‘Just ask “what if?” and go from there’: the role of mainstream story structures in women’s web series script development

ABSTRACT

This article investigates, through interviews, the script development processes of four female-identifying web series creators, contributing to scholarship around web series’ ability to serve diverse communities [Christian 2020. “Beyond Branding: The Value of Intersectionality on Streaming TV Channels.” Television & New Media 21 (5): 457–474; 2011. “Fandom as Industrial Response: Producing Identity in an Independent Web Series.” TWC – Transformative Works and Cultures, 8, ‘Race and Ethnicity in Fandom’ special issue; Monaghan 2017. “Starting From … Now and the Web Series to Television Crossover: An Online Revolution?” Media International Australia 164 (1): 82–91; Williams 2012. Web TV Series: How to Make and Market Them. Harpenden: Kamera Books], but from the perspective of the writing process. The three web series making up this small sample – Last Breath (2018), Love Songs (2019) and Phi and Me (2019-) – have all experienced notable levels of ‘success’ (defined here variously in terms of views, festival selections, and awards). This article offers a preliminary investigation into how women’s web series writing practices may – or may not – depart from conventions that are practiced in mainstream settings of episodic script development, and/or are circulated by the screenwriting ‘how-to’ market. Using the insights into these writing processes, this article builds upon web series scholarship (where, it has been argued, innovations around diversity are leading the way in terms of screen content and distribution) by exploring the extent to which gender and cultural diversity, platform and standardised story structures inform the script development processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Web series
• script development
• screenwriting
• screen representations
• women writers
• how-to screenwriting guides

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the generous participation of her four interviewees, Alyce Adams, Michelle Melky, Jennifer Monk and Diana Nguyen.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 By consultants, I refer broadly to those in such roles as script editors/doctors and development executives. For a detailed outline of script development roles and responsibilities, see Batty and Taylor (2019, 461–462).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stayci Taylor

Stayci Taylor is a lecturer and programme manager with the School of Media and Communication at RMIT. She is widely published on the topics of screenwriting and creative writing – often through the lenses of gender, comedy and web series – in journals such as TEXT, New Writing, Senses of Cinema and the Journal of Screenwriting. She is co-editor of two books and a journal special issue on the topic of script development. She continues a professional practice as a screenwriter, script editor and story consultant, and her writing for television has earned her wins and nominations in the prestigious Qantas Television Awards and Screen Writing Awards of NZ (SWANZ).