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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't live up to its billing, 26 Jul 2003
By A Customer
This book promises a lot but delivers little. I was expecting it to give some specific insight into the structure and format of screenwriting. Unfortunately what you get is a 260 page book, of which only a paltry 65 pages are of the contributor’s advice. This mainly boils down to four chapters consisting of four people who've written plays and screenplays talking about themselves and their own writing experiences in an anecdotal rather than informative way.The rest of the book consists of a 12 page example of the "worst possible play" which they inform us is so bad that it's used as a teaching aid. Quite bizarrely that's all they tell us. There's no further elaboration on it whatsoever. Would it have killed them to write a few pages more pages explaining why they considered it to be bad and highlighting certain areas of it, explaining what's wrong and how it could be made better? It is after all supposed to be teaching the reader something. The current way it's presented is of no use what so ever. Following the useless play you get the listings. These take up 170 pages of the book! and comprise the contact details of various television channels, radio stations, producers, agents, production companies, writing courses, festivals, useful websites and so on. This section is one of the few useful areas of the book. The authors/publishers probably found it useful as well because at 170 pages it turns what is little more than a pamphlet into a book and gives them the opportunity to charge accordingly. The only other worthwhile part I could find was the Q and A style interview with Kate Rowland (The BBC's creative director for new writing). In this she gives a good insight into what goes on behind the scenes: How many scripts they receive, how many are considered worthwhile, how they encourage those who've submitted well written scripts, how the scripts are assessed, what they're looking for in the scripts they receive, common failings that they frequently come across and general advice on what to do and what not to do. If you're looking for a book that's going to make you a better writer than you where before you read it, this certainly isn't it. The only real reason to get this book would be for the listings and that's purely for practical reasons as everyone needs to know where to send what.
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