Screenwriting Research Network Conference & Sightlines: Filmmaking in the Academy

Session: Between Now and Us: Story design for Narrative Change in Screenwriting
Christy Dena

What’s your relationship with change? What’s your characters’ relationship with change? And your audiences? You likely haven’t been asked these questions before. There is a reason for that. Those loud ones who believe there is one way to write a story also, coincidentally, believe there is one way to change…in stories and in life. Whether they refer to it as a transformational arc, dramatic arc, character or story arc, it’s usually pointing the same design elements. An inciting incident, for instance, involves you forcing a character to change, like in life. Indeed, there are loud ones in life who are invested in forcing people, communities, and countries to change. Ongoing colonialism (Wolfe, 2006) and genocide (Lemkin, 1944) live comfortably in this paradigm of change. Screenwriter and consultant Dara Marks (2007) explains in her manual on the transformational arc that a ‘natural story structure is one that reflects the true nature of the human experience’ (p.6). I’m here to say I agree! Somewhat! We haven’t depicted (or lived) the full range of human experiences of change. This talk is about opening up these craft and life possibilities. 

Why do this? There are at least two critical contexts to this call. One is the need to emancipate ourselves from the great creative dampening brought about by those who insist on peddling screenwriting orthodoxy (Alessandra, 2018; Connor, 2014; Hambly, 2021; Macdonald, 2013; Mullins, 2021; Neilan, 2025; Twarog, 2023). Another is the deep, radical, systemic, social and ecological transformations needed in the world right now (Ghosh, 2016; Klein, 2014; Meadows, 2008; Yunkaporta, 2023). We can address these by unlearning and immunising ourselves against doxa (Amossy, 2002), and we can engage in everyday activist actions. We can also use our stories to help inspire our audiences at scale and help them imagine and learn new ways of being (Vervoort et al., 2024).

Our stories can and do depict ways of changing to bridge not just the one-now with the many-nows but also bridge these with the many-possible. We do this not just in fiction and non-fiction (film, TV, games) but also with story design applied in activism (Reinsborough & Doyle, 2017), alongside uses in government (Alford, 2010) and business (Pine, 2025). If we take producer and script editor John Yorke (2020 [2013]) at his word, then ‘[c]hange is the bedrock of life and consequently the bedrock of narrative’ (p.46). We just need to remember that rocks — and the entire planet — change, too. We can have many relationships with change. How’s yours going?

BIO

Christy Dena (pronounced Dee-na, she/they) is no stranger to artistic turning points. She loved writing and performing feminist comedy theatre and touring the Melbourne Comedy Festival in ensembles. Keen on directing, she took on a Director’s Secondment at the Malthouse and produced the first multimedia theatre production at Monash, challenging gender norms in casting and characterisation with HeSheIt. However, this was all too personally rewarding, and that isn’t viable. So, she turned to advertising and entertainment. Following her passion for animation, she produced digital fx for TVCs, TV series, and feature films. She helped bring digital water to life for Omo laundry powder, got golden coins tinkling for Lotto, and computer screens dinging for Ocean Girl. Christy was too restless for regular wages, though, so she tried acting again. She dyed her hair blonde, got thin, fit, and tanned. She pretended to eat candy bars in TVCs, played a call girl on Good Guys, Bad Guys, and hosted Christy’s Happening Places on Optus TV. Christy grew frustrated at pretending the fake dialogue felt real. So, she wrote a very bad screenplay that was very good therapy. At the same time as iterating and learning on the job, she earned a Postgrad Dip in Creative Writing at Melbourne University and a PhD in transmedia practice at Sydney University. During that time and since, her original interactive stories have been AWGIE and WA Premier’s Prize winners. She’s consulted on interactive works such as Tim Kring & The company P’s Emmy-nominated Conspiracy for Good and ABC’s geoengineering ARG Bluebird AR. She’s been Professor II of Cross-Media and Interactive Narratives at the Norwegian Film School; Professor Adjunct at QUT’s Creative Industries; National Games & Masters Coordinator at (now called) SAE University College; and Lecturer at Griffith Film School. She’s presented at the Slamdance Filmmaker Summit; Whistler Film Festival Summit; The Documentary Organisation of Canada Conference; Cinekid Professional Conference, National Screenwriters Conference, and more. Her latest artistic turning point is getting joy from being her authentic self in her practice.