Work In Progress

This book, by Syd Field, is very nearly a waste of money. I guess that if you've never read anything about screenwriting it might be more helpful, but after Goldman's books and How Not to Write a Screenplay, there was very little that was new. An awful lot of it was things like how one develops characters and story ideas. I can't imagine a person starting to write without being able to do that on their own — what else could drive a person to write than coming up with stories and wanting to tell them? Of course there are things to know about creating characters, but I didn't feel that they were covered (e.g. be careful of making the star ever feel small).

Worse, the book is horribly dated. It's new chapter covering computer software mostly talks about how abandoning a typewriter for a computer may be terrifying but can be worth it. Screenplays and hollywood seem to have a lot of conventions, and these conventions seem to be shifting and changing. How fast I don't know, but a book which covers what they were like in the late 1970s isn't reassuring.

It does have a few interesting insights on writing, though. While largely covered in other books (and I suspect most people's experiences, to a degree), his description of how "everyone is a writer" (i.e. when you tell them your story, they'll tell you how you should write it) was interesting.

I don't recommend buying it, but it might be worth skimming if you can get it for free (e.g. at a library).

How Not to Write a Screenplay: 101 Common Mistakes Most Screenwriters Make is an interesting book and a pretty quick read. It's very entertainingly written, and makes a lot of sense. Unlike William Goldman's books (Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I tell?), I don't think that it would be interesting except for those with an interest in screenwriting.

For those, like me, who have an interest in screenwriting but are just starting, I heartily recommend it.

Incidentally, one of the things it mentions but doesn't really harp on is how much of a group endeavor a movie is. In the section where he recommends against including camera directions, aside from them being distracting, he points out that the director and cinematographer are going to ignore them anyway. Goldman mentioned that too.

Essentially, once a screenplay gets accepted and people start signing on, they're all going to want to have creative influence on the story, and so far it seems to be recommended to make sure to give leeway for that in places where it doesn't matter so that people are less likely to screw around with the parts that do matter. There's probably something to that, of course, but I wonder if it might not be better to try to avoid getting so emotionally attached to someone as one's own that won't be one's own. Of course you have to at least like a story to write it, and it probably really helps to love it, but that also seems counter-productive to one's health. I imagine that it's kind of like children. If you don't approach them with a pretty healthy dose of realizing that they're not going to turn out like you expect, you're not likely to be a good parent and you're just going to suffer.