Bergman's writing encompasses his entire creative life. His earliest pieces were jotted down in notebooks, some of them to be developed later into plays, film scripts, and short pieces of fiction. The original drafts are deposited in a special Bergman archive at the Swedish Film Institute, where the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, constituted in 2002, will administer, preserve and convey knowledge about Bergman's collected artistic work. A special database is being developed. Maaret Koskinen has recorded and discussed some of this material in her book I begynnelsen var ordet. Ingmar Bergman och hans tidiga författarskap (2002).

Some early stage plays by Bergman were published, and a few pieces of short fiction appeared in literary journals – all of it in the 1940s and early 1950s. But the main part of his writing consists of published and unpublished screenplays. Copies of scripts (not to be confused with the deposited Fårö material) are kept in SFI's library (see introduction to Filmography). Some scripts may require Bergman's permission to use.

Chapter II lists not only Bergman's fiction but also his program notes, prefaces, essays, radio talks, and open letters. Bergman's own plays are registered here, while specific stage productions of these plays are recorded in the Theatre chapter (VI).

Ingmar Bergman: Cinéma d’auteur

During Ingmar Bergman's lifetime, the concept of authorship has become more tenuous. Traditionally, it signified a writer whose texts were autonomous enough to be read and experienced as such, without requiring any other art form in order to appear complete. But Ingmar Bergman's authorship is usually not of this kind, for most of his writing falls within the categories of stage plays and film scripts; i.e., written works that presuppose a theatrical or cinematic medium to become fully realized. Bergman himself has suggested as much, referring to a dramatic or filmic text as a musical score, as notes to be played on by a director and by an ‘orchestrated’ ensemble. For that reason, says one of his commentators, ‘Bergman's scripts should not be judged by criteria appropriate to more explicitly literary works. A Bergman text is only a sketch for another and quite different creation…’ (Mosley, The Cinema as Mistress 1981, p. 19).