Thinking on Paper: Exploring the Role of Journaling in the Creative Process of Screenwriting

Abstract

Journaling is widely used in therapy and education to structure thought, deepen reflection, and document process, but its role in screenwriting, particularly within pedagogy sequenced to Wallas's stages, is under-examined. We studied stream-of-consciousness journaling in a 4-week, stage-aligned screenwriting elective. Thirty second-year students (three 3-h sessions/week × 4 weeks) completed weekly 20-min digital journals guided by four prompts; uploads to the course platform earned completion credit, preserving candor. The corpus comprised 109 entries. Using reflexive thematic analysis with the sentence as the unit, we interpreted journals by week aligned to stages: Week 1 Inspiration & Envisioning; Week 2 Research & Insight; Week 3 Writing & Flow; Week 4 Shaping & Sharing. We identified nine roles: reflective practice; perspectives on journaling; challenges to creativity/journaling; relation to self; emotions/feelings; cognitive scaffolding/organization; perspectives on creativity; scriptwriting-specific processes; and week-level shifts. Weeks 1–2 highlighted reflective support and process orientation; Week 3 foregrounded difficulty and negative affect during drafting; Week 4 emphasized sustaining the practice and growing confidence, with peer feedback. Students' entries support the idea of journaling as a form of “thinking on paper,” through which they described metacognitive monitoring, affect regulation, and idea organization, consistent with nonlinear accounts of Wallas and incubation. Implications span stage-aligned pedagogy, creative identity, and reflective practice design.