Screenwriters often joke that "no one ever paid a dollar at a movie theater to watch a screenplay." Yet the screenplay is where a movie begins, determining whether a production gets the "green light" from its financial backers and wins approval from its audience. This innovative volume gives readers a comprehensive portrait of the art and business of screenwriting, while showing how the role of the screenwriter has evolved over the years. Reaching back to the early days of Hollywood, when moonlighting novelists, playwrights, and journalists were first hired to write scenarios and...
Screenwriters often joke that "no one ever paid a dollar at a movie theater to watch a screenplay." Yet the screenplay is where a movie begins, determ...
The Pleasures of Structure starts from the premise that the ability to develop a well understood and articulated story structure is the most important skill a screenwriter can develop. For example, good structure requires a great premise and rigorous character development. Without clear character motivations and goals--which are themselves indicative of key structural beats--your story is going exactly nowhere. Using the simple and flexible 'W' model of screenplay structure developed in the prequel Write What You Don't Know, Hoxter sets this out as its starting point. This...
The Pleasures of Structure starts from the premise that the ability to develop a well understood and articulated story structure is the most...
