Please, feel free to use this thread to share with others how you have taught yourself to write better.
Discuss any aspect you would like.
I'll start by sharing my limited experience and hopefully my thoughts will help others:
I was in a hurry to write when I began and did not want to buy books and books. I started out just writing, which is a bad idea IMO. This kind of writing will produce a story like "this happened, and then that happened, and then these things happened but they aren't as important as THIS which comes next..." and you get an episodic story that is like a laundry list at the end of the day.
Anyways, bad start. I realized that and started to look into structure. Naturally, I started by turning to the internet and free sources of help. IndieTalk (although I did get a Premiere pass), other blogs, etc. All of it helped, but wasn't enough. So eventually I caved and decided to buy a few screenwriting books. I looked up reviews online and took the information to the bookstore and got lucky with the two books I picked up. One is useful in answering every kind of formatting question I can think of, although the chapters on structure are very weak and not recommended.
Story by McKee was the other book I got and I must recommend it to anyone looking for a book on screenwriting. I have read the book 3 times, each time many months after I last read it. The first time I read it, the book was very helpful although it was deep. I reread it again and took notes on it many months later, and learned even more from it. Finally, about a year after I first read it, I read it yet again, this time copying notes on index cards for every important point I found. Later categorized the notes and put them in my screenwriting notebook and, while the process sounds anal, I really developed an understanding for everything the author was saying.
Right after I finished that, I picked a few of my favorite movies and watched them and took notes on each and every scene, start to finish on index cards. The point was to deconstruct the movie and look at it from the writer's point of view. I broke each film down into sequences then to see how the story moved in accord with the principles that I had learned from McKee's book. Extremely valuable effort.
I read two other books after that which were also important: Aristotle's Poetics and Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing. The Poetics is a short work that anyone can read in a day, and the teachings are timeless. Aristotle's principles come straight from Sophocles, Shakespeare, Towne, Coppola, etc. Any mode of writing in any era and the principles apply.
The Art of Dramatic Writing is a wonderfully flawed book. Egri babbles on at length about nonsense from beginning to end, and a lot of the book is wasted pages. However, his thoughts on Premise are very much worth reading. If Story laid the foundation for what I know about screenwriting, Egri's ideas on Premise provided the missing link that fits everything together. Again, if you read this book, you will find yourself bored in long parts and wanting to skip ahead. But, the book is very much worth reading because when he has a good point to make, it is a very good point to hear.
Egri's breakdown of Ibsen's A Doll's House, McKee's breakdowns of Casablanca and Chinatown, and the discussions on Oedipus Rex in Aristotle's Poetics are invaluable. If someone reads those and understands what the authors are teaching, I think they will be in very good shape as a future writer.
----
Please, feel free to share your experience with others if you'd like.
Discuss any aspect you would like.
I'll start by sharing my limited experience and hopefully my thoughts will help others:
I was in a hurry to write when I began and did not want to buy books and books. I started out just writing, which is a bad idea IMO. This kind of writing will produce a story like "this happened, and then that happened, and then these things happened but they aren't as important as THIS which comes next..." and you get an episodic story that is like a laundry list at the end of the day.
Anyways, bad start. I realized that and started to look into structure. Naturally, I started by turning to the internet and free sources of help. IndieTalk (although I did get a Premiere pass), other blogs, etc. All of it helped, but wasn't enough. So eventually I caved and decided to buy a few screenwriting books. I looked up reviews online and took the information to the bookstore and got lucky with the two books I picked up. One is useful in answering every kind of formatting question I can think of, although the chapters on structure are very weak and not recommended.
Story by McKee was the other book I got and I must recommend it to anyone looking for a book on screenwriting. I have read the book 3 times, each time many months after I last read it. The first time I read it, the book was very helpful although it was deep. I reread it again and took notes on it many months later, and learned even more from it. Finally, about a year after I first read it, I read it yet again, this time copying notes on index cards for every important point I found. Later categorized the notes and put them in my screenwriting notebook and, while the process sounds anal, I really developed an understanding for everything the author was saying.
Right after I finished that, I picked a few of my favorite movies and watched them and took notes on each and every scene, start to finish on index cards. The point was to deconstruct the movie and look at it from the writer's point of view. I broke each film down into sequences then to see how the story moved in accord with the principles that I had learned from McKee's book. Extremely valuable effort.
I read two other books after that which were also important: Aristotle's Poetics and Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing. The Poetics is a short work that anyone can read in a day, and the teachings are timeless. Aristotle's principles come straight from Sophocles, Shakespeare, Towne, Coppola, etc. Any mode of writing in any era and the principles apply.
The Art of Dramatic Writing is a wonderfully flawed book. Egri babbles on at length about nonsense from beginning to end, and a lot of the book is wasted pages. However, his thoughts on Premise are very much worth reading. If Story laid the foundation for what I know about screenwriting, Egri's ideas on Premise provided the missing link that fits everything together. Again, if you read this book, you will find yourself bored in long parts and wanting to skip ahead. But, the book is very much worth reading because when he has a good point to make, it is a very good point to hear.
Egri's breakdown of Ibsen's A Doll's House, McKee's breakdowns of Casablanca and Chinatown, and the discussions on Oedipus Rex in Aristotle's Poetics are invaluable. If someone reads those and understands what the authors are teaching, I think they will be in very good shape as a future writer.
----
Please, feel free to share your experience with others if you'd like.
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