Here is a list that I dedicate to all writers whose works have been unfairly condemned. I suppose that includes most of us.

Rejection of  The Time Machine: “It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.”

Rejection of Altlas Shrugged: “Unsaleable and unpublishable.”

Rejection of Moby Dick: “We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the juvenile market. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…”

Rejection of Animal Farm: “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA”.

Rejection of Lady Windermere’s Fan: “Oh, my dear, sir.”

Rejection of Carrie: “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.”

Rejection of Catch 22: “…. it is really not funny on any intellectual level…”

Rejection of Lolita: “I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.”

Rejection of Lord of the Flies: “an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.”

Feel free to add your own to the list.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Much as I admire Elliot Grove for setting up Raindance and the British Independent Film Awards, I’m afraid I found this book a little unfocused.  It seems at times to be aimed at emerging British indie writers, but then a lot of the writing advice is lifted from the classic American screenwriting manuals which are aimed squarely at American writers who write or want to write predominantly for Hollywood. 

Grove begins by declaring that there are no rules to screenwriting, and then proceeds to fill most of the book’s pages with, um, a torrent of screenwriting rules. As a result, I can’t see this book being helpful to writers who are looking for tips on how to write outside traditional structures. As for those looking to stick to the rules, well there are plenty of books out there that lay down the law with more clarity and cohesion.

That said, Raindance’s website however is full of useful stuff.

Never judge a book by its cover, especially the fourth edition of this book, which takes the prize for the most uninspiring cover in the history of publishing.

But take a look inside, and you’ll see how unusually comprehensive this book is, with a whole chapter dedicated to formatting,  and another dedicated to selling your script. If you wanted just one screenwriting manual on your shelf, this would have to be it. Bear in mind however that, like all the classics, it has a bias towards commercial American films.  

If you’re a genre writer, you could get a lot out of John Truby. I wouldn’t recommend this book though. Order one of his electronic packages. I haven’t used any myself, but I’m sure they’re worthwhile, as Truby really does know his genres.

I’m a bit hesitant about recommending this book, as there’s a danger that it will do more harm than good. Truby is quite a  vociferous oponent of the three-act-structure, and yet he insists that you hit every sigle beat of whatever genre you’re working in. If you’re writing for Hollywood, then I think he’s right, and I think his emphasis on making all the beats original in some way is particularly appealing. The problem with this book though is that it’s too broad in its conceit.  Truby uses the breadth as a selling point, but I can’t see how it can be. It seems a contradiction that a guy who believes in structural horses for courses would write a book about rules to apply to a range of creative writing from short films to features and other media. 

While Field’s breakthrough book was Screenplay, as I said in my review of that book, it’s been made redundant in the last 10-15 years by a number of books that have built on it, and provided a more comprehensive and better-laid-out read.

The only Syd Field book I use time and again is this one, the Screenwriter’s Problem Solver. It’s a very useful book to have at your disposal as you flick through the first draft of your script - or better still, your first step outline. Bear in mind that it has a slight bias towards conventional American commercial films, but this isn’t really a problem even if you’re writing a European indie film, as so many of the principles still apply. For example, is the script too long or too short? Does it have too few or too many characters? Is there enough subtext? Is there too much description? There are so many questions that you need to ask about your script that you need them all to be in one place so that you can work methodically through them all and cross them off as you go along.  This is a very underrated book.

I don’t think I have to tell you to take this one with a pinch of salt.

We know it’s possible. Stallone wrote Rocky in a couple of days. Paul Andrew Williams wrote London to Brighton in a weekend. But are you or I going to write a good script in a few days or even a few weeks? I’d say we’re more likely to get struck by lightning, twice.

That said, this book’s weakness is also its strength: it makes you to get a whole screenplay done in only three weeks! So if you happen to have a period of 21 days at your disposal (e.g. if you’re a student on holiday, or are unemployed), then why not try this out? See it as a challenge, a bit of fun. Do it if you’re yet to write a feature-length script. See it as the one you need to get out of the way before you start writing proper screenplays! Just don’t choose a subject matter that will require any research!

If you find McKee too set in his ways and Snyder too shallow, you might get something out of Dr Seger’s more gentle, holistic approach to screenwriting.

Seger encourages you to look within for the answers, in order to produce work that is honest and fresh. Her approach is a little too exercise-focused for my liking, and is quite spiritual which might put some people off. All in all though, I think she’s definitely onto something and provides a great deal of inspiration for those on her wavelength. She also wrote Making a Good Script Great, which again would appeal to holistic writers.

I totally disagree with Lew Hunter who claims that the only manuals that are absolutely essential for budding screenwriters are this book and Aristotle’s Poetics.  It seems a peculiar assertion to say the least, as neither of these books is specifically geared towards screenwriting, which means they contain no advice on formatting, visual storytelling, script selling, pitching or marketing.  Additionally, both are hugely out of date, and therefore fail to speak directly to the new generation of screenwriters who are influenced by films such as Pulp Fiction and Being John Malkovich.  

Don’t get me wrong though; both books are brilliant and insightful, and definitely worth reading to get an overview of what makes a drama good or great (or bad!). And after all, it’s drama that we’re all writing, isn’t it? And as drama writing manuals go, The Art of Dramatic Writing is right up there.

The Sequence Approach has its roots in the earliest days of cinema projection when film stock would be wound around spools that could hold about a thousand feet. At eighteen frames per second, these lasted about 10-15 minutes. In the 1910s, although one-reelers were replaced by longer films, the reels still had to be projected one at a time, so there would be an interval between each one. That meant that films had to be structured in chunks of 10-15 minutes. By the ’30s, most cinemas had two projectors, which meant that films could be shown seamlessly. This was naturally a factor in the evolution of the feature film format. But as features continued to be screened seamlessly from beginning to end, producers and screenwriters continued to think in terms of reels, and would break scripts down into eight equal parts. This technique survives to this day, although without any necessity to make the parts equal in length. I’ve used it myself, in conjunction with the 3 Act Paradigm, and found it to be a very useful way to structure a screenplay.  

I kind of get the feeling that The Sequence Approach sets out to convince the reader that many great films have (consciously or unconsciously) used this approach, rather than setting out to show writers how their writing can benefit from using it.

The book breaks down a number of well-known films (e.g. Toy Story, Double Indemnity, Nights of Cabiria, Being John Malkovich) into their respective sequences, but I’m not convinced that this theoretical excercise has any basis for practical application. Maybe writers would benefit just as much from being told about this system in a nutshell, and then sitting down, combining it with the classical 3 Act structure and seeing if the method can improve the way they structure their work.

This book is subtitled “New (and Conventional) Ways of Writing for the Screen”, which makes it as far-reaching as any screenwriting manual that focuses on narrative.

Again, this book uses countless examples of films, old and new, but in a much more practical way than Dancyger and Rush’s Alternative Scriptwriting.  If you wanted just one screenwriting manual, I would suggest you went for Trottier’s Screenwriter’s Bible, but if you wanted just two manuals, perhaps this book would combine well with Your Screenplay Sucks! by William M. Akers.