The Role of the Writer: (LOTR)

The Lord of the Rings had a lot of work done with the screenplay during production. Here is what the the writers primary added/changed during creation of the screenplay.

The original books had very few  female characters, and  any that showed up had small roles in the overall story. In order to create more audience for the films they added essential female roles to the story. They where Arwen, (her role was created with only a poem from the original book) Elanor Gamgee and Galadriel.


Tom Bombadil was a character that was unfortunately removed from the film. This was to move the story along as he slowed it down and was not part of the ring's journey. Screen-writers often make sacrifices like this and the most common reason for it is to move the story along. Most film's are only a couple of  hours long so a  lot of good storytelling has to be removed from great story's to have enough time to tell it.  This unfortunately  was one of them. Glorfindel was another character who instead had his role  shortened in order to allow Arwin a bit  more screen time.


Exposition is one of the screen writers best friends. A big part of history and story telling shortened to a few lines of dialogue is a great tool when working with large story's. Lots of writers know this and it was used in The Lord of the Rings. A more  common method of exposition often shown  in fantasy and sci-fi films are told though a single character. Gandalf was this character.


Not all dialogue is  relied on the writer to create. Some writers have the actors help them out. Since the actors have to do some research in the first place, anything they find out about how a particular character speaks/ acts could help out the writers create some better dialogue. This was used to help the dwarf and elf roles of the trilogy.

Deconstructing a Script

For our first task we looked at a script and deconstructed it on a basic level.

Here is what I produced:

Script from Avatar (2009)