Okay so there’s a lot of authors of screenwritingbooks that make me cringe. Syd Field is balancing on that edge but the final verdict is: he isn’t one of them. I think this book is useful whenever you hit a bump in the screenwritingroad and are so close to the material that you can’t see clearly anymore.
I do have to say though that always with these books there’s things in terms of terminology that confuses me. That’s mostly caused by authors not using terms precisely enough or getting carried away with metaphors in the intention to explain it clearly. Syd Field does that too, for example when trying to explain structure vs paradigm vs form vs context. First he kind of translates these terms to an analogy of a glass of water, but the translation from the analogy to what it’d concretely mean for a script you have to do partially by yourself. That is a recipe for misunderstanding in my opinion. Also, on a sidenote, I’m doubtful whether he explains the term ‘form’ correctly (or maybe it’s just one of these terms that annoyingly most people have a different definition of).
That bugs me as it can cause confusion, and this is a book that claims to find clarity and solutions.
Having that said, I still wouldn’t advice against purchasing this book, especially as his tone of voice is motivating and kind. It’s just one of these books you might browse through every so often, when you’re looking for a comforting pad on the shoulder during writing struggles (l o l).
Ps: he does by the way incorrectly define or use the term ‘drama’. He says “drama is conflict, conflict is action”, while it’s rather the other way around (Drama = to act, thought I’d write that here, might people get confused)… just another personal pet peeve of mine as ‘acting’ and ‘conflict’ can’t be used interchangeably and don’t even have to implicate one and another. Anyway, we get the gist of it, so it’s fine but still I think with these kind of books terms should be used precisely. Ok bye