Emotional transportation predicting creative skills in a screenwriter: - a micro-phenomenological study

There is a new appreciation for fictional narratives in enhancing our capacity for imagination and empathy. Research suggests that highly empathic individuals are associated with higher creativity. However, no study has looked at the role of emotional transportation in predicting the emphatic and creative skills in a screenwriter.

In my paper, based on micro-phenomenological interviews with Finnish screenwriters, I study the function of transportation in predicting identification and empathy in fictional characters. The ideation and the development stage of screenwriting is unstable and open to various influences. The paper explores the transportation effect in writing as a mercurial process open to spontaneous as well as controlled cognition influenced by the writer’s emotions and intrinsic social and cultural norms.

My paper proposes that stronger empathizing with the characters leads to higher creativity. It provides valuable knowledge on the screenwriter’s role in changing the prevailing values and paradigms in audiovisual storytelling, assisting processes of creating ethics-based stories for a better future.