Fade In...

There is some serious skill that goes into writing a screenplay. I could barely manage writing a dialogue script for a class I was taking and that was only a few pages long. In this sense, voice actors and actresses are practically skipping through a field of meadows compared to the people who write scripts for a TV show or a film. They actually have to provide the story. Scripts aren't something that takes a second to write. No, no. Years are put into this. And, of course, stories are constantly being revised or rewritten to their taste. I can't think of any movie where there weren't multiple screenwriters collaborating and helping one another out.  There may be some out there, but in animation I can't recall anyone working solo on the script.
Animated movies are always working on the premise of their next movie during the production of another. It's a cycle where the writers will come up with more movie ideas to work on in the future as one of their movies is being made. I would have never thought of it like this, but there's no way they would just work on a movie for a few years without writing new ideas for another. As far as the scriptwriters are concerned, they simply take that premise and write out a hundred page script with the help of each other. Movies that are based off of novels are probably easier to write considering it's based off of a script that has already been written and elongated into three books. Still, there's the matter of what parts to put in, what to take out, and which to rewrite.
TV shows are constantly writing scripts. General ideas for the next episode are placed and then are written up. Depending on how long each episode is (11 minute or 22 minute), there can be a lot of script taken out and revised if it turns out to be too long. A challenge for screenwriters is that they must figure out a way to scrunch down the entire script into something that is more time manageable. With TV, not every cartoon show is script driven (but that's another story to tell for later), but I've seen interviews where they have complained from taking a thirty page script and shrinking it down half that size. I mean, wow! Can you imagine how many scenes were cut out from those episodes? At least we're able to know about deleted scenes.
Writing a screenplay is really only the beginning phase to a lot of hard work that follows. Visual storyboards can be just as challenging as writing a script. Next up: Life Drawing in Animation!