Todd Croak-Falen’s Reviews > Crafty Screenwriting: Writing Movies That Get Made > Status Update

Over the years, I've picked up various screenplay-wording techniques from classes, trial & error, friends, and other screenplays, but this book's chapter on formatting is very helpful!

I'm glad he slams the "Rubber Ducky" technique. It's always stood out and bothered me in movies, although I never knew it had a term.

After a few pages that slowed me down because I didn't find them particularly helpful, this book is back with a vengeance, offering some great tips on "the secret lives of characters" that I hadn't heard before. It also admonishes against taking this technique too far -- if it's not in the story, how does the audience know it? I felt this way about the film "Collateral" after watching the special features.

Super-interesting to see where the various storytelling books agree and disagree. Whereas "Save the Cat" pushes structure, structure, structure, "Crafty Screenwriting" deliberately says that structure is not supercritical.

So far so good! I already like the tone of this one quite a bit (and I enjoyed his book "Crafty TV Writing").