Screenwriting

Rewrite: A Step-By-Step Guide to Strengthen Structure, Characters, and Drama in Your Screenplay

Legendary screenwriting instructor and award-winning writer Paul Chitlik presents an easy-to-read, step-by-step process to take your script from first draft to submission draft. He reveals the hidden structure of screenplays, sequences, and scenes, as he guides you through the process of examining your draft, restructuring it, and populating it with believable, complex, and compelling characters. Along the way he outlines how to make your action leap off the page and your dialogue crackle.

 

While the first edition was widely used in film school rewriting classes, it was also recommended as an introduction to screenwriting craft by a number of professors and professionals. Paul Chitlik has included, for the second edition, more examples, exercises, and applications for television, the web, and other media, using a wide range of citations in film, television, and the Internet to underline his approach.

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39 Steps to Better Screenwriting: A Practical Guide to Improving Your Screenplay

This is not a beginner’s book on screenplay writing, though a beginner could read it and learn. This is a writer’s consigliere. It’s a book of advice and reflection that will kick ass against just about any screenwriting problem. It’s a series of essays on film and television writing, a deep background on very specific craft issues ranging from punctuation to meaning in your screenplay. Chapters range from “The Antagonist as a Good Guy” to how to establish an emotional core in your script, to one on Katy Perry’s use of story in her concerts (Yes, that Katy Perry) to “The Power of Story.” There’s even one called “What Film School Should I Go to?” You’ll want to carry it with you to the Starbucks and consult it like you would your best friend when you run into trouble. It will get you to think about your writing in new ways and to give you tools to express those thoughts. It’s a writer’s secret weapon, and now you can have it, too.

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