Secrets of Film Writing

by Tom Lazarus

Overview

Most books about screenplays instruct on three-act structure, character arcs, and how to format a script. But you already know all that.

Secrets of Film Writing reveals a working writer's secrets-the tips, short cuts, tricks, and insider advice that will get your story down on paper, maximize your idea, and seduce your readers. Do you know why actors pick scripts out of a stack? Why montage sequences don't work? Why the traditional three-act structure is obsolete? Lazarus lifts the veil with dozens of secrets like these.

Lazarus's insights and techniques will smooth and improve any screenwriter's process and will make any script more readable and ultimately more salable. Secrets of Film Writing takes you behind the scenes of feature and television writing and demystifies, once and for all, the Hollywood System.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312269081
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/02/2001
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	279,835
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Tom Lazarus has had five feature films made from his original screenplays, including the number-one movie Stigmata, and has written six movies of the week and over thirty hours of network drama. He is also an award-winning educational filmmaker. He has taught screenwriting for ten years as a UCLA Extension Instructor and continues to write screenplays while writing and directing independent features.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction	xiii
Secret #1	Organization Is Freedom	1
Secret #2	The Log Line	7
Secret #3	Telling the Story Through the Characters	13
Secret #4	Rising Action	27
Secret #5	The Mathematics of Film Writing	31
Secret #6	Less Is More	35
Secret #7	More Is More	37
Secret #8	Script Presentation	39
Secret #9	Show Not Tell	51
Secret #10	Write Short	53
Secret #11	Rewriting--A Survival Course	57
	A Personal Rant	61
	Some Other Notes on Rewriting	61
	Rewriting--An Example (Five Drafts)	64
	Rewriting: A Case History	73
Secret #12	Cut to the Heart of the Scene	83
Secret #13	It's a Process	87
Secret #14	It's About Character, Stupid	91
	Character Description	98
	The Protagonist	101
	The Antagonist	103
Secret #15	Dialogue	105
	Dialogue--An Example	106
	Dialogue--Another Example	112
Secret #16	Openings	119
	Openings--Some Examples	123
	Stigmata	123
	Basic Instinct	127
	Christopher	133
Secret #17	Scene Descriptions from Hell	137
Secret #18	Endings	143
	The Pitfalls	145
Secret #19	All the Other Stuff	147
	Surprises, Wrinkles, Twists and Turns	147
	Text Versus Subtext	148
	Using the Wrong Words	149
	Phone Conversations	150
	Signs of an Amateur	152
	Flagging Problems	154
	The Writer's Mantra	155
	Pitching--Six Minutes of Hell	156
	Reader's Hate	162
	Getting into the Business	162
	Pre-Writing	165
	Shooting Yourself in the Foot	165
	Getting Out of Your Own Way to Write	166
	Don't Stop Momentum to Describe	167
	I Hate Montages	168
	Transitions	170
	Geography	172
	Metaphors and Similes	172
	Sex and Violence	173
	Dialects	175
	Exposition	176
	Shooting Yourself in the Foot, Part Two	178
	Reviews	179
	Coverage	179
	The Hook	181
	Cliches	181
	The Sun to Yolk of Fried Egg Dissolve	182
	More Uncinematic Stuff	182
	Action Sequences	183
	Turning in Your Script	183
	Turning Things on Their Ear	184
	The Best Friend	184
	Characters Who Speak Out Loud When No One's Around	184
	Coincidences	185
	What Should You be Writing?	185
	And if You Don't Have an Idea?	185
	The Writer Who Doesn't Finish	186
	Television	189
	Fooled Them Again	203
	Addendum	204
	Much More than a Glossary	205
	The Final Secret	231
	End Titles	235