SCRIPTWRITING is facing new challenges and opportunities in the Internet era, TV professionals said yesterday at the 23rd Shanghai TV Festival.

They were speaking at a forum titled the “innovation and quality of screenwriting.”

Many TV and online series are now adapted from popular online novels that have already developed a large fan base — and increasingly demands of fans are taken into consideration during the adaptation process, the forum heard.

Zhang Yongchen, both a scriptwriter and chairman of Pilot Media, said the most important aspect of a script is the value it conveys. Audiences and scriptwriters should learn to respect each other, he said.

“These days enthusiastic fans of original online novels are very likely to object to any big changes” to scripts, he said. “A good scriptwriter is a good listener but he shall never simply yield to the appeals of fans. He needs to be good at giving audiences surprises.”

Weekly broadcasting of TV series, common in Western countries, is still a relatively new concept for Chinese audiences. Industry insiders believe that methods of casting, scriptwriting and marketing are all due for radical change.

Wu Bai, director of the suspense online series “Evil Minds,” said fast-paced series with original stories and new styles of cinematography are what online viewers want.