A fabulous introduction to properly structured TV drama scripts!
579812
This is a really superb book that gives a basic structure that the new TV screenwriter can use to generate an good quality script. TV drama spec scripts have specific structure and format requirements that are not obvious to the new writer. Is this the ONLY way to write a salable drama? Of course not--and Dan Calvisi says that up front. But it is a terrific format that lets writers focus on telling their stories and generating acceptably formatted and structured scripts. Once you learn the trade, and know the rules, you'll be able to bend this structure if you want--as long as you're doing so in service to the story itself and not to break them just to break them. Highest recommendation.
851973
There are many good texts in newswriting out there, but few which are as  comprehensive in all areas of media as this one.  I teach a course in  broadcast scriptwriting at a community college with the intention of trying  to cover as many different formats as possible, e.g., newswriting,  commercials, talk-interview, documentary, dramatic narrative,  informational, etc. for both radio,TV and film. This text covers all of  these and offers both solid theoretical background as well as plenty of  real world examples. I do recommend substituting the dramatic narrative  chapter with a specialized text for screenplay writing, but it covers the  basics.  My only real complaint is that it is starting to get a bit out of  date.  But it is still the best I've come across and better than the Robert  Hilliard text, in my opinion.
223810
I've always loved the way some television shows have been able to tell a really great story. Shows like Lost, Smallville, Once Upon a Time, and Supernatural have been some of my favorite storytelling experiences. I've always admired the writers of these shows for their ability to build on a story week after week.

INSIDE THE ROOM, edited by Linda Venis, is a virtual film school in book form for those interested in the process of television writing. The book is broken up into chapters written by writing instructors at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. The book looks at how the process of television writing works and the specifics behind different types of television shows. It gives aspiring writers the steps to pursue to get their foot in the door as a television writer.

I really enjoy this book for its focus on television writing. I also appreciate the credibility provided by the authors who dedicated their wisdom to it.

Review copy provided by Gotham Books
3294579
My acting instructor recommended Susan's book and I have to say that it was worth its weight in gold.  As a working actor, I've continually been on the search for practical techniques to help me build characters and breakdown scripts.  Susan's book shows you exactly how to do that in a very clear, precise way.  What I particularly liked was her use of the need-persona-tragic flaw paradigm that has helped me create characters quickly for cold reads.  I almost don't want to give out this secret because I want to be selfish and keep it to myself, especially in this highly competitive industry, but I can't deny that this book is one of the best.  I've already recommended it to several of my actor friends before even writing this review.
3581889
In "Something Startling Happens" Todd Klick demystifies how to approach the script-writing process and takes you on a beautiful journey into the thought process behind the moments that make a feature great. Since Todd is coming from the screenwriter/executive perspective, he did the work of analysis and you get to reap the rewards of what he found. He will give you tons of "aha" thoughts and will help you to look at and interpret story in a way that will give you answers on how to best write your script. It is for advanced writers however, I also think it's great for writers at every level to begin to see story through the brilliant perspective. I highly recommend it.

Jen Grisanti, Story/Career Consultant, Writing Instructor for Writers on the Verge at NBC, author of STORY LINE:FINDING GOLD IN YOUR LIFE STORY, blogger for The Huffington Post
1322310
As a teacher who believes in the possibility that education can help to transform a society, I have always wanted to use drama as a medium for my students to explore issues and concerns.
I never knew how to do this. All I knew was "I'm no good at drama. I couldn't act to save my life."
This book is written for people like me - I read it all in one go. Then I read it again slowly, working out how I would make a small start with just one class, in my next project.
What I find helpful is that, because they are writing from a depth and breadth of classroom experience, the authors are able to de-mystify the processes. They do not talk down to the reader however and the book is not just a "cookbook" of useful tips. Their advice is always grounded in educational theory and they make these foundations explicit.
Another helpful feature of their approach is that they attach the story of the development of three dramas in three different schools, to each chapter. These three stories are threaded through the entire book. As our understanding of the process grows, chapter by chapter, so the story of the three schools is gradually expanded, until at the end, the readers feel confident that this thing can work, they can try it for themselves.
3516395
This book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in playwriting -  whether you're overwhelmed by the idea, struggling with a manuscript,  mulling over completed drafts needing revision, or seeking a perspective  for understanding the craft.  It really does take you step by step from  idea through revision.  It distills a deep understanding of the dramatic  art into a straightforward approach to structure, character and technique.  Exercises to guide and stimulate the budding playwright are woven  throughout.  Later sections build intelligently on earlier learnings, and  important points are returned to for reinforcement.  I particularly liked  the warnings about what NOT to do and why, the section on the nine  functions of dialog (the best I've ever read), and the included Writer's  Workbook.  Brief and to the point, the book is loaded with useful  information and intelligently organized.  It is clear that Sossaman brings  a wide knowledge of dramatic literature, a clear understanding of the craft  of playwriting, and his own impressive teaching experience to this work.  For sure, many of the best plays I've read or seen over the last forty  years ring true to his guidance, and the others would certainly have  benefited from his solid nuts and bolts advice.
3985646
The Whole Picture is the first book I read on the craft of screenwriting -- probably because it was the only book on the subject in my local library (lucked out there, Mr. Walter). Not an avid reader, I begrudged the idea of reading on the subject of writing -- after all, my intent was to produce and direct, not write -- however, absent of the knowledge of film production, lacking gear, and poor as a beggar, I figured screenwriting was the cheapest place to start my career. It was mid-1999.

