Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood

by Syd Field

Everyone has a story to tell, and millions of people across the globe want to write their generation's great screenplay. But what do you do  after  you've done all the hard work to get your story expressed as a script with solid structure, vibrant characters, scintillating dialogue and industry-standard formatting? Can you truly get it professionally produced? 
Selling your script to an established producer, studio, network or streaming service can mean a lot of money, so competition is fierce. And all those mysterious people with the power to make your entertainment-industry dreams come true... What do they want from you?  Do you need an agent and/or manager to get a sale?
In  Selling a Screenplay , Syd Field (best-selling author and world-renown lecturer/teacher of screenwriting) gives you an insider's look at the movie and TV industry, packed with essential tips from pros. Read this book and see how
This is a must-have guide for every aspiring screenwriter, filled with frank, real-life advice from influential Hollywood deal makers and celebrated screenwriters. They all started somewhere!

Genres: Film, Writing, Nonfiction, Reference

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Sydney Alvin Field was an American screenwriting guru who wrote several books on the subject of screenwriting. He also conducted workshops and seminars on the subject of producing salable screenplays. Hollywood film producers have increasingly used his ideas on structure as a guideline to a proposed screenplay's potential.

Reviews

[Gary Reger · Rating 3 out of 5]

First the confession: I didn't read this whole book. I got through the first 49 pages and then skipped around, a chapter here, a chapter there. So take my reaction with the grains of salt it deserves.

Field interviewed players at all levels of the movie business, from agents to script readers, to see what they would advise if a screenwriter hoped to sell a screenplay. While their answers are colored by their professional relation to the process of moving a screenplay from typewriter (more on that below) to premier, the advice they all give really boils down to two principles: write a good screenplay with strong characters and a compelling plot, and believe passionately in your project. Oh, and it helps a lot to know people.

That's about it. Just how this advice is supposed to help the hopeful writer at her computer in Iowa or Alabama isn't particularly clear.

Field marbles his advice with cute stories, several coming from the success that his screenwriting students had, others from his own long career.

I've read novels set in Hollywood written in the 1920s and 1990s, and it's striking how little the structure of its culture has changed. With its competitiveness, back-biting (which, however, Field rarely alludes to), personality- and network-driven decision-making, and focus on money and status, Field's Hollywood could be Fatty Arbuckle's. (Field in fact tried to write a screenplay about Arbuckle's trials, but couldn't come to an arrangement with the actor's lawyer's grandson for access to his papers.) Everyone wants to sell everyone else something. Sometimes Hollywood comes across as a brush salesmen's convention.

Today's Hollywood I know little about, but I suspect there have been at least some changes thanks to the explosion of venues demanding what Field unabashedly calls "product." (He seems oblivious to the ironies in treating the creativity he seems to insist on as if it discharged in vacuum cleaners.) When Field wrote in 1989, a handful of TV-based distributors had just begun to emerge. Today the market is bursting, and the demand for "product" must be astronomical. Whether that creates any wider opportunities for the new screenwriter I don't know.

Field's own career was not as a screenwriter but a mentor to screenwriters, teaching classes and publishing how-to books. Evidently his advice about the three-act structure has become gospel. And, to be perfectly honest, his basic advice is still no doubt well-taken: write a good script and believe in it. No guarantees, though.

[Laurie Woodward · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there is a lots of practical advice in this book, it is dated. Much of the information was relevant in the 1990's but is not as applicable today. For example, social media is barely mentioned. It is an interesting read about how Hollywood used to work and some of the movers and shakers of the past. Also, it advices how to present one's self professionally and there are several don'ts that never go out of style. For someone just getting started there are several good tips but for a screenwriter trying to compete in a digital age, it may not have a lot to offer.

[David How · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Book

The book was extremely enlightening of the ways to sell your screenplay and the realities of the industry. Yet, there were a lot of grammatical errors throughout the kindle version.

[Monzenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book's all right. It's not my cup of tea, but I can understand the appeal of showcasing the ins and outs of screenplay production.