The Screenwriter's Problem Solver: How to Recognize, Identify, and Define Screenwriting Problems [Paperback]

Syd Field (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 1998

All writing is rewriting. But what do you change, and how do you change it? All screenplays have problems. They happened to Die Hard: With a Vengeance and Broken Arrow-and didn't get fixed, leaving the films flawed. They nearly shelved Platoon-until Oliver Stone rewrote the first ten pages and created a classic. They happen to every screenwriter. But good writers see their problems as a springboard to creativity. Now bestselling author Syd Field, who works on over 1,000 screenplays a year, tells you step-by-step how to identify and fix common screenwriting problems, providing the professional secrets that make movies brilliant-secrets that can make your screenplay one headed for success...or even Cannes. Learn how to:

•Understand what makes great stories work
•Make your screenplay work in the first ten pages, using Thelma & Louise and Dances With Wolves as models
•Use a "dream assignment" to let your creative self break free overnight
•Make action build character, the way Quentin Tarantino does
•Recover when you hit the "wall"-and overcome writer's block forever

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Can't get your characters to shut up? Is the bit player in Act II more compelling than your protagonist? Do your scenes drag on f-o-r-e-v-e-r? Whatever your problem, screenwriting guru Syd Field can help; he's written four previous books on screenwriting, teaches worldwide, and is "involved in the reading and writing of about a thousand screenplays a year." Screenplays bog down in vague and mysterious ways, says Field; identifying a screenwriting problem is half the battle. Fixing a screenplay that seems dazed and confused might seem like Mission: Impossible, but you've got to have courage under fire. By identifying symptoms in the writing, Field isolates about 20 different screenwriting problems, each related to plot, character, or structure (after all, what else is there?). His fixes generally involve getting to know your characters or story better, through the use of automatic writing, biographical sketches, and the like. For examples of spectacular screenwriting, he offers excerpts from the screenplays for Thelma and Louise, The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Apollo 13, and Silence of the Lambs. Field is a man of many mantras: "Writing is rewriting," "Film is behavior," "Drama is conflict," "Action is character." But his advice is so useful that you'll forgive him his facile phrasemaking. And you'll thank him for persuading you that, yes, "a problem is an opportunity, a challenge that will allow you to ultimately improve your craft." --Jane Steinberg

Review

With examples from Pulp Fiction, How to Make an American Quilt, The Shawshank Redemption, Crimson Tide, Broken Arrow...and more of Hollywood's biggest hits

"The most sought-after screenwriting teacher in the world."—The Hollywood Reporter

"If I were writing screenplays...I would carry Syd Field around in my back pocket wherever I went."—Steven Bochco, writerproducerdirector, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue

"I based Like Water For Chocolate on what i learned in Syd's books. Before, I always felt structure imprisoned me, but what I learned was structure really freed me to focus on the story."—Laura Esquivel

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Delta (February 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440504910
• ISBN-13: 978-0440504917
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #155,786 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Syd Field is a screenwriter, producer, teacher, international lecturer, and author of the bestselling books Screenplay, The Screenwriter's Workbook, Selling a Screenplay, and Four Screenplays. Published in 1982, Screenplay has been translated into sixteen languages, and is used in more than 250 colleges and universities across the country. At present he is creative consultant to the governments of Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Austria, and South Africa, and has been a script consultant for Roland Jaffe's film production company, for Alfonso Arau and Laura Esquivel on Like Water for Chocolate, and for Tri-Star Pictures. He lives in Beverly Hills, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Repetitive, boring, February 27, 2000

By 

David Kerr (Calgary AB Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Screenwriter's Problem Solver: How to Recognize, Identify, and Define Screenwriting Problems (Paperback)

How useful is it to have extremely vague and rambling prose accompanied by already fixed examples? Answer: not useful at all. If Sid wants us to learn, he has to show us flawed scripts, then what happens when he fixes them. I personally found this book full of lame advice, describing problems only complete fools would run into. Maybe that is the point. The two things I salvaged from this book are: a) Do an outline of your screenplay first, then write around that. NEVER start writing from scratch, no matter how bold an approach it seems. b) Put lots of action in your screenplay, avoid dialogue driven plays. Think Dogma. Apart from that, I liked how Sid harped on cruddy movies like Die Hard 3 and Broken Arrow... but he never shows us how or where they break down... he only says that they do. Now that you have read my review, you got all the good stuff from the book, so I just saved you money. Buy his earlier books, this just seems like it was written solely to make a quick buck.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be in every writer's library, April 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Screenwriter's Problem Solver: How to Recognize, Identify, and Define Screenwriting Problems (Paperback)

I had read Field's excellent book Screenplay several years ago, and it helped me tremendously in writing my first screenplay. Since them I have written two more, but neither of them have sold. When I finished my last screenplay, I knew I had some problems, but I didn't know what I could do to fix it. So,I gave it to a few people to read,and then everyone started giving me different advice.The more people I gave it to, the more confused I became. So, I got the Screenwriter's Problem Solver and was absolutely delighted to find a way I could identify and define the problems in my own screenplay.It was like I really felt I could take control of my own writing. When I finished the book,I approached my screenplay with the understanding of how to recognize and analyze the problems, then break them down into the various problem catagories of plot, character and structure. I really feel the book has been instrumental in my understanding of how to approach the solving my problems in the rewrite. Each chapter took me through a different area of the process and I'm happy to say that after I rewrote my script, which took several months, I submitted it to a production company and while they didn't buy it, they liked it well enough to recommend an agent in Hollywood, and he is now showing it around. I'm so happy to have read this book; it is so literate, so clear, I see why Field is called the "meta guru of screenwriters."

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Too many words - to few facts, October 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Screenwriter's Problem Solver: How to Recognize, Identify, and Define Screenwriting Problems (Paperback)

Reducing this book's approximately 350 pages to 35 would in my humble opinion have made it a hundred times better, and the price perhaps more in line with the informative value.

Lecturing on about how important it is to adapt one's script to the right format, and constant nagging on about avoiding talking heads, the author himself could have considered checking up on some of his own advice on how to keep the reader's interest, and avoiding dull and uninteresting writing.

I forced myself to continue through the 3-8 chapter (of a total of 22) with the cod-liver-oil-attitude; "I hate this, but I must - it's supposed to be good for me". Repeating sentences every ten minutes might function well in the author's classroom lecturing, but on print it's overly annoying. Especially when nothing really new seems to surface after chapter one. Sorry, but I got the feeling that somebody is trying to "squeeze some extra dollars out of me by using a well selling name", rather than was my hope; a sharing of real knowledge... hopefully made out of the urge to tell something of real value. Isn't this the perfect example of the wrong motivation for writing, the very same as the author is urging his reader no to do?

A much better read, and far more comprehensive, informative and enlightening, I find Linda Seger's book "How to make a good script great" which I am currently enjoying.