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    The Screenwriter's Way: Master the Craft, Free the Art
    The Screenwriter's Way: Master the Craft, Free the Art
    The Screenwriter's Way: Master the Craft, Free the Art
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    The Screenwriter's Way: Master the Craft, Free the Art

    By Brian Craft

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    About this ebook

    THE SCREENWRITERS WAY is for writers that want to take action and get writing NOW! Designed by a working Hollywood screenwriter, this breakthrough guide empowers you to successfully tackle the hundreds of choices you will face in every act, on every page, in every scene.

    - Clarify and magnify your story idea in 6 easy steps.
    - Develop fully dimensional characters with the simple biography questionnaire.
    - Build your story foundation with the no-nonsense structure guide.
    - Unlock the power of your scenes with the straightforward Scene Primer.

    Free of the fluff and philosophy that can bog down other books, THE SCREENWRITER’S WAY takes you on a laser focused, step-by-step journey to clarify your idea and maximize your writing choices. It will teach you how to write EFFECTIVELY, allowing you to focus your creative energy and unleash your big screen success!

    THE SCREENWRITERS WAY
    Master the craft. Free the art. Sell your script!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrian Craft
    Release dateSep 23, 2013
    ISBN9781301674237
    The Screenwriter's Way: Master the Craft, Free the Art
    Author

    Brian Craft

    Brian Craft, author of 'THE SCREENWRITER'S WAY' series, has been a professional writer and designer for nearly two decades. After many years experience inventing and developing products for the global marketplace he turned his creative experience and creative process to his passions in film. He's written in many genres for TV and theatrical, along with developing and directing his own projects.He works as a professional reader for production companies, agents and sales agents as well as coaching writers and producers on how to develop their work and make it great. He currently resides in Los Angeles where he is a professional screenwriter.

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      Book preview

      The Screenwriter's Way - Brian Craft

      Preface

      The screenwriter’s way…

      Something about stories drives the human mind. We have the ability to be taken away by them and transported to someplace else; defying time and space. We live inside the characters. We make friends with them and experience their happiness and pain. From their journeys we actually learn about life. Sometimes just a little, other times we learn something profound. Movies are unique in the world of storytelling because they are visual and include the element of time. Science tells us that our brains can’t distinguish a movie from a dream, or a dream from real life. So when you see a movie you experience it more intensely than any other form of story. It happened to me the first time when I was a kid and I experienced Star Wars on the big screen. It was a cannon shot into my world and ignited a great passion for story and especially for movies. In time I became compelled to tell my own stories to the world. I had something to say. I had some emotional spark inside me that I wanted someone else to experience too. That’s what we do as artists; we use our craft to convey our emotions to another person in hopes of getting them to feel the emotion that we did.

      My first screenplays were rough to say the least. But I knew a lot about building a creative process from being trained as a product designer before I was in movies. I knew that there had to be a process for writing and that it would help me bring my ideas to life. I realized that the roadblock to getting an idea from my head to the screen was the craft that embodies screenwriting. Screenwriting is an applied art, or a craft that is used to set up what is the actual final telling of your story: the film.

      Screenwriting has a ton of rules, format, structure, and guides that not only shape scripts into a blueprint for the making of the movie, but more importantly they create a framework for you to focus your story and characters. The craft is a set of tools. Like a stone carver and his tools, you need to master your writer tools so that they not only don’t get in the way of your story, but they actually set it free.

      "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

      Michelangelo

      The screenwriter’s way is a path that walks the line between art and craft. We are creating stories in order to sell emotion. We are fueled with dreams and ideas that inspire us to write, but must work within screenwriting rules that are demanding. You should learn the rules so they become the champion of your art, the springboard for your story, and the framework to convey your emotions.

      ‘The Screenwriter’s Way’ is drawn from the real working process of screenwriting; taking a story from idea to scripting. I use it, it works, and it has worked for many others. It is a working process without fluff, and light on theory and philosophy. It’s a straight forward, step-by-step, stripped down, writer’s process. Without a doubt you can get from idea to finished script with this process, but I urge you to use this process as a starting point for your own process development. Master these skills and add to them, subtract pieces, adjust pieces; unfold the craft of story design so that you can bring your ideas to life, pure and with emotional impact. Deliver your inspiration through your craft to an audience and hopefully you’ll inspire them.

      Master the craft so you can set free the art inside you!

      <><><>

      How to use this book

      This is an action-oriented book, meaning you should be taking action to write your story along with the steps presented in the coming pages. The sections and steps are set up to follow from start to finish like you were actually building a story meant for scripting a feature screenplay. You’re not going to get a lot of philosophy about story and screenplay; you are getting action built on a framework to get you writing now.

      Since the information in this book is an actual writer’s process, you can work with it from start to finish or use it in the future as a reference guide by going to whatever sections you need. It was originally presented as 6 separate books, each covering a specific aspect of the writing process toward creating a screenplay. They are compiled here to give you the full picture from start to finish.

      If you follow through all the steps you’ll definitely get to the finish with everything you need to write your script, and the Dynamic Dialogue and Description section will help guide you through your scripting choices.

      Trust the process, the structure, the rules and guides because they will advance your knowledge of screenwriting. My advice to you is that you commit to knowing your craft, work on it, build it and challenge yourself. Part of ‘the screenwriter’s way’ is hard work and perseverance. No matter the information you get, you will learn it, relearn it, probably forget some and learn it again.

      But you can get there.

      <><><>

      THE SCREENWRITER’S WAY

      Capture and Magnify Your Story Idea

      Introduction

      BAM! Inspiration has hit you like a lightning bolt; a story idea just lit up your brain! You see images, characters and scenes, all the jumps and links through your mind make total sense. It could be brilliant! Audiences will laugh, and cry, and love what you created…

      But as you try

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