Prewriting Your Screenplay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Generating Stories

✍ Scribed by Michael Tabb

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 247
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Prewriting Your Screenplay cements all the bricks of a story’s foundations together and forms a single, organic story-growing technique, starting with a blank slate. It shows writers how to design each element so that they perfectly interlock together like pieces of a puzzle, creating a stronger story foundation that does not leave gaps and holes for readers to find. This construction process is performed one piece at a time, one character at a time, building and incorporating each element into the whole.

The book provides a clear-cut set of lessons that teaches how to construct that story base around concepts as individual as the writer’s personal opinions, helping to foster an individual writer’s voice. It also features end-of-chapter exercises that offer step-by-step guidance in applying each lesson, providing screenwriters with a concrete approach to building a strong foundation for a screenplay. This is the quintessential book for all writers taking their first steps towards developing a screenplay from nothing, getting them over that first monumental hump, resulting in a well-formulated story concept that is cohesive and professional.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Figures
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Preface
Act 1 Story origins
1 Premise
2 Genre
3 The brainstorm
Act 2 Character creation
4 Character development
5 Protagonist
6 Antagonist
7 Can the protagonist be the antagonist?
8 Love interests
9 Mentor
10 Dual mentors
11 Allies
12 Final reflections on characters
Act 3 Culmination
13 Some assembly required
14 From concept to story
15 Loglines
16 Three-act structure
17 Reverse engineering from plot to premise
Final words of advice
Bibliography
Special thanks
Illustrators
About the author
Endorsements
Index