: Re: How do screenwriters incorporate song scenes into a screenplay for a musical? If the song is already written, sure, easy question. But say you're sitting down to write The Lion King before any

@BetL639

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A musical has 3 kinds of writing in it:

the “book” (aka the “play”) written by the writer
the lyrics, written by the lyricist
the music, written by the composer

… if you don’t write all 3 yourself then you need collaborators.

Generally speaking, the lyrics are written either first or concurrently with the book because they are the most important parts of the story, and the book weaves the various lyrics into one big quilt of a musical. The music can be written at various times.

Of course, you can do it any way that you want. But to me, writing the book first sounds like the hard way. You risk a lot of wasted effort because you may put the lyrics in and notice that the book has to change a lot. A lyric might obsolete whole sections of the book, or require whole new sections to be written.

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