This chapter discusses teaching screenwriting in terms of translation and adaptation. Realigning terminology with everyday language, translation is redefined as an invariance-based phenomenon while adaptation is reconceived as a variance-based phenomenon, which entails better fit. More specific working definitions follow specifying what one could be teaching or learning in more precise terms. The acceptance of these proposals remains a matter of contention. One major obstacle involves the current Western Romantic view on art and culture. Having driven a rift between art and craft, Romanticism 2.0 opposes the aforesaid working definitions, and disparages screenwriting, translation, and adaptation, lest they comply with the Romantic rule. Suggestions follow to re-open the Romantic view to its pre-Romantic stance, and to revalue both art and craft values in screenwriting, translation and adaptation. Finally, conclusions highlight some caveats foreshadowing resistance also against nudging back Romanticism 2.0 to its pre-Romantic views.

This paper argues that to adopt a “naturalized morals” perspective, and to match it with narrative studies, may help advance the study of empathy and its relation to multi-cultural ethics within the larger study of audience involvement. Firstly, different texts may convey different morals, and therefore require different audiences adhering to different morals in order to obtain a preferred or negotiated reading. This invites us to reconsider some old concepts (e.g. anti-hero) as well as some newer ones (e.g. the “bad fan”). Secondly, if studies of empathy tend to focus on character (dis)liking, narratologists generally adopt a wider view, involving multiple narrative agents including real makers, implied makers, narrator(s), narratee(s), implied audience(s) and real audience(s). Adopting this wider view allows for a more refined study of empathy that may play (or not) as a more diversified phenomenon at multiple levels. Thirdly, empathy is not the only player in this game. A brief introduction to phenomena such as prank culture and hate reading/watching suggests that a study of empathy needs to look also at some competitors in the field of audience involvement.