The Whole Picture was not a difficult read -- at all. Mr. Walter has a way of writing that feeds your appetite for wanting more. Page by page, I devoured the book, not once, but twice. His enjoyable style was engaging, delightful, and addictive. What I thought would be a dry and studious approach to screenwriting became a magical ride through the very art of storytelling. I had no reference to compare this book, no software to guide me through the formatting process, and no mentor to coach me along, yet based on a single and defining principle, my love for storytelling and script writing was born. That principle is INTEGRATION. Mr. Walter got it right -- integration is a fundamental, no, the fundamental principle in storytelling. Sure, character development is crucial, story arcs are tried and true, and timeless plots will sell films, but without integration your story lacks a cohesive property that ties all the above together. Integration is the cornerstone to great storytelling, and because I learned this first, it not only inspired me, but has guided me ever since.

As for actually formatting a script, this is not the book -- and it was never intended to be. For formatting, pick up The Hollywood Standard by Christopher Riley. Mr. Riley's clear and simple book has been my go-to since 2011 (give of take a year). Never rely on formatting software alone to guide you when writing a script -- My. Riley's book covers just about every question you will have on formatting.
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Hollywood-Standard-The-Complete-and-Authoritative-Guide-to-Script-Format-and-Style-Hollywood-Standard-The-Complete-Authoritative-Guide-to/dp/1932907637/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Hollywood Standard: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style (Hollywood Standard: The Complete & Authoritative Guide to)</a>

I will be completing my MFA in film production next summer, moving on to teach others as I continue writing/directing/producing. My journey to a master's program has seen four produced features, two feature directing credits, multiple script credits, a plethora of other crewing opportunities, and a growing production company. Through it all, integration has been the corner stone of vision -- when writing, developing, directing, and producing. I can honestly say I have a ways yet to go, but fundamentally I am rooted in the importance of integration, all thanks to the only shelved screenwriting book at a public library. Cheers, Mr. Walter, a toast to sharing your wisdom.
4562915
As I try to turn the lifelong hobby of writing into a serious pursuit, Ive been working on understanding how to transform an idea into a book. When I was writing just to entertain myself, I never thought much about character arcs and story structure, or how essential those tools are for constructing a compelling and readable story.  Your future readers may not think about character arcs either, but they will certainly expect a pay off for the investment of their time and money.  K.M. Weilands Creating Character Arcs will help you deliver on that unspoken promise.

One great thing about Creating Character Arcs is that it doesn't just leave off at showing how to build an interesting and believable character.  It discusses the evolution of character development alongside the waypoints of the larger story structure.  What should be happening at the first plot point?  What decisions should the character be facing?  How does your character react to the events that have brought him or her to the midpoint?  How have you shown the contrast in your characters evolution up through the resolution?  These details can be overwhelming when you're beginning to find your way, but Weiland has a straightforward and logical approach to providing helpful guidance that allows you to answer these questions for yourself.

Weiland uses examples from well-known books and films that demonstrate the principles being taught.  Using, among others, Jane Eyre and Jurassic Park, she carries those examples through the entire book so that you can see the changes in Jane Eyre and Alan Grant as they move through the key points of their character arcs and story structures.  Using familiar material provides immediate recognition of the principles in a very accessible format.

You may want to use the look inside feature on Amazon to view the chapter titles so you can see the depth of the material covered.  Aside from these major sections, she also covers an array of thought-provoking topics like:

How to convince readers to invest in your character.
What is a characteristic moment?
The symbolism of the normal world.
Should all my minor characters have arcs?
What is an impact character, and why does every story need one?
How do I write a character arc in a series?

