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5.0 out of 5 stars
A FUNDAMENTAL GUIDE TO THE SCREENWRITING PROCESS., September 6, 2006
This review is from: A Guide to Screenwriting Success: Writing for Film and Television (Paperback)
For most of us, becoming a successful screenwriter is an uphill struggle. Yet in the beginning I was confident that after reading a number of how-to books I would quickly blaze a trail to screenwriting success. I was The Little Engine That Could. But after writing three screenplays, I found myself no closer to the top of the hill than when I started. My head was a jumbled mess of screenwriting teachers' theories from 12 Steps to 15 Beats, so when I came up with a couple of great characters for my next script, I was no longer sure where to begin. Fortunately, just as with my romantic heroine and her hero, Duncan's book and I found each other at just the right time. When I opened "A Guide to Screenwriting Success" and read the first line of the first chapter, "Where do I start?" I knew I had found the perfect guide.
Duncan takes a very clear and practical approach to teaching the essential and fundamental skills every writer should master on the path to screenwriting success. His book is divided into three sections. The first deals with writing the screenplay, the second with rewriting it, and the third section is on writing for television. In the back of the book you'll find a wonderful appendix that includes specific templates to help you with your writing, as well as a structure analysis of the film Witness.
As I began reading the first section, I soon realized I was being guided step-by-step through the process of writing a screenplay from premise to Fade Out. In fact, this is the first how-to book I've owned that I felt was useful enough to keep open and next to me on my desk as I wrote. While all three sections are full of practical advice and insights, I will comment on the first section in detail as this is the one I used to develop and write the first draft of my screenplay.
Chapter 1 offers helpful tips on how to develop a solid movie premise and includes a listing of sample movie premises as a guide.
Chapter 2 deals with inventing interesting characters and introduces you to "the five points of character arc." Duncan discusses the importance of character biographies and includes his Character Development Template to help get you started.
Chapter 3 teaches you how to craft a strong story, taking into account such things as the central question you want to explore, the Act One metaphor, visual motifs, the protagonist's major moral dilemma, subplots, and runners, to name a few. He includes his very helpful Basic Story Development Template to get you started. Then comes creating your story's synopsis. Here he prompts you with about 15 insightful and story-provoking questions to help get your creative engines revved such as in Act One "what forces the protagonist into a new situation?" and in Act Two "how does he or she fail this time for the first major setback?"
Chapter 4 - to me, this section alone is worth the price of the book. Here he teaches you how to use structure to frame an engaging story. Duncan says that "structure is really just guidelines that help to keep you on the track of good storytelling. It's a way of thinking about your story, not a way of writing it." He discusses various techniques such as linear versus nonlinear storytelling, flashbacks, foreshadowing, and subplot. He includes his Love Story Development Template as a guide to use for plotting your romance, if you chose to include one. Then he gets down to the specifics of what to include in each of the three acts. I found his advice for Act 2 particularly helpful as I tend to lose my momentum here. Duncan shows you how to break Act 2 into four, 15-minute mini-dramas. I found this to be a much more manageable, as well as enjoyable, process for me. He also includes his Story Structure Development Template and shows you an example of one of his own scripts in the template. He also teaches you how to take your story synopsis that you created in Chapter 3 and expand it into a scene outline.
Chapter 5 introduces you to visual descriptions and dialogue. This is where you'll find the technical information such as screenplay formatting and camera directions, how to format a flashback scene, intercutting scenes to create tension and suspense, and finally, the correct use of dialogue to write your scenes.
I am just beginning to rewrite my script following the rewriting process in Part 2. With Duncan's book, I have finally completed a first draft that I am proud of and as I continue to work my way through the process and toward screenwriting success, I can actually see the top of the hill.
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