Trafford Publishing: Grow A Screenplay The Natural Way, Second Edition

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Grow A Screenplay The Natural Way, Second Edition

by George Perez

140 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0307; ISBN 1-55369-494-5; US$19.95, C$25.95, EUR16.00, £11.10

This book describes the method for writing a motion picture screenplay directly from a short story.

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about the book about the author comments sample excerpts catalogue info

About the Book

Grow A Screenplay The Natural Way describes a method of writing a motion picture screenplay directly from a short story. The book is divided into three sections, which are: The Introduction; Part I, the story--contains the short story on which the screenplay is based; Part II, the screenplay--shows how a movie is written directly from the short story. In effect, the screenplay grows right out of the story! The market for this book is anyone and everyone who ever dreamed of writing a screenplay.
Grow A Screenplay The Natural Way does something other script writing books do not. Other books tell the reader where to put a character's name and where to set the tab stops on the typewriter or computer. They talk about heroes and heroines, plot and structure, positive and negative space. However, those books do not model a method that the majority of inexperienced writers, attempting to write their first screenplay, can successfully follow.
Grow A Screenplay The Natural Way will show you, step by step, how easy and fun it can be, with a little bit of work, to complete a motion picture screenplay-- without all the hassle and in less than half the time. With a copy of this book you will be able to stop dreaming and start writing, today!

About the Author

George Perez is a stage and film actor. The plays he has appeared in include The Rivals, Rehearsal or Murder, The Man in the Bowler Hat, and Annie; his films include, Counting Days, Night or Nixes, Uniforms, Terminal Entry. He was a Drama Major at Cal State L.A. and attended the Academy of Dramatic Art in Hollywood, CA. He has written short stories, essays, plays and poems. His essay "Going Back," about his visit to Cuba in 1996, was published in the Bellingham Herald.
When George decided to write a screenplay, he picked up a couple of scrip-formatting manuals and studied them carefully. He soon realized that these books, while excellent sources for structuring and laying out a screenplay, really do very little as far as how to write a screenplay goes. So he decided to write his own book on screenwriting. Since George has worked as a Spanish Interpreter/Translator for the past ten years, he became fascinated with the thought of "translating," that is, of transforming a short story into a screenplay.
George lives in Bellingham, Washington. He is also a artist and illustrator. As a child, he would draw animals and things using the colored pencils his mother gave him. Twice he has participated in the Bellingham Chalk Art Festival and both times his work has appeared in the front page of the Bellingham Herald. He has many other ideas for screenplays and he dreams of someday seeing his stories on the big screen.

Reviews

* A step-by-step guide to writing a screenplay. This book lays out the writing process in a way that is easy to understand and follow. Mr. Perez does a great job of teaching by example. He takes a short story and turns it into a screenplay right before your eyes. Along the way he shows you how not be restricted by the original story, to embrace your creative side and have fun with the process. A great resource for people who don't have the time or money for a screenwriting class as well as a great refresher for those who haven't written for awhile.

SM, Kentucky
* I truly enjoyed this book. I found it to be something accessible for all readers. I also find it to be a time saver and more concise than many other texts on the subject I have read. The book makes the most technical, frustrating act of writing a screenplay simple and fast. Any book that can cut the time of writing a screenplay in half is indispensable in my opinion.

DF, Virginia
* Accomplished with a light hand coupled with a respect to [the] audience that translates like a conversation with a knowledgeable good friend with whom you share a love of the art of storytelling.

JD, Texas

* What a refreshing way to detail the process of writing screenplays! It is thorough yet witty, intense yet relaxed. In writing it as such, one who is writing their own screenplay is secure - allowing their creative juices to flow.

AL, New York
* I loved the breakdown of how to do your best on writing your own screenplay. It was very informative and helpful, it also gave me an inside look of how others would benefit from writing their screenplay, different scenarios and all. I would highly recommend this book. It's a great learning tool and would benefit any writer.

AJ, Tennessee
* The narration is in a casual tone, and things are written just as if someone was speaking. Seeing how Mr. Perez took his short story and transformed it into a full-length screenplay... it was very cool. This book will serve as an excellent reference to script writing in general.

RO, Connecticut
* Easy going and positive. The strength of the book is that it shows by example how one can go from a mediocre story to a better screenplay.

TM, British Columbia
* This book is easy to read and understand.

SH, Connecticut
* The book "delivers" what the author claims. I feel the author did a great job all around. He kept the process of screenwriting simple and readable. The book was focused and complete. George is very honest in his intentions of the book. Rather than weighing you down with details, he encourages the writer to create from within himself. The title is appropriate for the book; it gives you a good idea of what the content will be. George provides you [with] inspiration and basic skills that can be used in writing your own screenplay.

MS, California
A great method of self-education for someone not wishing to spend astronomical fees for classes and workshops. I found this book to be highly educational and easy to follow. The author did an excellent job on the screenplay featured as an example in the book. The plot kept my attention and cleverly gave several examples of direction. This book makes screenwriting seem like a natural progression from a simple short story. I find the theories behind the book to be inventive and fascinating.

