'To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script.' Said Alfred Hitchcock.
If I've written below about the demise of the written word, then I take it back.
OK, love letters have had their day. I don't even suppose that boarding Prep School Boys are writing home religiously every Sunday either; though we did.
My mother's collection of letters written by my brother and I from aqe eight years make quixotic reading.
Avatar started with a script.
The three CD edition is worth it for the documentary on the creation of the film. It started with an idea expressed as a 'scriptment' (sic) i.e. not even a script, but words on sheets of paper nonetheless.
A Learning Designer starts with a script, as does an Account Manager.
A client wants to see it in writing. You can edit words. You can share words. You can hold, copy and digest them in written form.
An idea (or problem), a brief, a synopsis and treatment ... that leads to a script. And once this is nailed down the costly business of production begins. Why should e-learning be any different to the production of a mega million Hollywood movie, or the Christmas Pantomime in Ambridge Village Hall.
I get paid to write because I'm able to fill a blank space with bright ideas in a sequence that makes sense (linear) or does not (non-linear).
But ultimately says something.