creative practice itself. In Fighting Fit, characters directly address the camera through various mirrors, providing an opportunity to exploit tensions between their public and private selves. Episode 1 of Fighting Fit opens with Tom wrestling with a back-support girdle in front of a mirror. He tries to convince himself of the success ahead, but his reflection talks back and hurls insults. The mirror creates awkward moments for my characters; it reveals their insecurities and externalises their internal critic. In this way, the screenplay articulates my own struggle to silence the internal critic that disrupts the creative process.

Louise: I found when the reflective writing is incorporated into the structure of a script’s development, the creative process, as research, can be as valued as the finished screenplay. The parallel narratives in the fictocritical screenplay I wrote for my PhD innovates on structure to incorporate the reflective voice in the creative practice.

In summary

Developing screenplays within the academy allows us to prioritise experimentation over the need to conform to prescribed narrative structures. The rigour of reflexivity embedded in the research methodology amplifies our voices as female screenwriter-researchers. They are heard through our characters, the conflicts they encounter and the structural and stylistic devices that embody our critical reflective practice.

Conclusion

We agree with Baker (2016) that, irrespective of screenplays being produced, there is scholarly value in interrogating the process of script development and the artefacts it produces. Furthermore, script development within the academy provides a creative haven for writers to discover, develop or reinvent their voice without the pressure of conforming to prescriptive industrial practices. Within this context, screenwriting can resist external pressures such as the need to observe network censorship or the demands of corporate sponsors. This freedom encourages creative risk-taking that has the potential to disrupt normative approaches to script development. While the necessity to frame and develop the creative practice within the rigour of academic research has its own requirements, screenplays developed in this environment have the potential to challenge taken-for-granted practices.

This article has shown that screenwriting within the academy creates opportunities for female screenwriters to examine their sources of inspiration and the dominant systems that press against their sense of agency. As a form of creative resistance, writing narrative comedy enabled Sue to identify and question discourses surrounding organisational management that conflicted with her own values. For Louise, an individual process of script development through subjective and reflective practices allowed an exploration of a character identity similar to her own. Through our respective creative practice-led research we have the opportunity to challenge and subvert dominant script development practices. Sue used narrative comedy to parody change management and avaricious corporate practices. The Fighting Fit screenplays also serve as a metaphor for, and provocative summary of, the qualitative research into various management practices. In I feel like I’m the only one, Louise gives voice to under-represented female characters. Using consecutive stories to explore the experience of an asexual woman, Louise provides a transgressive reinscription of the female protagonist. The academy is a space to challenge traditional forms of knowing and writing for the screen. With our differing strategies for script development, including character and structure, we have also found the potential to disrupt the self in the process. This disruption of the self represents development towards a female epistemology of practice that resists the industrial imperative to ascribe value to a screenplay solely in terms of its ability to provide a blueprint for the final screen work. We ascribe value to the process that has enabled us to explore, disrupt and give voice to our own narratives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susan Cake

Dr Susan Cake lectures in screenwriting at Queensland University of Technology. In 2018 she was awarded Outstanding Doctoral Thesis for her creative practice-led research examining how writing narrative comedy performed creative resistance in her proposed television series, Fighting Fit. She recently completed a market analysis report for Screen Queensland on the feasibility of studio expansion on the Gold Coast and her current research explores technological disruptions to script development and writing for expanded notions of ‘the screen’.

Louise Sawtell

Dr Louise Sawtell is a teacher, researcher and filmmaker. She teaches video production courses in the digital media degree at UniSA Online and completed a practice-led PhD at RMIT in 2019. As a creative practitioner and researcher, she is interested in telling female stories through a multidisciplinary practice that challenges traditional and industrial models. Current projects include an anthology feature, a coming-of-age musical and a collection of poetic documentaries. Her publications about script development and creative writing methodologies feature in The Journal of Screenwriting, New Writing and The Journal of Writing in Creative Practice.