Customer Reviews

The Art and Science of Screenwriting

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Much is made on the cover of Parker's book of his teaching credentials. He might well be a fine teacher, but this is a poorly written book.

The irony is that a book dealing with that most *structural* of art-forms should be so poorly structured. Parker's 'creative matrix' (little more than an assertion that every aspect of a screenplay relates to every other aspect) seems to be claimed as an overarching structure for the study, but this is soon lost within a jumble of fragmentary sections and subsections. Barely half-a-dozen paragraphs pass without a new section or subsection. Bullet lists continually work against any sense of narrative flow.

The overall effect for the reader is to be lost in deep woods without a map. Section numbering has been resisted here, but might have helped a great deal to orient the reader. Often, this feels like sketchy *notes for a book*, rather than the book itself.

Unfortunately, Parker's prose also fails. Much is clumsy and stilted, showing uncertainty and inconsistency of tense, and even at times problems with number agreement. This clumsiness seriously damages clarity.

Even basic-level copy-editing seems to have been overlooked. For example, Nick Park's Oscar-winning claymation short 'Creature Comforts', is referenced as 'Creative Comforts'. Renowned BBC drama producer Michael Wearing becomes 'Michael Wareing'. Reference is made to items '9 to 11' of a list, despite the fact that the list items are marked not with numbers, but letters. Mistakes and infelicities continually trip the reader. (Peter, when you use ellipses, the things that have been left out aren't 'ellipsed', they're 'elided'.)

And yet, whilst there's nothing startlingly original here, Parker covers most of the familiar ground. Anyone new to screenwriting who is willing to hunt around in the dark woods of Parker's unstructured prose is likely to find valuable advice. They'll have to work hard, though. This is a very frustrating read.