Top Film Courage Screenwriting Interviews and Corresponding Books on the Craft
Watch the video interview here on Youtube
Check out Karl’s Book Writing for Emotional Impact: Advanced Dramatic Techniques to Attract, Engage, and Fascinate the Reader from Beginning to End
About the book: There are three kinds of feelings when reading a story – boredom, interest, and WOW! To become a successful writer you must create the WOW! Feeling on as many pages as possible, and this requires writing that engages the reader emotionally. In his best-selling 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, screenwriter Karl Iglesias explored the working habits of A-list Hollywood scribes. Now, he breaks new ground by focusing on the psychology of the reader. Based on his acclaimed classes at UCLA Extension, Writing for Emotional Impact goes beyond the basics and argues that Hollywood is in the emotion-delivery business, selling emotional experiences packaged in movies and TV shows. Karl not only encourages you to deliver emotional impact on as many pages as possible, he shows you how, offering you hundreds of dramatic techniques to take your writing to the professional level.
Check out Karl’s Book The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, 10th Anniversary Edition: Insider Secrets from Hollywood’s Top Writers
About the book: You can struggle for years to get a foot in the door with Hollywood producers–or you can take a page from the book that offers proven advice from twenty-one of the industry’s best and brightest! In this tenth anniversary edition, The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, 2nd Edition peers into the lives and workspaces of screenwriting greats–including Terry Rossio (the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise), Aline Brosh McKenna (Morning Glory), Bill Marsilii (Deja Vu), Derek Haas and Michael Brandt (Wanted), and Tony Gilroy (the Bourne franchise). You will learn best practices to fire up your writing process and your career, such as: Be Comfortable with Solitude Commit to a Career, Not Just One Screenplay Be Aware of Your Muse’s Favorite Activities Write Terrible First Drafts Don’t Work for Free Write No Matter What This indispensable handbook will help you hone your craft by living, breathing, and scripting the life you want!
The Serious Business Of Being Funny
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About the Book: While other books give you tips on how to “write funny,” this book offers a paradigm shift in understanding the mechanics and art of comedy, and the proven, practical tools that help writers translate that understanding into successful, commercial scripts. The Hidden Tools of Comedy unlocks the unique secrets and techniques of writing comedy. Kaplan deconstructs sequences in popular films and TV that work and don’t work, and explains what tools were used (or should have been used).
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Check out Richard’s Book Essentials of Screenwriting
About the Book: Anyone fortunate enough to win a seat in Professor Richard Walter’s legendary class at UCLA film school can be confident their career has just taken a quantum leap forward. His students have written more than ten projects for Steven Spielberg alone, plus hundreds of other Hollywood blockbusters and prestigious indie productions, including two recent Oscar winners for best original screenplay-Milk (2008) and Sideways (2006).
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Check out John’s Book The Anatomy of Story
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Writer Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way, The Vein of Gold, The Right to Write) calls into Film Courage to discuss where she was in her life when she began writing ‘The Artist’s Way,’ keeping the drama on the page, stealing time to write, and tells us about Julia Cameron LIVE.
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Check out Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way
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Check out Kathie’s Book The Script-Selling Game
About the Book: Explains the processes of developing, pitching, and submitting stories. The book includes such unique information as a 10-point checklist for a completed script, the eight most common reasons why a script can be rejected, what really happens to a script once it’s submitted, how to navigate within the industry, and much more.
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Check out Vicki and Barbara’s New Book!
About the Book: Screen storytelling is an essentially collaborative process. Writers need feedback but too often the notes they receive stall them and even demoralize them. This book unpacks the whys and what-fors of all the most commonly given notes on scripts, stories, and writers themselves. Coming from the perspective of experienced Hollywood professionals, Notes to Screenwriters offers insightful and concise guidance on the entire storytelling process, as well as what comes before it in the life of the writer, and after it in the marketing of the screenplay. It is a unique blend of classical storytelling principles combined with practical knowledge of the contemporary marketplace. This book is destined to be a resource for every writer who gets past the initial stage of writing a first draft and needs sage counsel for what to do next.
