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Now Write! Screenwriting ed. by Sherry Ellis and Laurie Lamson (review)

2013; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 65; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

1934-6018

David Bennett Carren,

Artistic and Creative Research

NOW WRITE! SCREENWRITING Sherry Ellis and Laurie Lamson, eds. New York: Tarcher Penguin, 2010, 343 pp.It can be difficult for a screenwriting instructor to find a text that will properly facilitate his or her instruction. Many screenwriting books offer a familiar, almost rote approach consisting of anecdotal accounts from the author's often restricted experience coupled with a creative formula that is usually simplistic and limited, its true practical application to the craft almost nonexistent. Obvious statements extolling the value of strong structure and layered character- ization are often matched with equally obvious scene, dialogue, character, and plot examples from familiar films. At best, these books offer the reader a limited insight into the truly dif- ficult and painstaking processes that must be performed to create a successful original screenplay. At worst, they are completely off the subject or even misleading, these flaccid and unfocused texts being more like personal suc- cess narratives than practical workbooks. With these works, script instructors vainly struggle to gather functional information that could even support let alone sustain any sensible or pro- ductive script course.Now Write! is not a screenwriting book in any traditional sense. It does not offer a win- ning recipe, secret plan, or magic elixir that will unlock the vault that contains the perfect formula with which to create and structure a solid screenplay. Instead, it presents a series of exercises, almost a hundred of them, arranged under nine categories that cover almost every conceivable subject or area relevant to screen- writing. In Choosing Your Story, Get Writ- ing, Structure, Theme, Crafting Scenes, Character Development, Verbal and Nonver- bal Communication, and Revision, this book offers its readers practical, hands-on exercises that will ably assist them in furthering and enriching their craft. There are even exercises under the category Now What? that can assist the reader in building a log line or finding an agent. For the screenwriting instructor, the ex- ercises can be more than helpful in organizing a class. There are few texts that can match this book's breadth and variety in its sensible and workable writing drills.Written by such established professionals as Wesley Strick, Nicholas Kazan, and Glen Maz- zara and such notable instructors as Syd Field, William Aker, and Linda Seger, this book's es- says offer personal experience matched with practical application. Not only does this mate- rial make for entertaining and informative read- ing; it provides both aspiring film writers and screenwriting instructors intriguing and enlight- ening advice, secrets, and ideas for the suc- cessful construction of a workable screenplay. It could not have been easy to find ninety-five essays and exercises of this quality focused on this singular craft, but editors Sherry Ellis and Laurie Lamson have done a superb job of com- piling and organizing this wealth of information. …