Even if you've already written your draft, this book is an excellent guide for testing the foundation of your story, analyzing your main characters journey, and suggesting improvements you may not have considered.

K.M. Weiland has become my explainer-in-chief for the nuts and bolts of storytelling.  If you feel intimidated by structure and planning and are afraid you might not get it, youve come to the right place:  Weiland is a fabulous teacher, and Creating Character Arcs delivers.

Enthusiastically recommended.
1183006
Having been a screenwriter for nearly two decades I've been through more than my share of How-to-screenwrite books.  Most of them end up boring you with their supposed formula for success (You'd have to be a math whiz to figure out all the arcs and paradigms of some of them).  But what if you just happen to be need to know or be reminded of the difference between a montage and a series-of-shots?  And that's where this handy, dandy little guide comes into the mix.  It just gives the basic that are so commonly overlooked but a necessity in writing a professional screenplay.  Highly recommended!
452158
Each drama has a compelling, layered plot.  The acting is excellent, and I am enjoying learning of the history and social issues of WWII in Great Britain.  I think the fellow who conceived of, researched and wrote this drama (Anthony Horowitz) is brilliant.
 (The only TV drama series I've liked better than this one is The West Wing.  Again, amazing scripts, compelling plots and acting, and topical, almost to the point of being prescient.
3169874
Gulino's book is one of the best screenwriting handbooks I've ever read. It's simple, clear and concise, providing a powerful tool that can help a screenwriter to engage an audience. The first chapter introduces the sequence concept and shows the four fundamental techniques used to capture the audience attention. In the following chapters the author uses the aforesaid tools to analyze eleven movies, covering six decades and various genres, and showing the effectiveness of the sequence method. Once you have learned the method, it's quite simple to apply a similar analysis on whichever movie you want.

As a screenwriter myself, I'm familiar with the traditional three-acts paradigm and the various writing techniques. In Gulino's book I found the anwers to three major questions I had about screenwriting:

- I noticed that all my favourites directors have the ability to create long, beautiful and well-structured scenes, or sequence of scenes sharing at least one unit of time, place, action. Classical directors like Kubrick, Hitchcock, Lean, Kurosawa and Leone all had these ability, so as Scorsese, Spielberg, Cameron and Tarantino. The sequence approach confirms this intuition and shows that it all happens in a more general way, that is dividing the whole screenplay in blocks that, just like short movies, have their own acts, protagonist and dramatic tension.

- Another classical feature is the ability to enrich and deepen the narration by shifting the thematic point of view from the protagonist to another character. Gulino's book shows that it's easily achieved building some of the movie's sequences around a character other than the protagonist. For example, in "Lawrence of Arabia" fourteen of the sixteen sequences are built around Lawrence, that is the movie's protagonist, showing us its dramatic needs, hopes and fears about the Arab cause. One of the remaining sequences is built around General Allenby and its efforts to persuade Lawrence to go back into the desert, so stating its strategical and military importance. In a further sequence the reporter Bentley serves as the protagonist, expressing the importance of Lawrence as a romantic figure and revealing the reporter's cynical point of view.

- The three-acts structure, and its further developments in Syd Field's work, is a paradigm independent of movie's length. Nonetheless, because of the way it has been developed, Field's theory seems to fit better in a canonical one-hundred-and-twenty pages screenplay, that is a two-hour movie. What about a two-and-a-half- or three-hour movie? Gulino shows that while the three acts are stretched to respect their canonical proportions, the sequences always retain a ten- to fifteen-minutes duration. This obviously means that a three-hour movie contains more sequences than a two-hour, proportionally distributed among the three acts, allowing the screenwriter to create a richer narration and explore more characters' points of view. With an exceptional length of three hours and thirty minutes, "Lawrence of Arabia" stretches the three acts respectively at fifty, one-hundred-and-twenty and forty-minutes, but the sequences are sixteen, that is twice the number of sequences contained in a one-and-a-half to two-hour movie.

In conclusion, I recommend this excellent book to anyone who is interested in movies & screenwriting.
298167
Jeffrey Sweet has written a "how-to" playwriting book that is a  no-nonsense, practical guide. Like Uta Hagen's seminal book for the actor  -- Respect for Acting -- Sweet's Tool-Kit identifies the core challenges of  the craft and provides simple, straightforward techniques for overcoming  them.  And the "tools" he offers are immediately useful.  I began  using Sweet's techniques on the play I was writing even before I'd finished  his book.  Whatever problems you may be struggling with in your play, you  are certain to find good, useful techniques for addressing them in Sweet's  book.
2167810
Over the years I have bought, read and reviewed many books on directing, acting and writing. At a certain point they just blend together and really don't add any value over what's come before. Until now. Dave Kost's Book of Sides is a breath of fresh air providing real value to working directors and actors, as well as to teachers and students in those disciplines.

