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screenwriter

/ˌskrinˈraɪdər/
/ˈskrinraɪtə/
IPA guide

Other forms: screenwriters

Someone who writes movie scripts or screenplays is called a screenwriter. A novelist whose book is being made into a film might be hired to be the screenwriter.

Every movie has a script, with lines for the actors to speak and directions for certain camera shots and scene changes. The person who writes the screenplay is the screenwriter. Some big-budget Hollywood films might have several screenwriters who collaborate. The word's been used since the 1920s, from the sense of screen that means "cinema world," or "surface on which a movie is projected."

Definitions of screenwriter
  1. noun
    someone who writes screenplays
    synonyms: film writer
    see moresee less
    examples:
    George Lucas
    United States screenwriter and filmmaker (born in 1944)
    Dalton Trumbo
    United States screenwriter who was blacklisted and imprisoned for refusing to cooperate with congressional investigations of communism in America (1905-1976)
    type of:
    scriptwriter
    someone who writes scripts for plays or movies or broadcast dramas
Pronunciation
US
/ˌskrinˈraɪdər/
UK
/ˈskrinraɪtə/
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