Product Description

Teach Yourself Screenwriting is a comprehensive, jargon-free guide for all budding screenwriters. Its aim is not just to guide you through the techniques and skills you need to write for the screen (film and television), but also to give you guidance on how to approach the industry as a whole. Focusing on every aspect of screenwriting from how to set about the writing process and develop your characters, plot and structure to how to break into this highly competitive industry and make a career for yourself as a writer, this book uncovers all. This new edition has been completey updated to include discussion of the most recent developments in this incredibly fast-moving industry. It also includes a foreword by Andrew Davies.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48412 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review

'Everything that you need to know can be found between these covers.'

(Total Film Magazine )

'... it is so useful to have the generally accepted industry wisdom laid out for you in such an accessible, clear, entertaining, and above all, INEXPENSIVE format.'

(Andrew Davies, in the foreword to the book )

'Raymond Frensham's invaluable guide to writing screenplays, 10th in the film best-sellers...'

(The Independent Arts and Book Review )

About the Author
Ray Frensham is a writer, script doctor, freelance lecturer and script workshop organizer. He is ex-chairman of The Screenwriters’ Workshop.

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Customer Reviews

An excellent guide for the beginner
This book is brilliant, not only showing you how to lay out a screenplay but going into the fine detail of how to structure plots without being confusing or full of jargon. Frensham also provides a lot of help in generating and refining ideas, an area that is neglected by many other screenwriting texts. I refer to this book on an almost daily basis, I can't give higher praise than that!

Read Frensham after Robert McKee's "Story" book.
The best thing about Frensham is his emphasis on characterisation.
The main arguement of Robert McKee's book is plot-structure being far more important than characterisation. Thus if you want to know about plot-structure then buy McKee but if you want a great character biography analysis checklist buy Frensham.

Also frensham has lots to say about how to approach rewriting: he outlines his 6 different stages: again with good checklists.

Best of all he has a typical production company script reader's (story analyst) checklist, so that we know what how the enemy thinks.

However, on plot-structure he is too formulaic: he doesn't prove story principles the way McKee does. McKee's principles are based on Aristotle and Stanislavski.

I'd suggest you'd buy "An Actor Prepares" if you really want to 'Act at the desk' so that you feel what the characters feel.

Think Big! Think Hollywood! Think Where To Start!!
Frensham begins at the beginning and finishes at the end: visual layout of your script (including size of pages, colour, text size, UK or US), synopsis, genres, the 8 basic stories, development of your story, character development, 1st draft, 2nd draft, to promotion.

Frensham takes you on a journey, he advises films to watch and take note from. HE IS TEACHING, it's kind of an interactive book.

If you are thinking of writing for film or TV, to say this book is invaluable is an understatment.

Alfred Hitchcock said 'To make a great movie, you need just three things: a great script, a great script, and a great script.' (taken from TY Screenwriting By Raymond Fresnsham.)

I say 'To learn to write that great movie, you need just three things: this book, this book, God! You need this book!'