Anon., Virginia

Sample Excerpts

PREFACE

While anyone can write a screenplay using this book as a guide, no guarantee is made that your screenplay will be made into a movie, or that your script will be considered "good " by anyone.
Having said that, anyone who follows the method outlined in this book, will, in a relatively short period of time, have a completed screenplay, regardless of his/her level of experience and expertise as a screenwriter.
What happens with your screenplay after that is beyond the scope of this book. Like with anything else, becoming a good screenwriter requires knowledge, practice, and experience. If your goal is to write a screenplay for fun, then this is a great little book that will show you exactly how to do that. But if your sights are set on "breaking into Hollywood," then you're going to need a little more work. Just the same, this book will guide you in getting that first screenplay out of your head and down on paper.
Don't expect to be a success after writing just one screenplay. Write ten. Write twenty screenplays. When you complete a script, don't think that it will be perfect after the very first draft. Instead, be prepared to do several rewrites - maybe a googol of rewrites. And read. Read other people's scripts and see what they've done. Also, watch a lot of movies and see which ones are getting the reviews and which ones are not; which ones are a hit at the box office and which ones flop. Like it or not, filmmaking is about moneymaking.
But someone has to write the movies that make the big bucks!

INTRODUCTION

How wonderful it would be to write a motion picture screenplay, to have it become a great feature film, a blockbuster, the next Star Wars, or some totally different kind of film. Wow, that would be something!
Do you want to write a movie? Do you think you have a good idea that you KNOW could be made into a great movie...if only you could get the darn thing written down--from beginning to end?
If you are serious about writing a screenplay, you've probably already picked up a book on how to format your script. That book tells you where to put a character's name, where to set the tab stops on your typewriter or word processor; it tells you the difference between Direction and Dialogue in a screenplay. Maybe you've already purchased one of the various scriptwriting programs available to use on your computer.
No doubt you've learned from those formatting resources that you need a Hero or Heroine, perhaps in the role of underdog, lost soul, universal human, idol. Furthermore, you may have seen that you need Connection, Plot, Structure, a Dramatic Center and Theme, Positive and Negative Space.
Possibly, you've also come across a cute, little book that tells you how to write your movie in three weeks. And now you may think that you're really getting some place! Why you've discovered through this little book that a movie is written in three Acts; that Act I is from page 1 to about page 30, Act II is from pages 30 to 90, and Act III from pages 90 to 120; that the movie starts on page 1; that on page 30 an event will occur that lands the hero or heroine into hot water. In Act II is where our hero/heroine encounters all kinds of obstacles and all hell breaks loose!In Act III, the resolution of the film begins.
Well whoopee! By now you are probably really frustrated.
So you have your idea, and your format book and/or software. Now what? How do you write the script?
This is exactly the situation I ran into when I tried to write my own screenplay. I went looking for ways to help me realize my dream, but there was nothing that I could really use. Short of spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars attending a script-writing school or workshop, I just could not find any instructions that would take me, step by step, through the creation, development, and completion of a motion picture screenplay. To me, it was plain that if I wanted a simpler, clearer, more effective and thorough method, one that would quickly guide me through the writing of a screenplay, I would have to come up with that method myself.
Then inspiration hit me! I thought, Why not take a story, one that I have already written, and simply go through it, sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by- paragraph, and transform it into a screenplay. Basically, it would be a matter of adapting the story to the format of a movie script.
However, before embarking on the challenging task of performing major surgery on a short story, I started wondering whether someone had already had the same idea, and had written a book about it. I went out to several bookstores, and did some searching on the Internet. Surprisingly, I found no books that did exactly what I was proposing to do. How exciting for me, I thought. Apparently I had a new idea for writing a screenplay that had never been written about. So I gathered my several books on the subject of screenplay formatting, and set about the task.
A couple of months later, I had completed my first motion picture screenplay, based on a short story! I was amazed at how simple it was to go from a story to a screenplay, once I understood how a screenplay was constructed. In the process, I became a scriptwriter.
Thus was created Grow A Screenplay The Natural Way. I believe that the word grow in the title is truly descriptive as this is precisely what takes place. Think of the story as the seed, and the script as the plant that grows from it.
Now I want to share with you what I consider to be the very best and easiest method for someone--with little to no screenwriting experience--to take a story (any story) and convert it into a screenplay.
You want to write a movie? This is how you do it!
The prerequisite for growing a screenplay is that you have a story. It doesn't have to be a long story. A ten to fifteen page short story will do quite nicely. And it doesn't even have to be your own. There are plenty of stories already written that you can use.
Remember though, that you'll need permission from the author or publisher if you want to use someone else's story as the basis for your screenplay. This is why I recommend that you write your own.
Do you have a story? Well, let's get going!

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