The Screenwriter's Roadmap: 21 Questions to Building a Successful Screenplay
Neil Landau
ISBN: 978-0-240-82060-6
Finally, a GPS system for screenwriters!
The potentially long and arduous journey of writing a screenplay was just made easier to navigate with The Screenwriter's Roadmap: 21 Questions to Building a Successful Screenplay. Avoid the wrong turns, dead ends, gaping p(l)otholes, and other obstacles that result in frustration, wasted time, and wasted energy. The Screenwriter's Roadmap: 21 Questions to Building a Successful Screenplay keeps you on track and helps you reach your destination- a finished, professional quality screenplay.
Neil Landau, a successful Hollywood screenwriter and script doctor with over 2 decades of experience, provides you with 21 Guideposts, that if implemented, will help you nail down your screenplay's story structure, deepen its character arcs, bolster stakes, heighten suspense, and diagnose and repair its potential weaknesses. These Guideposts are based on field-tested, in-the-trenches experiences that have been proven to work. ... [more]
Screenwriter's Compass: Character As True North
Guy Gallo
ISBN: 978-0-240-81664-7
What makes a bad movie? We've all experienced it. Fine production values, fantastic action sequences, stellar cast—and still it sucked. Not worth the popcorn. You come out saying, ";I didn't buy it."; What's that mean? And how can it apply to such wildly different failures? Because ";buying it,"; being compelled by the characters, lies at the heart of our experience of film, indeed of all storytelling. If we don't believe the choices the characters make are important and meaningful, we will not be compelled, we will not care.
Most screenwriting books analyze examples of what has worked in the past, extracting formulas and templates, pointing to great movies and saying, in effect, ";See? That's how you do that."; But these examples don't help fill the blank page. It's as if such books think past success can stand as a guiding map toward future creativity.
Screenwriter's Compass: Character As True North will not give you a map. Rather it will give you a compass. It will lay out a set of tools, ways of thinking, practical ideas and applicable concepts to help you discover the particular geography of your imagination, help you navigate the unique problems posed by the struggle to articulate vision, agenda, and story. This book will help you build your own compass to orient yourself in your unique fictional landscape... [more]
Screenwriting Tips, You Hack: 150 Practical Pointers for Becoming a Better Screenwriter
Xander Bennett
ISBN: 978-0-240-81824-5
Confused at the outline stage? Stuck in the swamp of Act Two? Don't know who your protagonist is or where she's going?
You might feel like a hack. But don't worry-you're not alone. Even the most experienced writers feel like this at times. Sometimes we just need a few short pointers and reminders to set us on the path again.
Xander Bennett worked as a script reader in the trenches of Hollywood, reading and covering hundreds of mediocre screenplays. After months of reading about heroic Sea World trainers, transgendered circus detectives and crime-fighting chupacabras, he couldn't take it any more. Xander started a blog called 'Screenwriting Tips, You Hack', a place designed to provide short, witty tips on screenwriting for amateur writers all the way up to journeymen scribes.
This book is the evolution of that blog. Dozens of the best scripts (along with many brand-new ones) have been expanded into bite-sized chapters full of funny, insightful, highly usable advice. Let Xander's pain be your gain as you learn about the differences between film and television structure, how to force yourself to write when you really don't want to, and why you probably shouldn't base your first spec script around an alien invasion... [more]
Writing for Visual Media, 3rd Edition
Anthony Friedmann
ISBN: 978-0-240-81235-9
This book looks at the fundamental problems a writer faces as a beginner learning to create content for media that is to be seen rather than read. It takes students from basic concepts to a first level of practice through explicit methods that train students to consistently identify a communications problem, think it through, and find a resolution before beginning to write.
Through successive exercises, Writing for Visual Media helps students acquire the basic skills and confidence they need to write effective films, corporate and training videos, documentaries, ads, PSAs, TV series, and other types of visual narrative. A new chapter looks at adaptation as a specific script writing problem. Writing for Visual Media also lays a foundation for understanding interactive media and writing for non-linear content with new chapters that cover writing for the web, interactive corporate communication, instructional media, and video games...[more]
Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect, 3rd Edition
Claudia Hunter Johnson
ISBN: 978-0-240-81214-4
Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect introduces the essential element of human connection – the ability to touch the reader or observer - to the screenwriting and story creation process for short films. Claudia Hunter Johnson teaches the craft of short screenplay writing by guiding students through carefully focused writing exercises of increasing length and complexity. Your students will learn how to think more deeply about the screenwriter's purposes, craft an effective pattern of human change, and hone their vision and process for their short screenplays... [more]
An Introduction to Writing for Electronic Media: Scriptwriting Essentials Across the Genres
Robert B. Musburger
ISBN: 978-0-240-80852-9
The call for quality and knowledgeable multi-platform writing is always
in high demand. Author Robert Musburger’s An Introduction to Writing for Electronic Media presents students with a survey of the many types of electronic media writing and explains how to do it.
Musburger focuses on the qualifications needed to write for animation versus radio or television, and news versus corporate training. Sample scripts help the student learn by example while modeling their own scripts. Production files illustrate the integral role writers play in the production process. Individual movie frames allow instructors and
students to compare these to the real scripts... [more]
Writing the Short Film, 3rd Edition
Pat Cooper
Ken Dancyger
ISBN: 978-0-240-80588-7
The short film is a unique
narrative art form that, while lending itself to experimentation,
requires tremendous discipline in following traditional filmic
considerations. This book takes the student and novice screenwriter
through the storytelling process- from conception, to visualization,
to dramatization, to characterization and dialogue- and teaches
them how to create a dramatic narrative that is at once short (approximately
half an hour in length) and complete. Exercises, new examples of
short screenplays, and an examination of various genres round out
the discussion... [more]
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