Call for Articles
Journal of Screenwriting Special Issue

Screenwriting and AI: Emerging Theories, Modes, and Practices
Romana Turina & Maxine Gee (Eds)

The Journal of Screenwriting is calling for articles for a special issue on screenwriting and artificial intelligence (AI), theories, modes, and practices to be published in late 2025.
Abstract Deadline: September 1st, 2024

In recent years, screenwriting has witnessed various developments in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), specifically generative AI (GAI). These emerging AI technologies offer novel ways to reconceptualise and problematise creativity and collaboration between humans and machines within the field of writing for the screen. As writers mediate between AI code and human narrative comprehension for developing effective storytelling, important ethical questions have become apparent around the creative process, bias, labour and copyright. Skilful as we are as a species in understanding the act of storytelling and detecting the limitations of AI systems, there are many questions that scholars and screenwriting professionals are looking to answer when approaching the boundaries of AI and GAI.

This issue of the Journal of Screenwriting focuses on emerging theories, modes, and practices regarding the collaboration between humans and machines, across screen media and in international contexts. It does not wish to question whether AI is orthodox when applied to screenwriting – rather, it analyses the stakes raised by the partnership of human creativity and AI.

We seek theoretical reflections on different approaches, analysis of storytelling and screenwriting strategies, responses to individual practices or project case studies, and studies of the development of the human and AI's paths of discovery. Articles may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

- Thematic and critical screenplay analysis focusing on human-AI interaction.
- Intermedial perspectives on human-AI collaboration.
- Limitations of textual artefact and screen ideas produced by forms of AI.
- AI and its impact on screenplay styles, modes, and languages.
- Human-AI collaboration in the context of script development
- AI-produced screenplay textuality and experimental practices.
- National and global tendencies concerning Human-AI collaborations in screenwriting.
- Challenging the doxa: marginalised voices and representation of social diversity
through emerging human-AI collaboration.
- Institutional, industry, and/or personal resistance to emerging human-AI collaboration in screenwriting.
- Responsible and/or ethical use of AI in Screenwriting.
- Changes to labour practices, production processes and screenwriter’s rights.
- New/fringe human-AI collaboration practices in screenwriting.
- New configurations of humans and algorithms in screenwriting software.
- New mapping of the terrain of inter-agencies between people and machines.

In the first instance, please email abstracts of up to 400 words and a short biography of up to 100 words no later than September 1st, 2024, to both of the editors of this special issue: Dr Romana Turina (rturina@aub.ac.uk) and Dr Maxine Gee (mgee@bournemouth.ac.uk ).

Final articles of between 5000 and 8000 words (in accordance with the Journal of Screenwriting house style: https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-screenwriting should be sent by July 1st, 2025.

Key dates recap:
- Abstracts and short bio to be submitted by September 1st, 2024.
- Acceptance/rejection of abstracts will be completed by October 2024.
- The First drafts of articles for peer review are due on March 1st, 2025.
- The Final rewrites will be due July 1st, 2025, to ensure publication in November
2025.

The Journal of Screenwriting is an international peer-reviewed journal published three times annually by Intellect and is abstracted and indexed by Thomson Reuters: ISI Web of Knowledge, MLA and FIAF. It explores the nature of writing for the screen image; this includes not only writing for film and television but also computer games and animation. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate, and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging ground-breaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.

Biographies of the editors:
Dr Romana Turina is an Associate Professor of Screenwriting at Arts University Bournemouth. She holds a PhD by Creative Practice in Theatre, Film, and Television, from the University of York, UK. Her award-winning short films Lunch with Family (2016) and San Sabba (2016) have been screened at various international film festivals; the film Three Sisters in a Sketchbook (2024), an Italian state-founded project, has been chosen for International Childhood Day screenings as an example of archival research of civic impact in Europe. She leads the International Seminar in Comparative Screenwriting for the Screenwriting Research Network (SRN); and she is the lead convenor of the SIG Essay Film for the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS). Romana has published on screenwriting and ethnographic research in postmemory, space/page as an archive in international landscape research, history as a complex narrative system, and the essay film form. She has co-edited for the Journal of Screenwriting, special issues on screenwriting and textuality (13:3), and screenwriting and virtual reality (14:3).

Dr Maxine Gee is a Principal Academic in Screenwriting at Bournemouth University. She holds a PhD by Creative Practice in Screenwriting from the University of York. She is currently Co-Investigator on the AHRC and BRAID funded research project, Shared Post-Human Imagination: Human-AI Collaboration in Media Creation. Her award-winning short films Terminal (2018) and Standing Woman (2020) have screened at a range of international film festivals. Maxine has published on posthuman noir in Cinema: Journal of Film and Philosophy; web series in the Palgrave Handbook of Script Development; Folk Horror, gender and Japanese survival horror for The Journal for Cultural Research, and on her practice research screenplay Golems Inc. in Sightlines: Filmmaking in the Academy. In 2022 she received funding from the ESRC Festival of Social Science for an interactive theatre event exploring neurodivergence and how future humans are portrayed in science fiction film and television.