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The book arrived in my mailbox ahead of schedule. I enjoyed reading the guide from cover to cover. Excellent value for the money. This is a beautifully done guide to writing a screenplay in the accepted format.
I received this package on time, the cover and pages was almost brand new. I am completely satisfied with this order.
Script formatting and scheduling programs are great timesaving tools, but you should be telling the programs how to format your script, not the other way around. This book is MUST HAVE for anyone who wants to be a professional script coordinator or staff writer, and for anyone who wants their scripts to look just like professional ones. It contains THE industry standard for how scripts should look -- which is sometimes not the default setting of those expensive script programs. Combine this with Ralph Singleton's Film Scheduling/Film Budgeting Workbook. I've worked in the hour-long TV business as writer's assistant, then staff writer, then producer, for almost 15 years, and I recommend this book to everyone I work with and all my students. This book was written by professional studio typists, back before there were word processors, when every produced script was typed by people who did that as their full time job. It isn't really designed for, or necessary for, people who are just starting out, although I personally think it should be required reading for every aspiring writer, especially in TV, because understanding how a script is used as a blueprint for filming, such how the scene headers are used to create the shooting schedule, can really help new writers to understand how to create a script that is not only interesting but filmable.
I suppose it's okay, but not awesome. Of those books, this one is likely one of the least helpful.
You'll get modern formatting information from these books PLUS a lot more useful advice about how to write well. and hasn't been updated.
It was writen in 1983. Two newer books I would recommend instead would be CRAFTY SCREENWRITING by Alex Epstein (2002) and HOW NOT TO WRITE A SCREENPLAY by Denny Flinn (1999).
I've just finished my first script. I've read a half dozen books on screenplays.
I suspect that much of the formatting advice this book offers is now out of date, old fashioned to what professional script writers are doing this days.
It does have some, however I found another book which is more what I was looking for. I bought this book thinking it would give me all the technical terms and definitions of a script. This book is useful (meaning I did not return it) however, it is not easy to read if you know nothing about scriptwriting to begin with.
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