screenwriter
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of screenwriter
Explanation
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."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Winslet read Eryn's story and shared it with the film's producer Dame Pippa Harris and screenwriter Simon Farnaby.
From BBC • Jun. 5, 2026
Her husband, a Swedish producer, actor and screenwriter, had been a long-time collaborator.
From Barron's • Jun. 4, 2026
Working with screenwriter Will Soodik, Parsons has gone back into that banal maze to find an uncannily mature story about loss and stagnation, about how our self-serving narratives barricade us from emotional growth.
From Los Angeles Times • May 28, 2026
Michael Esser, a Los Angeles screenwriter, wrote in with a parallel story from before the AI era—one illustrating the historical asymmetries that AI is now scaling up.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 26, 2026
In the late 1960s, the screenwriter Norman Lear produced a television sitcom pilot for a show called All in the Family.
From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
