Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #217853 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Synopsis
Using well-known films as examples, Syd Fiel d shows aspiring screenwriters how to recognise, locate and solve problems in a screenplay, from the finest detail to qu estions of character, motivation, plot, etc. '

Customer Reviews

Only repeating a handful of facts and shallow tips
Reducing this book's approximately 350 pages to 35 would in my humble opinion have made it a hundred times better, and given another price more in line with the informative value.

Lecturing on about how important it is to adapt one's script to the right format, and constantly nagging on about avoiding artificial talking heads, the author himself could have considered checking up on some of his own advice on how to keep the reader's interest, and how to avoid dull and uninteresting writing. ...or perhaps he did, and his product is an indication of the effectiveness of his own advices?

I forced myself to continue through the 3rd-8th chapter (of total 22) with the cod-liver-oil-attitude; "I hate this, but it's supposed to be good for me". Then I had to give up. Repetitiveness might function well in the author's classroom lecturing, but on print it's overly annoying. Especially when nothing really new seems to surface in between.

A much better read, and far more comprehensive, I find Linda Seger's book "How to make a good script great" which I am now enjoying.

WHAT A GREAT BOOK111
I've been stuck on my screenplay for months now. It's good, I know it's good, but I didn't know what was wrong with it. I tried all the other books, some were good, others not. But this book just nailed it down for me. I found out what was wrong, and how to fix it. Great job. I'm going to read everything Field has written.

GET THIS BOOK!!

This book is literally a problem solver
This book is the best tool to assist screenwriters in getting the most out of their scenes and characters. Field's simple, straight forward sentence structure allows the reader to easily find and understand any problem he or she may encounter in the screenwriting process. Field tosses out the technical lingo and explains things in a basic way that anyone could comprehend. He makes screenwriting fun.