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Check out – The Secrets of Action Screenwriting
by William C. Martell
About the Book: Real techniques from a working professional screenwriter that you won’t find anywhere else! Let the other books tell you about the 3 act structure! This book covers: How to write a plot twist, the four kinds of suspense (and how to create it), reversals to keep your description exciting, ten ways to invent new action scenes, secrets and lies, creating the ultimate villain, five kinds of love interests, creating effective violence, is sex necessary?, theme, using magnification to create kick ass stories, weapons for weirdos, plans for world destruction and/or domination, four ways to explode cliches, twelve steps to a more focused script, *every* type of hero, emotional action scenes, your script’s DNA, pre-story goal and the connection to story goal, pacing, *how* to plot, giving them something extra, and more…. Plus a complete analysis of the classic DIE HARD!
Though this book focuses on the Action and Thriller genres, the information can be used in any genre. This is the book professional screenwriters recommend!
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Check out the book Writing For The Greenlight: How
To Make Your Script The One Hollywood Notices
About the Book: Tailor your screenplay to sell. Find out what Hollywood script readers, producers, and studio executives want in a screenplay (and why) from someone who’s been there. Discover what it takes to begin a lasting career as a screenwriter.
Peppered with interviews from established professionals, Writing for the Green Light: How to Make Your Script the One Hollywood Notices gives you a sharp competitive edge by showcasing dozens of everyday events that go on at the studios but are rarely if ever discussed in most screenwriting books. With his behind-the-scenes perspective, Scott Kirkpatrick shows you why the system works the way it does and how you can use its unwritten rules to your advantage.
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Check out Michael’s Book
Writing Screenplays that Sell
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About the Book: For more than twenty years, Writing Screenplays That Sell has been hailed as the most complete guide available on the art, craft, and business of writing for movies and television. Now fully revised and updated to reflect the latest trends and scripts, Hollywood story expert and script consultant Michael Hauge walks readers through every step of writing and selling successful screenplays. If you read only one book on the screenwriter’s craft, this must be the one.
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The Film Director’s Bag of Tricks
About the Book: Provides a dazzling array of useful tips to get the performances you want from your actors.
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by Pamela Jaye Smith
About the book: Conflict is the very heart and soul of drama, and Smith’s latest work explores character conflict and the various ways to portray it both in scripts and on the stage.
About the Book: Conflict is the very heart and soul of drama, and Smith’s latest work explores character conflict and the various ways to portray it both in scripts and on the stage.
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Check out Peter and Jeffrey’s Book Show Me the Funny
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About the Book: Enjoy a unique glimpse into the intelligent and quirky inner workings of the comedic mind! Show Me the Funny! presents 28 top comedy screenwriters from the revered figures of television’s “Golden Age” to today’s favorite movie jokesters. Authors Desberg and Davis put an innovative spin on the traditional interview: each writer was given the same loosely structured comedic premise and asked to develop it in any way he or she wanted-no rules, no boundaries, no limits! The result is a hilarious and illuminating look at the comic process.
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Check out Linda’s Book Making a Good Script Great
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About the Book: Making a good script great is more than just a matter of putting a good idea on paper. It requires the working and reworking of that idea. This book takes you through the whole screenwriting process – from initial concept through final rewrite – providing specific methods that will help you craft tighter, stronger, and more saleable scripts. While retaining the invaluable insights that placed its first two editions among the all – time most popular screenwriting books, this expanded, revised, and updated third edition adds rich and important new material on dialogue, cinematic images, and point of view, as well as an interview with screenwriter Paul Haggis. If you are writing your first script, this book will help develop your skills for telling a compelling and dramatic story. If you are a veteran screenwriter, it will help you articulate the skills you know intuitively. And if you are currently stuck on a rewrite, this book will help you analysis and solve your script’s problems and get it back on track.
