Alternative Scriptwriting: Successfully Breaking the Rules

click here for more details, find new or used items	Ken Dancyger, Jeff Rush Our price £18.04 (£18.99) New from £10.58 Used from £10.58 Pages: 424 (Paperback) ISBN: 0240808495 Pub: Focal Press Pub date: 2006-10-13 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 107858

Reader Reviews:

Good information spoilt by sloppy mistakes (0/0 people found this helpful)

This book has a lot of solid information on how to write and analyse screenplays and breaking out of the standard "Hollywood" three-act structure as outlined by Syd Field etc. Undermining this are some silly errors which make you doubt the rest of the solid information

To give a few examples of the errors that I spotted:
They call the main character in Hitchcock's Vertigo by two different names (it's Scottie not Johnny); misspell Nabokov, Clouzot, Joe Mantegna, Dovzhenko; call Robert De Niro's character in The King of Comedy Rupert Popkin (it's actually Pupkin); confuse the director of Muriel's Wedding P.J. Hogan with Crocodile Dundee actor Paul Hogan; think Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart is a "classic war film" (they must mean Malle's Lacombe Lucien); and finally (on page 216) can't quite decide whether Yojimbo and Seven Samurai are remakes of classic Westerns or inspired them. To quote: "Kurosawa made a gangster film, High and Low, as well as two films remade from classic Westerns, The Seven Samurai remade as The Maginificent Seven, and Yojimbo, remade as A Fistful of Dollars." I think they mean remade INTO but it would leave most people scratching their heads. Surely a moment checking these things wouldn't be too much trouble.

Once Focal Press properly copy-edit this book for the next edition I would certainly recommend it but until then it might be better to stick with Syd Field, Robert McKee or one of their many colleagues.

A great book about storytelling forms... (0/4 people found this helpful)

No book in the Universe will teach you how to write, or how to tell a story. The intention of this book is to compell the reader to think about many common places of the story telling in general, and the scriptwriting in particular, like structure, genres, etc. So don't expect any chewed prescription; be ready instead to bite on your own.

Thought provoking, but not very well presented. (4/5 people found this helpful)

While the concepts presented in the book were interesting, I found the writing itself not very compelling. Furthermore, the frequent typographical errors (and/or factual errors) were distracting and caused me to question the content. As an example, the authors use the phrase, "It is worth nothing...," when in fact they mean, "It is worth noting."

A fresh look at screenwriting. (3/3 people found this helpful)

If you have already read the "how-to" books from Syd Field, Linda Seger, and others, then you must know that the three most important things you should be doing to enhance your craft are: reading screenplays, watching movies, and writing screenplays. After that, if you still need some motivation to write, then reading an exceptional book such as "Alternative Screenwriting" might be just the kick in the pants you need to keep you going. It's presentation is clear and fresh. And it does not just emphasise "alternative" approaches, either. In fact, it presents some of the most useful and succinct summaries of "mainstream" dramatic screenplay structure I have ever seen. This is not just another "how-to" book.

I bought it twice. (2/2 people found this helpful)

I already had the earlier edition of this book, but bought the update, thinking that it could even help my writing by osmosis. My god, I was right. This is not a book to be taken lightly, nor is it a "new" edition by virtue of adding a couple of new words, an updated comment here and there. These authors take their task very seiously, including taking to heart comments they'd received about the first edition, and making sweeping and important changes for this new version. Buy this book. It couldn't hurt. It could change your life. At the very least, it will give you a new list of rentals for the video store. And you'll understand why you like them.

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