Book description
Unlike most how-to books on screenwriting, Writing in Pictures is
highly practical, offering a realistic guide to the screenwriting
profession, as well as concrete practical guidance in the steps
professional writers take to write a screenplay that comes from the
heart instead of the pocketbook. The readeris taken through the
nitty-gritty process of conceiving, outlining, constructing, and
writing a screenplay in the professional format, with clear and
concise examples offered for every step in writing a short dramatic
film. Writing in Pictures offers straight talk, no mumbo-jumbo or
gimmicks, just a methodical, step-by-step process that walks the
reader through the different stages of writing a screenplay -- from
idea to outline to character biography to treatment to step outline to
finished screenplay. Using well-known films and screenplays, both
contemporary and classic, to illustrate its lessons, Writing in
Pictures also offers comments from famous screenwriters past and
present and insightful stories (often colorful and funny) that
illuminate aspects of the craft.
Joseph McBride is a film historian and associate professor in
the Cinema department at San Francisco State University. His many
books include Searching for John Ford, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of
Success, Steven Spielberg: A Biography, Hawks on Hawks, Whatever
Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career, as
well as the critical studies John Ford (1974, with Michael Wilmington)
and Orson Welles.
