The basics, the answers, the definitions, the reference, the examples, the inside jokes and the snide comments for you all, who decided despite all warnings to write a screenplay
Hundreds of books claim they can teach you how to write the perfect script. Listen up: your script doesnt need to be perfect to sell! It does need to include nine standard story elements. Producer, writer and story analyst Donna Michelle Anderson, best known in the industry as DMA, has been hammering this point home for more than a decade at UCLA Extension Writers Program, film fests, production companies and more, and as the founder and screenwriting instructor of the Movie in a Box one-day filmmaking seminars.With this concise guide, DMA brings you the simplest steps to unifying a theme, character arc and spine, then streamlining those elements into a sellable script. She calls it The 1-3-5 System. Youre going to call it a miracle.
Based on actual class lectures and assignments, Finish the Script! offers an inside look into the screenwriting process as it's author writes a screenplay from scratch along with the reader. By taking a step-by-step approach to writing, Finish the Script!, ditches theory and focuses on the actual process. It's a full college course squeezed into a book, complete with exercises and sample assignments. It shows how messy first drafts can be and how to fix problems and mistakes when doing a rewrite. Stop worrying about getting the perfect treatment, exact structure, or fitting your story into a generic mold and start writing because it's the only way you'll finish your script.
Writing in Pictures is a refreshingly practical and entertaining guide to screenwriting that provides what is lacking in most such books: a clear, step-by-step demonstration of how to write a screenplay. Seasoned screenwriter and writing teacher Joseph McBride breaks down the process into a series of easy, approachable tasks, focusing on literary adaptation as the best way to learn the basics and avoiding the usual formulaic approach. With its wealth of useful tips, along with colorful insights from master screenwriters past and present, this book is invaluable for anyone who wants to learn the craft of screen storytelling. CONTENTS Introduction: Who Needs Another Book on Screenwriting? Part I: Storytelling 1: So Why Write Screenplays? 2: What Is Screenwriting? 3: Stories: What They Are and How to Find Them 4: Ten Tips for the Road Ahead Part II: Adaptation 5: Breaking the Back of the Book: or, The Art of Adaptation STEP 1: THE STORY OUTLINE 6: Research and Development STEP 2: THE ADAPTATION OUTLINE 7: The Elements of Screenwriting STEP 3: THE CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY 8: Exploring Your Story and How to Tell It STEP 4: THE TREATMENT Part III: Production 9: Who Needs Formatting? 10: Actors Are Your Medium 11: Dialogue as Action STEP 5: THE STEP OUTLINE 12: The Final Script 13: Epilogue: Breaking into Professional Filmmaking Appendix A: The Basic Steps in the Screenwriting Process Appendix B: “To Build A Fire” by Jack London Selected Bibliography Acknowledgments Index
Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling is the Second Place Winner in the 2019 International Writers Awards! A vast majority of Academy Award-winning Best Pictures, television movies of the week, and mini-series are adaptations, watched by millions of people globally. Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling examines the technical methods of adapting novels, short stories, plays, life stories, magazine articles, blogs, comic books, graphic novels and videogames from one medium to another, focusing on the screenplay. Written in a clear and succinct style, perfect for intermediate and advanced screenwriting students, Great Adaptations explores topics essential to fully appreciating the creative, historical and sociological aspects of the adaptation process. It also provides up-to-date, practical advice on the legalities of acquiring rights and optioning and selling adaptations, and is inclusive of a diverse variety of perspectives that will inspire and challenge students and screenwriters alike. Please follow the link below to a short excerpt from an interview with Carole Dean about Great Adaptations: https://fromtheheartproductions.com/getting-creative-when-creating-great-adaptations/
A new, original investigation into how screenwriting works; the practices, creative 'poetics' and texts that serve the screen idea. Using a range of film, media and creative theories, it includes new case studies on the successful ITV soap Emmerdale, Hitchcock's first major screenwriter and David Lean's unfinished film, Nostromo.
This book approaches the construction of complex and transgressive ‘pervert’ characters in mainstream (not ‘art’), adult-oriented (not pornographic) cinema. It deconstructs an episteme on which to base the construction of characters in screenplays, in a way that acknowledges how semiotic elements of characterisation intersect. In addition, it provides an extended re-phrasing of the notion of ‘the pervert’ as Feiticiero/a: a newly-coined construct that might serve as an underpinning for complex, sexual filmic characters that are both entertaining and challenging to audiences. This re-phrasing speaks to both an existential/phenomenological conception of personhood and to the scholarly tradition of the ‘linguistic turn’ of continental philosophers such as Foucault and Lacan, who represent language not primarily as describing the world but as constructing it. The result is an original and interdisciplinary volume that is brought to coherence through a queer, post-humanist lens.
Screenwriters often joke that “no one ever paid a dollar at a movie theater to watch a screenplay.” Yet the screenplay is where a movie begins, determining whether a production gets the “green light” from its financial backers and wins approval from its audience. This innovative volume gives readers a comprehensive portrait of the art and business of screenwriting, while showing how the role of the screenwriter has evolved over the years. Reaching back to the early days of Hollywood, when moonlighting novelists, playwrights, and journalists were first hired to write scenarios and photoplays, Screenwriting illuminates the profound ways that screenwriters have contributed to the films we love. This book explores the social, political, and economic implications of the changing craft of American screenwriting from the silent screen through the classical Hollywood years, the rise of independent cinema, and on to the contemporary global multi-media marketplace. From The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone With the Wind (1939), and Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) to Chinatown (1974), American Beauty (1999), and Lost in Translation (2003), each project began as writers with pen and ink, typewriters, or computers captured the hopes and dreams, the nightmares and concerns of the periods in which they were writing. As the contributors take us behind the silver screen to chronicle the history of screenwriting, they spotlight a range of key screenplays that changed the game in Hollywood and beyond. With original essays from both distinguished film scholars and accomplished screenwriters, Screenwriting is sure to fascinate anyone with an interest in Hollywood, from movie buffs to industry professionals.