Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 26-30 of 94
 This is what to expect: to learn how to form a script April 30, 2006
Celeste Thoms (Rochester,NY)
Very good book to learn the rules and structure of a screenplay. I believe this book really helps to breakdown the screenplay so that it's not as difficult to write. The only thing with this book I would like to have been different is some of the movies. Some of the movies he chose to talk about I have not seen before. When I rented them to understand what he was talking about I didn't really like any of the movies he picked. I guess it's just a different generation.
If you are looking at this book to buy this is what you should expect: you will learn the three act structure and how to break it down to focus on the important aspects of writing. Watch a lot of movies (that you like) and study them with the book, it helps. If you are a beginner, this book is a great place to start. He does get a little redundant at times, but it's still a good book.
 Didn't help me at all April 15, 2006
deborah
5 out of 14 found this review helpful
This book is very much oriented around following a certain structure. Syd focuses on describing the three act structure and how to build your screenplay in this structure. While structure definitely is a valuable element, I would not recommend anybody concentrating on it too much, cause the right structure will come in the right way for your script. Much more important elements like how to create rich characters and to enhance your story are not dealt with very much. If creative advice is given it comes across in a quite rigid way, and is lacking foundation. You really feel that Syd didn't gain his knowledge by working as a professional screenwriter, but just by analyzing them. I am missing that kind of sensitivity, creativity and flexibility in his messages to writers that would come from persons who have really written screenplays themselves. To sum it up: The book was not valuable for me, in fact it left me disappointed and a bit frustrated. Other screenwriting books on the contrary have been a very inspiring and motivating source!
When cotton candy goes bad... November 19, 2005
Jay A. Goemmer (Twin Falls, Idaho, USA)
10 out of 26 found this review helpful
I thought Fred Saberhagen's "Berserker Fury" (1997) was redundant. But while Syd Field's "Screenplay" offers plenty of reassurance to the wanna-be screenwriter, pretty soon I got the point and was tired of all the cheerleading.
Field may indeed have something substantial to say, but I couldn't help wondering if this book started out as photocopied handouts (since Field apparently taught at Sherwood Oaks Experimental College) and ended up as a hardbound book. That led me to question if the revisions to the successive editions of the book (1979, 1982, 1994) didn't simply consist of inserting additional redundancies.
If you can stand to wade through (and/or "weed through") the pep talk, you might actually get something out of this book. I couldn't, so I didn't.
That means it's time to drag out J. Michael ("Babylon 5," "Murder, She Wrote") Straczynski's "The Complete Book of Scripwriting" (subtitled "The all-in-one guide to writing and selling screenplays, teleplays, theatrical plays, radio scripts and animation scripts").
one of a few 'bibles' of screenwriting, Field knows his stuff November 8, 2005
Reuben I. Thaker MD MPH (USA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This text is more 'how to' then McKee's Story, though both are excellent. The technological information on writing with programs accurately states that such programming should not take the place of creative thought.
The programs have come a long way since then, but has the craft of screenwriting? Did this year's summer blockbuster onslaught show growth of Hollywood? Or is Hollywood a perpetual adolescent? Field's work has stood the test of time, and his techniques are clear and simple. I am still working on my first few scripts, and have benefited immensely from this recommendation by an accomplished writer. How lucky to be one of his students, I guess this is close!
boring and academic October 9, 2005
Christopher Lansdown (Ithaca, NY USA)
10 out of 20 found this review helpful
Of the various books about screenplay writing I've aquired recently, the only one I'm really dissapointed with is this one. It reads something like a decent academic text for someone who hasn't any notion of how to write a story at all, and needs enough of the basics that they'll be prepared to write at least badly. There's nothing that I can see which is wrong with it, I just found it to be a waste of paper, money, and time.
(The one good thing I have to say about it is that in one of the last chapters Field describes the process of showing one's work to others -- that everyone is (or thinks that they are) a writer, and unless they're very good will try to rewrite your story to be the one that they want to tell, not yours.)
I heartily recommend Crafty Screenwriting (by Alex Epstein) over this book. It's fresher, much better written, vastly more engaging, contains a lot more useful information, and is actually helpful to write stories that will work as movies and still be good stories.
Showing reviews 26-30 of 94
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