One place this book will make a huge impact for me is in the audition process. Having actors read sides is a great way to evaluate whether the actors are appropriate for a role and their ability to participate fully in the rehearsal process, by taking directions or making different creative choices within a scene. A downside to using sides is needing to use portions of the current production, either because you don't want the actor to have preconceived ideas on the character they will play if they get the role, or because a few pages of the script isn't designed to showcase a broad range of beats you may want to explore in a short audition.

Mr. Kost's book resolves some of these concerns. Each page contains a complete story that allows an actor to build up a performance with some type of major beat change at the end. It's not tied to any particular character within a larger story, so that it's easy to have actors explore completely different choices, and also short enough, that you can do this several times in a few minutes. In terms of quickly evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of an actor in an audition, and then comparing them to other actors up for the same role, this is of tremendous value. With a wide range of sides to choose from, it would be easy to select several sides for different roles being cast for a production.

For a student actor or director, these sides provide a wealth of material to practice her craft with others, or in a classroom setting. This can be done alone or under the guidance of an instructor. With the sheer number of sides available, it gives the teacher a great deal of flexibility for exercises regardless of the number of students in their class.

Dave Kost is a masterful writer to put together 200 sides with well-crafted stories, strong characters and clear beats. These are the essential ingredient directors and actors, either in film or theatre, require from the scripts they need to use to hone their craft.

Book of Sides is one book I'm happy to add my collection of materials I keep near my desk for easy reference.
2236559
Yes, your new best friend is Jen Grisanti's "TV Writing Tool Kit: How to Write a Script that Sells." Why? All too often, books about writing philosophize about the intangible qualities that make great writing stand out without giving any (or enough) practical advice about how to produce it--but this book is different. As the title promises, this book truly gives you the tools to raise your writing abilities closer to your aspirations.

Specifically this book addresses:

1. The technical components of a show's structure that can make or break it (a solid log line, universal themes, a hook, etc.)
2. What people actually mean when they tell you to "write what you know"
3. The kind of shows that will best reflect your unique voice

in a clear and utilitarian fashion that can be immediately put to use--and I do mean immediately.

I read this book over the course of a few hours on a plane flight. When I opened the book, I had two vague ideas floating around in my head for 30-minute shows that seemed like they had legs. By the time I closed the book I had working log lines and one-pagers for both. Granted, these need plenty of TLC-- but getting something down on paper marked a huge step forward in my process.

This book offers a positive yet practical approach to writing and if you take its advice to heart, your writing will improve. Period.
4219880
Very helpful exercises and an enjoyable read. It's nice to read from an established tv writer in the field. She doesn't add a lot of bells and whistles in her book and is very straightforward and practical. I really enjoyed the book and it helped grease the skids of my creativity :)
2106745
Ken's book is a no-frills, no-nonsense,  straight-talking "Actors Bible."  It is not a theoretical or intellectual assessment of the craft of acting (there are many books on acting that are). Ken's assertion is that the actor's first commitment is to the "story" and his unique methods are specifically geared towards such commitment.

I am a talent agency-represented actor and have been a student of Ken's for some time.  I have trained with other coaches as well as earning a diploma in drama from the Beaufort Performing Arts School. As beneficial as this has been, so far nothing has compared to the value that I have derived from Ken's book, his mentorship and his coaching.

I have read (and continue to read) many books on the craft of acting and many of them provide invaluable insights. However, as the reviewer below commented, Ken's book is a "valuable collection of practical experience" represented by his 40+ years in the industry.

Using Ken's methods, I can typically be "off book" with a 4 to 5 page scene within 30 minutes. Swap characters on me 2 seconds before the scene and I'm not phased, as I've learned to commit to the story, which means knowing ALL of the dialogue, not just my own.  This is very useful in the real world (especially at cold read auditions).  I occasionally see other actors at auditions, panicking about being able to "memorize" their lines, frantically highlighting only their own dialogue, while I sit waiting for my turn, confident about my performance and not concerning myself with remembering dialogue because I've used Ken's methods to absorb the story, build my character and live in the moment.

Highly recommended.