Idea to Script: Storytelling for the Electronic Media teaches students how to conceive and write compelling stories for the electronic media.

Idea to Script has a unique two-part structure: Part One lays the foundation for conceptualizing and writing effective scripts and Part Two focuses on the development of scripts from conception to execution. This text introduces students to many facets of storytelling not covered in other scriptwriting texts. It examines the nature of comedy, melodrama and tragedy; it presents ways of structuring the incidents within stories to achieve maximum effectiveness; it introduces and illustrates the nature and importance of catharsis in the storytelling arts; it presents a vast number of universal themes that have marked the most successful stories of all time; and it asks students to direct their stories to the needs, desires, fears and hopes of their audiences. The text features many examples of scripts written by award-winning writers as well as by students taking their first media writing course.