Notes to Screenwriters: Advancing Your Story, Screenplay, and Career With Whatever Hollywood Throws at You

by Vicki Peterson, Barbara Nicolosi

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.

Genres: Writing

250 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Louie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You can buy a fancy paint set but that don't make you Van Gogh."
Anybody can write a script. Few can tell a decent story. Even less can do it to industry standards.
The reason Starbucks is filled with wannabe screenwriters is that even though they may have a new Mac and the latest version of Final Draft, they have no idea of how to tell a story, (or at least not a good one, anyway). The best thing about NOTES TO SCREENWRITERS is it puts the focus on the story where it should be, not on the actual process of writing a script, even though it does a good job of covering that as well.
NOTES is broken down into three sections. There are suggested writing exercises and prompts. You don't have to do them, but you'd be stupid not to - the point of the book is to improve your writing, isn't it?
Section One covers the basics of story, characters, dialogue, themes, tone and genre. The single greatest flaw of any story is when the reader can't get past knowing it's all just words on a page. NOTES explains how to make your story, setting and characters real, or actually, "more than real." Even if you have a few scripts in the works and know your way around a keyboard, it wouldn't hurt to give this part a good once-over or two.
Section Two shows how to format your script correctly. No matter how good your story, it's on a one-way trip to oblivion if it does not conform to industry standards. Typos, wordiness, and bad grammar only guarantee it'll get to the dumpster faster. This section is relatively shorter than the other two, but it has info that'll make or break your script.
Section Three is all about putting it all together into a nice package. The person looking at your script only has to glance at the first few pages to see if you've got your act together. If it's going to get past the first line of defense, it'll have to look and read like a winner, or at least something that deserves a second look. This section also gives you a good idea of what you'll be getting into if you decide to call yourself a screenwriter. It's not a pretty picture, but it is an accurate one.
The end of the book has four appendices; a list of one hundred of the most influential movies, a correctly formatted title page, first page, and interior page. Screenwriting has come a long way from some guy sitting in front of a beat-up Remington and banging away on the keys, but the results are still the same - you have to get it all down and spill some ink on the paper sooner or later.
Bottom Line. NOTES is the only book out there that not only tells you what you need to know, but also what you might not want to hear. If you don't have what it takes to make it in the industry, you'll need to find out before you go wasting days, months or years on a dream that will stay one. If you've got the gift, the talent, the skill AND the persistence to sit down and do the work, NOTES will tell you how it's done.
On a personal note, I wish NOTES were available as an audiobook (my eyes get tired sometimes), but I can see where it needs to be in print in order to give good visuals on formatting. Also, a plus is that the authors are easily accessible on social media. NOTES covers everything you need to know, but it's nice to know someone is out there ready to answer questions if you have any.

[Robert M Gallagher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A new staple in my screenwriting library. This is one of the most applicable writing books out there, written with a confident approach with experience behind them. But and read if you want to be a screenwriter!

[Matt Lohr · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who's been in the receiving end of producers' notes a time or two in my life, I know how difficult and challenging they can be to grapple with. Vicki Peterson and Barbara Nicolosi have channeled their own years of experience and know-how in dealing with the dense linguistic tangle that can often be development notes and come up with a smooth, concise, informative and no-nonsense how-to guide for interpreting what you get back from producers, executives and studio script reading personnel. The book also features solid tips on living the writer's life, a nicely bullet-pointed set of hard-and-fast writers' rules, and one of the most concise-yet-comprehensive formatting guides you'll find in any book anywhere. This isn't necessarily a book for first-timers, but if you've got a couple of scripts under your belt and are starting to make some waves out in the wider screenwriting world, I think this book is a must-read.

[Panda Incognito · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no interest in screenwriting, so I didn't read this entire book, but the material about how to tell a good story is phenomenal. Like I hoped, this work came from a different angle than many books I've read for novel-writers, and I found it extremely helpful.