Reviewed by Charles Deemer

 

SECRETS OF THE SCREEN TRADE

By Allen B. Ury

Lone Eagle, 2005

165pp, $18.95

ISBN 1-58065-060-0

 

THE SCREENWRITER WITHIN

By D.B. Gilles

Three Rivers Press, 2000

213pp, $14.00

ISBN 0-609-80495-2

 

SCREENWRITING IS STORYTELLING

By Kate Wright

Berkeley Publishing Group, 2004

264pp, $14.95

ISBN 0-399-53024-X

 

SCREENWRITING: THE SEQUENCE APPROACH

By Paul Joseph Gulino

Continuum, 2004

230pp, $14.95

ISBN 0-8264-1568-7

 

            Sometimes my screenwriting students get confused, and I don’t blame them. For example, one may read Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach and learn that “a typical two-hour movie” is structured into eight dramatic sequences, then pick up Screenwriting Is Storytelling to find that, no, “There are twelve sequences in a major motion picture screenplay, structured in a 3-6-3 act breakdown…”

            Another student, preparing to send out her first screenplay, may read in Wright’s book that a script is “typed in 12 pt. Courier and bound with three brass fasteners and cardstock covers” – then find this contradicted in Ury’s book: “As trivial as it sounds, when a script is submitted with three brads instead of the usual two, I always know it’s coming from someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing” (Ury quoting a creative executive).

            Eight sequences or twelve? Three brads or two? The wider one reads in the screenwriting field, the more contradictory information one gets exposed to. But much of this information really isn’t contradictory at all. Many things can be accurately described in more than one way. Consider the number twelve, which can be “structured” as two sixes or six twos, three fours or four threes, twelve ones or one twelve. None of these descriptions is more accurate than the other. All work fine. And such is the case with the many descriptions of story structure that are now available to screenwriting students.

            Gulino and Wright have good reason to emphasize the sequence approach to story structure. More comprehensive than a three-act breakdown, but not as tedious as a full step outline, breaking a story into sequences (usually more than half a dozen but less than two) is a useful tool for getting a firmer grasp on a story’s movement. What Gulino and Wright fail to do in their books, however, is provide examples of how an original story concept can be developed into sequences. Virtually all of Gulino’s book is analytical, showing how his eight-sequence approach works with eleven different movies, including The Graduate, Being John Malkovich, North By Northwest and Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. As screenwriting students quickly learn, it is one thing to analyze a finished film or script, quite another to create structure from scratch. While analysis of successful screenplays and movies is important, it also is incomplete and actually less helpful to the creative act of writing than often is supposed. This make Gulino’s book especially limited in its usefulness to the beginning screenwriter.

            Gulino also makes an assertion with which I flatout disagree: “It is a common misconception that the end of the second act needs to be a ‘low point’ in the story.”

I’ve analyzed hundreds of films and find that such a low point almost always is there. In one of Gulino’s own examples, North By Northwest, his eight-sequence structure shows no low point at all. However, a traditional three-act analysis clearly ends the second act when Thornhill realizes he has put Eve, the woman he loves, in life-threatening danger. Not a low point? Of course it is. Moreover, this happens 25 minutes before film’s end, right where it should happen, and we move into act three, where he rescues her. This is textbook structure.

            Wright does a better job than Gulino in addressing the needs of beginning screenwriters. Although she doesn’t provide what would be most helpful, the actual development of an idea into a structure of sequences, she does discuss most of the concerns about story and character development that face the screenwriter. Her book is especially strong in several areas: in “screenthinking,” the pre-writing activity that tightens a movie concept (“one of the most difficult things to communicate to screenwriters is the value of patience when it comes to creating an idea big enough for a movie”); in an outstanding discussion of genre; in emphasizing the emotional requirements of a story; and in describing, with an excellent example, how to write a one-page synopsis. Wright’s book is a solid introduction to screenwriting craft, though outdated in some matters of format and overly optimistic in her view of marketing. Thus it is not recommended as a first or standalone text but as a supplemental one.

            The best two books in this group are the least prescriptive and most personal, the books by Giles and Ury. The Screenwrier Within, despite its terrible new-age title, is a great read:

            “Screenwriting is like dating. You meet someone (you get an idea). Being with your new lover is so easy (the first 15 pages almost write themselves). Things look incredibly promising for the first four weeks (Act One is done and Act Two is so well thought out, you can write it in your sleep.) Then all Hell breaks loose.”

            Many a screenwriter can relate to this sequence of events!

            Gilles, unlike most authors of screenwriting books, does not promise more than he can deliver. About writing dialogue, he says: “I can tell you how to make it funnier, shorter, edgier, longer, tougher, deeper, scarier, smarter, hipper, less formal, and more conversational, but I can’t teach you which words the characters will say.”

            And about marketing: “But there’s no guarantee that someone who can get it made will like it. All a screenwriter can control is what he puts on the pages of his screenplay.”

            What makes this kind of honesty so refreshing is that it is so rare. Here is a book that’s fun to read and filled with common sense. It belongs on your screenwriting shelf.

            So does Ury’s book, which is a collection of essays that first appeared in Fade In Magazine. This is my favorite volume of the group. Like Gilles, Ury does not present himself as a guru with the answers but as a practical, experienced writer with solid advice to offer, which here is organized into four sections: Storytelling, Mechanics, The Sale, The Secrets.

            Among the highlights in Storytelling is Ury’s discussion of the most appropriate genres in which to make a first sale; in Mechanics, the “get in, get to the point, get out” approach to scene construction; in The Sale, his discussion of the birth of the free option; and in The Secrets, a discussion of formatting errors that drive readers crazy.

            Ury’s common sense approach is summarized by his Ten Commandments of Screenwriting:

1.      Thou shall have a sympathetic hero.

2. Thou shalt not have a weak antagonist.

3. Thou shall tell thy story from a single point of view.

4. Thou shall have a clear beginning, middle and end.

5. Thou shall make thy hero American or European.

6. Thou shall have an active hero.

7. Thy hero shall undergo change.

8. Thy story shall have a “Wow Factor.”

9. Thy first act shalt not occupy more than the first quarter of your screenplay.

10. Thou shall have a happy ending.

While all these books are worth looking at, I can recommend the Gilles and Ury books without reservation as worthy additions to any screenwriting library.

 

 

Charles Deemer teaches screenwriting at Portland State University. His new book, Practical Screenwriting, will be published later in 2005.