Analyzing Contents of Screenwriting Manual Books with Topic Modeling

Screenwriting manuals are comprehensive guides designed to instruct and aid individuals in the art of screenwriting. A total of 60 screenwriting manual books were systematically analyzed with topic modeling methods to identify a topographical overview of the field along with similarity analysis using Word2Vec. The analysis employed TF-IDF, LDA, and Word2Vec techniques to identify key themes and semantic structures. All 60 screenwriting manual books contained similar contents focusing on four categories - story, film, audience, and industry. The core theme running through these categories was identified as 'character-centered story'. Clustering analysis revealed limited differentiation in content among manuals despite their proliferation in the market. Dual characteristics of screenwriting, such as in-between art and craft, writing and filmmaking, and autonomous and disciplinary, were detected through semantic analysis. This study makes methodological contributions to screenwriting research by demonstrating how computational text analysis could complement traditional qualitative approaches. Findings of this study can inform the development of new screenwriting manuals that address gaps in current offerings and serve as a framework for evaluating screenwriting pedagogy. This paper can help us design a new screenwriting manual with a difference and make a methodological contribution to the field of screenwriting research.