I’ve read a few books on screenwriting now, the largest and heaviest of which has been The Screenwriter’s Bible by David Trottier. The book isn’t that long or wordy, so much as the print and the physical pages are large.
I guess a big, heavy, large print book seems more authoritative then and small little print one. It does make a noticeable difference for a traveling expat screenwriter though.
Anyway the “Bible” is billed as six books in one: a screenwriting primer, a screenwriting workbook, a formatting guide, a spec writing guide, a sales and marketing guide, and finally a screenwriter’s resource guide.
I would absolutely recommend this book.
I can’t think of anything I have against this book, other than I can tell David Trottier isn’t a fanatic about three act structure, a lot of people aren’t, I am however not one of those, so I would have to recommend another book (probably The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Screenwriting by Skip Press) to really drive the three act structure concept home.
The other strange thing about reading so many screenwriting “guru” books is that everyone wants to coin their own vocabulary, as a result certain concepts get named and renamed and named again. Is it twist, plot point, turning point, etc.?
This is where the book excels over the other books I’ve read: the primer, the formatting guide, and the sales & marketing guide.
It will clear up any misconceptions about what and why you should be writing a “spec” script as oppose to all the shooting scripts you download from the Internet.
As basic as it sounds I actually gained a lot from this, older screenplays and shooting scripts have such a different style (camera direction, etc.) it’s hard not let those bleed into your writing.
I feel that this book cleared up some of the basic misconceptions I had about what is a screenplay.
The formatting guide is great for reference. While there is no absolutely correct way of formatting, Trottier’s guide is a quick and easy way for finding industry-accepted techniques.
He makes it easy to reference by boiling everything down into a three-page screenplay. Get familiar with those three pages and you’ll be set for your own application of those techniques.
Lastly, his sales and marketing guide is like nothing else I have seen. He lists concrete steps to take after finishing your screenplay.
Reading this section is inspiring, at least in that there will be something to do with your screenplay after it is written.
This book is strong on basics and I recommend it to everyone.
-J Roland Kelly
