Of the screenwriting books I've read, the only one I appreciate is "Story" by Robert McKee. I liked that it wasn't a how to book, but an in depth explanation of what story is and how a screenplay functions as an outlet for story telling. I think most other screenwriting books focus on the how to, the dos and don'ts. I've heard so many people say you can't use "we" or unfilmables, but, in my opinion, if using those is the best way to tell the story then why not?

I've learned a lot of useful stuff from so-called gurus, especially stuff I can use as a toolkit if I find my script in trouble - but in the end, as a script takes shape, I find all of the act-breaks and the sequences and the whatevers start gradually fading away. All that structural stuff is like the stake you tie a young tree to - it's great when the tree's fragile, but the whole point is to get the tree to a point where it doesn't need the stake any more, because it has its own shape and strength.

Initially books like savethecat helped me realize that though I enjoyed writing, my weakness was in structure. But afterwards they only ever got in the way. I became desperate to fit my story into some detailed beat sheet, and it ended up screwing the story itself. -Scenes that came too early or stretched too long. -Filler scenes so I could hit the beats. So the next level is the really technical stuff by Campbell and Vogler. All interesting but there was always the missing crucial piece of how to apply that theoretical academia to a specific script I was writing. So to me the guru books were helpful only insofar as they helped me realize what my specific method is, and it came about as much by realizing what in their methods didn't work for me as in what did.

I'm confused about the statement about Michael Arndt. From what I heard that guy struggled for many years. It was over a decade from after graduating from NYU that he sold "Little Miss Sunshine". Before writing that, he worked as an assistant to Matthew Broderick while writing nights and weekends. He then quit that to focus on writing for a year while relying on his savings. And even after selling the script, it was still 5 years before it got made and the project almost fell apart multiple times. I can understand mentioning Diablo Cody since "Juno" was her first screenplay, but Arndt's success came after many years of perseverance.

dw, according to what I've read -- and that includes this Wikipedia entry here -- Arndt did not start writing screenplays until 1999. You can read his own comments on the process of writing and selling LMS here. My reference to Arndt had nothing to do with how much persistence he demonstrated in writing LMS nor in getting it made, rather simply an acknowledgement that there are cases of writers who do sell a first or very early script in their career, a la Diablo Cody [but then she had written and published a memoir before Juno and had been an active blogger, too]. In other words, it can happen. But per my OP, that's a dangerous message because it makes writing and selling a screenplay seem somehow easy. That meme demeans the craft and is not reflective of reality. LMS is an example of the saying, "If you write a great script, Hollywood will find it." Indeed in this case, it was so great that despite all the odds against it getting produced, it did get made and became a big hit. It's also a script that defies many of the so-called 'rules' of screenwriting, such as "You must have a Nemesis." There are all sorts of psychological dynamics at work with the Hoover family that create conflict and opposition, and each of them wears a nemesis 'mask' from time to time, but is there one specific Nemesis figure resisting the Protagonist's path toward a goal? Hell, I would argue there are three Protagonists in LMS, and none of them sets the goal that lies at the end of the Plotline: Getting to the beauty pageant. If you've had the good fortune to see Arndt's presentation on great endings, you know he is a super smart guy who has really immersed himself in movies, read and analyzed a bunch of scripts, and spent considerable time thinking about and learning the craft of screenwriting. Finally when I interviewed Mary Coleman at Pixar, she was the person who brought Arndt into that studio based on the script for LMS -- before the movie had even come out -- eventually to write Toy Story 3. Again the fact LMS is so good proves the value of a strong script.

Yup, you're right. I got served. He hadn't been writing long. All those years I thought he was writing he said he was reading a lot of scripts and getting a feel for story and structure which is valuable, but isn't the same as churning out scripts. Your comparison to Diablo Cody is appropriate.

Have you seen this Salon article by Stephen Harrigan? I Was an A-List Writer of B-List Productions > ...Our life as the hottest new screenwriters in Hollywood didn’t all come crashing down exactly, but it did become clear in our meetings with Pollack that we had been the beneficiaries of beginner’s luck and had no idea how to really write a screenplay. He wanted to know things like where the end of Act 2 was and what the character’s arc was. We didn’t know characters were supposed to have arcs, we didn’t know scripts were supposed to have acts, and in our guileless delight at having hit the big-time we certainly didn’t know that the leading impediment to this project ever getting made would be our continued participation in it. > ... I came to realize that the only things that really mattered in a screenplay were momentum and clarity. It was true that if you paid too much attention to the screenwriting gurus, with their how-to-write-a-screenplay books and seminars about plot points and inciting incidents and act breaks, you could end up with a script that was all skeleton and no heart. Sometimes you had to forget the rules even as you were slavishly following them, to give yourself a little room to improvise and explore. But the gurus had a consistent and undeniable point: The real writing was in the structure. Glittering dialogue meant nothing if it did not directly advance the plot, paragraphs of elegant screen description were merely ornamental obstructions that busy readers would impatiently skip over. Subtlety was too much like vagueness, and in a script nothing vague can survive. / You had to search and search until you found a story’s irreducible thread: a man on the run from a killer, a young girl growing into a woman, a victim seeking revenge. If the movie was about one thing, it could be about many things. But if you started out determined to make it about many things, it would be about nothing. What I take away from the article: - the guru books give you access to a common language for discussing screenwriting; - they also teach you what's teachable: structure; - structure is critical, but structure alone isn't substitute for a compelling story (The whole article is interesting, and addresses a number of perennial GITS topics.)

I think that screenwriting books benefit writers in that they at least get writers thinking analytically (hopefully), but ultimately I don't think they clean up what is inherently a messy, bloody process. And I think if you really want to be a writer—ANY kind of writer—you have to be willing to teach yourself because the analyses you make will be the ones you internalize.

I want to poke a hole in Scott Frazier's comment: "I think there are many similarities between becoming a great screenwriter, and becoming a great athlete." No one becomes a world class athlete by being terrible at their sport. There's enough terrible screenwriters that have gotten huge paydays for whatever reason. In fact, that's a large part of the business. Even for pros, who write like fucking Gods, it is a crapshoot. Where's Darabont's Fahrenheit 451, amiright? There's directors that have made a career out of being terrible. Tommy Wiseau, anyone? Uwe Boll? It adds to the "lottery nature" of screenwriting. Of entertainment in general. Most people who can't make a free-throw will realize that they probably aren't cut out for basketball. Most people who that don't know the difference between first and third person, still think they are an incredible writer. Writing is fucking easy. That's the problem. There's no discernible difference from the practices of the good writer from those of the hack. (Woo, worked in a Ben Hect reference!)

James wrote: > No one becomes a world class athlete by being terrible at their sport. > There’s enough terrible screenwriters that have gotten huge paydays for whatever reason. I read Scott Frazier's reference to "great screenwriters" to mean people who achieve a high level of excellence in the craft--not necessarily in the business. There are a lot of a variable that affect who will achieve the huge paydays--but one of the steps anyone can take is working on writing a good script. It's like buying extra tickets in the screenwriting lottery--if you can write a good script, and if you can keep getting better, while it might not be a guarantee of winning it does a lot for your odds.