How to Write It, How to Sell It: Everything a Screenwriter Needs to Know About Hollywood

by Linda Palmer

As a producer and successful screenwriter, Linda Palmer knows all of Hollywood's trade secrets--and in How to Write It, How to Sell I t, she shares them all.
Linda Palmer knows that even in closed-door Hollywood, if your screenplay snags the interest of a producer, it doesn't matter who you are--you're in. The trick is getting your screenplay into the producer's hands. As a former vice president of production at Tristar Pictures and a credited screenwriter, Linda Palmer has a unique understanding of both sides of Hollywood's desk.

In How to Write It, How to Sell It, she shares her knowledge with aspiring screenwriters, and she does so with the same charm the students of her popular UCLA Extension class have come to love and depend on. Straightforward and personable, Palmer uses the movies she loves to illustrate discussions of plot, structure, and character. From the layout of the page to the pitch to tips on sneaking by Hollywood's notorious readers , Palmer explains the business of show business as only one who knows it from the inside can.

324 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 15, 1998

About the author

Linda Palmer admits it all started when she fell in love with Roy Rogers in the fifties. The family TV was boxy; the picture was black and white. That didn’t matter. Roy’s cowboy courage won the day and inspired her to create elaborate scenarios when playing with her sisters and friends outside. Indoors, she read romances in every genre from Sci Fi to Gothic.

Linda began writing for pleasure in the third grade, mostly poetry, and has letters from her grade school teachers predicting she'd be an author. Her poems eventually became short stories; her short stories became books. And even though a writing career was never actually a dream, it was something she pursued with intent after winning some writing contests and joining local and national writers’ groups.

Silhouette Books published Linda's first romance novel in l989 and the next twenty over a ten-year period (writing as Linda Varner, her maiden name). In 1999 she took a ten-year break to take care of her family, but learned that she couldn't not write. She began again in 2009, changing her genre to young adult/new adult paranormal romance. She has now written over a hundred novels and novellas ranging from traditional romance to erotica. Linda was a Romance Writers of America Rita finalist twice and won the 2011 and 2012 EPIC eBook awards in the Young Adult category. She was also a finalist in that category in 2013 and in 2014.

Linda has been married to her junior high school sweetheart over fifty years and lives in Arkansas, USA with her family. Ever a hopeless romantic, she still falls for unattainable Hollywood heroes that inspire her to write romances about alpha males and the women who stand up to them. Linda hints that her current crush’s name starts with Tom and ends with Hardy. Her website is www.lindavpalmer.com. You can also find her on Facebook: Linda Varner Palmer.