Screenwriter

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who creates scripts for films or television shows that include dialogue, character development, and plot structure
2. An individual responsible for writing the text for movies or TV, crafting narratives, characters, and dialogues
3. Someone who composes the screenplay for visual media productions, encompassing story arcs, character lines, and thematic elements

Etymology: "Screenwriter" is a plain compound: "screen" joined to "writer," with the sense being the person who writes for the screen. The "screen" here is the movie screen, the surface onto which films are projected, so the word names someone who writes for moving pictures rather than for the printed page. Because the word is built from two ordinary English parts, its meaning is transparent: the older "writer" sense of someone who composes text has been narrowed by the added "screen" to the specific craft of writing scripts for film and, later, television. The compound shows how English often forms new job titles by attaching a medium or setting to an established noun.

Synonyms: scriptwriter, playwright, author