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About the Book: There are plenty of books about the craft of screenwriting, and a handful about pitching your screenplay. However, little can be found on how to go from writing to pitching in the professional space. There is no formula, no three-step plan. Getting It Write: An Insider’s Guide to a Screenwriting Career unlocks pragmatic guidance for constructing a screenwriting career, delivered by a sought-after industry authority who works with writers both novice and professional. Never pulling any punches, the book aims to decode Hollywood, prepare the writer for the road ahead, and offer tangible avenues for screenwriting success.
Breaking In: Tales from the Screenwriting Trenches
by Lee Zahavi Jessup
About the Book: Breaking In: Tales from the Screenwriting Trenches is a no-nonsense, boots-on-the-ground exploration of how writers REALLY go from emerging to professional in today’s highly saturated and competitive screenwriting space. With a focus on writers who have gotten representation and broken into the TV or feature film space after the critical 2008 WGA strike and financial market collapse, the reader will learn from tangible examples of how success was achieved via hard work and specific methodology. This book includes interviews from writers who wrote major studio releases (The Boy Next Door), staffed on television shows (American Crime, NCIS New Orleans, Sleepy Hollow), sold specs and television shows, placed in competitions, and were accepted to prestigious network and studio writing programs. These interviews are presented as Screenwriter Spotlights throughout the book and are supported by insight from top-selling agents and managers (including those who have sold scripts and pilots, had their writers named to prestigious lists such as The Black List and The Hit List) as well as working industry executives. Together, these anecdotes, learnings and perceptions, tied in with the author’s extensive experience in and knowledge of the industry, will inform the reader about how the industry REALLY works, what it expects from both working and emerging writers, as well as what next steps the writer should engage in, in order to move their screenwriting career forward.
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Watch the video interview here on Youtube
Check out Dan’s book STORY MAPS: TV Drama: The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot (Volume 4)
Check out Dan’s book STORY MAPS: How To Write A GREAT Screenplay
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When A Screenwriter Has 5 Minutes To Pitch A Movie Idea by Larry Hankin at Story Expo 2014
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Check out Gary’s Book Conquering Hollywood
About the Book: There are over 1,094 books on Amazon that show you “how to write a screenplay”… but next-to-nothing on how to break into Hollywood, sell your script, and build a successful writing career. Until now. As a producer, Gary W. Goldstein’s movies have generated well over $1B in global box office receipts. His portfolio includes Pretty Woman, Under Siege, and The Mothman Prophecies.
But more importantly — over the last two decades — Gary has nurtured, mentored and launched some of Hollywood’s most successful screenwriters. In his book, Conquering Hollywood, he reveals proven career-making strategies, planning and advice for aspiring (and established) screenplay writers.
The strategies in this book will help you whether you’re looking to sell a spec script, option your screenplay, land a writing assignment and get hired, attract an agent or manager of your dreams…or get a producer to take a meeting with you.
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Check out Curtis Ray’s Book
Juvenile Justice 101: A Juvenile Crime Fiction Novel
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About the Book: Juvenile Justice 101 is a candid look into the world of juvenile crime: those that fight to steer kids back on track, and those that exploit them for material gain.
Julian Marcel doubles as a police officer and an auxiliary probation officer with the Department of Juvenile Justice in Colton, South Carolina. When a new probation kid, Calvin Thompson, is dragged unwillingly by his grandmother to Julian’s office, an onslaught of troubles arise. Calvin’s gang affiliation, and his desire to “move up” in the ranks make it difficult for him to adhere to the judge’s order of probation, which in turn creates major problems for Julian. While Julian is busy focusing on Calvin’s exploits, he neglects another probation kid–Dayne Larkins. Dayne, a spoiled rich kid, is upset about his best friend getting jumped by a band of young thugs, and has revenge on his mind. He intends to get “justice” for his friend, and he plans to make a bang in doing so.
