Head writer

The head writer conceives and outlines the long-term story of a scripted television or radio series.

In daytime television, the over-arcing storylines are broken out into daily episodes, which are individually outlined by particular writers, and fleshed out with dialogue by others.

In prime-time series, individual staff or freelance writers briefed with any long-term storylines generally pitch their episode ideas to the head writer/executive producer.

The writer develops their ideas into an outline and a script, which is subsequently edited and revised by the series' entire writing team during the production process.

In Japanese animation, the role that is given to a writer who leads a team of individual episode scriptwriters (脚本, kyakuhon) is credited as series composition (シリーズ構成, shirīzu kōsei).