Watch the video interview here on Youtube
Check out Houston’s book Make Your Story Really Stinkin’ Big: How To Go From Concept To Franchise And Make Your Story Last For Generations
About the book: A creative, yet straightforward manual on how to take one concept and turn it into a franchise that will last generations. Houston Howard’s “360° Storyweaving” process is revealed with step-by-step instructions on how to best intersect entertainment, marketing, transmedia and technology.
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Check out Joe’s Book The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood
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About the Book: In The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood, bestselling author and legendary bad-boy screenwriter Joe Eszterhas tells everything he knows about the industry, its players and screenwriting itself–from the first blank sheet of paper in the Olivetti to the size of the credit on the one-sheet.
Often practical and always entertaining, The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood distills everything one of Hollywood’s most accomplished screenwriters knows about the business, from writing advice to negotiation tricks, from the wisdom of past players to the feuds of current ones. Eszterhas has selected his personal pantheon of the most loved and loathed players in the business and treats the reader to a treasure trove of stories, quotes and wisdom from those luminaries, who include William Goldman (loathes) and Zsa Zsa Gabor (loves).
The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood could only have been written by someone who loves the business as much as Eszterhas does–but who also has its number.
Watch the video interview on Youtube here
Check out Jen’s book Change Your Story, Change Your Life: A Path to Success
About the Book: Author, consultant, and international speaker Jen Grisanti instructs readers on how to apply story tools to their own lives, illuminating how everyone can become the hero of their own story. Based on her own experiences dealing with major life changes and developing methods with which to turn negative experiences into positive ones, Grisanti is a skilled guide in teaching readers how to live new life stories of their own making.
Check out Jen’s book Story Line: Finding Gold in Your Life Story
About the Book: Story Line: Finding Gold in Your Life Story is a practical and spiritual guide to drawing upon your own story and fictionalizing it into your writing. As a Story Consultant and former VP of Current Programs at CBS/Paramount, most of the author’s work with writers has focused on creating standout scripts by elevating story.
Check out Eric Edson’s book
The Story Solution: 23 Actions All Great Heroes Must Take
About the Book: Eric Edson has developed a new tool for bringing depth and passion to any screenplay – the “23 Steps All Great Heroes Must Take.” It’s an easy to understand paradigm that provides writers and filmmakers the interconnecting, powerful storytelling elements they need. With true insight, a master teacher of screenwriting pinpoints the story structure reasons most new spec scripts don’t sell; then uses scores of examples from popular hit movies to present, step by step, his revolutionary Hero Goal Sequences blueprint for writing blockbuster movies.
Watch the video interview on Youtube here
Check out Jeff’s book Not F*ing Around: The No Bullsh*t Guide for Getting Your Creative Dreams Off the Ground
About the book: Can’t quite get your creative juices flowing? The day job sucking your soul? Fizzled out before you put the finishing touches on your amazing creation? With relentless positivity, full-on authenticity and a punk rock thunder spirit, author Jeff Leisawitz pulls back the curtain on the creative process and reminds us that we are all creative SuperStars. It’s time to get off the couch and get on the path. It’s time to tap into the cosmic heartbeat that thumps in your chest and shines from your soul. It’s time to get NFA! Jeff Leisawitz burns with a mission–to inspire writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, entrepreneurs (and everyone else) to amp up their creativity, heal their hearts and shine in the world.
Watch the video interview on Youtube here
Watch the video interview here on Youtube
Watch the video interview here on Youtube
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TED Talks Storytelling: 23 Storytelling Techniques from the Best TED Talks
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Learn the screenwriting secrets behind successful cinematic stories in the world of film & television script writing!
Paul Castro the original writer of the Warner Bros. hit movie, AUGUST RUSH.He is a produced, award winning screenwriter and world-renowned screenwriting professor. Success leaves clues and so do masterfully crafted screenplays that sell for millions of dollars.
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