About
the Book:
The Tools of Screenwriting is an essential book for anyone
who wants to write a script that will be filmed. It is a core text
used at top film programs worldwide.
Screenwriting is the art of telling stories dramatically – and
it can be learned. Acclaimed USC screenwriting teacher David
Howard has guided hundreds of students to careers in writing for
film and television. Although there is no standard formula for
writing a screenplay, there are central principles that all good
screenplays share.
Edward Mabley wrote Dramatic Construction about the
craft of playwriting in 1972, and Frank Daniel discovered and
adopted it for his own use in teaching screenwriting. Twenty years
later, even though the book had gone out of print, it was still the
book of choice for giving a simple and clearly laid out introduction
to dramatic theory to screenwriting students. But the book was
difficult to find so David Howard (influenced by Frank
Daniel) dedicated his time, energy, and thought to transforming
the original book into The Tools of Screenwriting. Keeping the
core of Edward Mabley's ideas and concepts intact, he
redirected all of the tools, examples, and quotations toward film,
expanded and explained the critical elements, and analyzed their use
in a variety of important scripts.
David Howard gets to the very core of screenwriting in The
Tools of Screenwriting, focusing on the principal elements a
script, like plot, dramatic structure, dialogue, character
development, setting, imagery, and how they specifically apply to the
special art of filmmaking as opposed to other forms of writing. These
elements are guideposts for the aspiring screenwriter, and they can
be used in different ways to accomplish a variety of ends. By using
specific examples found in sixteen famous scripts, including like
Citizen Kane, E.T., One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chinatown, and
The Godfather, he shows how these elements look when masterfully
applied.
What people say:
"The Tools of Screenwriting
tosses aside ponderous paradigms
and takes you directly to the heart of good writing. I hope every
aspiring screenwriter reads it." — John
Furia Jr.,
a prolific writer for movies and television who wrote episodes for
many popular series, including Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, The
Waltons, and Hawaii Five-O
"This
is not simply a book about making bucks with your screenplays. ...The
authors show an important connection between learning to screenwrite
and examining the elements of theater." — Film
Threat
"Howard
and Mabley dearly define the building blocks of storytelling."
— Booklist
"An
excellent volume for the student of screenwriting at almost any
level. Recommended." — Classic Images
"David Howard calls
this book 'a writer's guide.' I think it's a wonderful and
indispensable producer's guide to story, storytelling, and
screenwriting." — Lawrence
Turman,
producer of The Graduate, Running Scared, The Flim-Flam Man, and
other films
"What
David Howard has
done with The Tools of
Screenwriting is to reveal for
me and for all readers just how stories work; he shows that there are
no absolute rules, but there are principles that can help a beginning
writer gain understanding of all the elements that go into the
creation of a 'good story well told'."
— Diane
Keaton
"The
Tools of Screenwriting is the
best primer on the craft, far better than the usual
paint-by-the-numbers sort of books that abound."
— Frank
Pierson,
Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Cool Hand Luke, Dog Day
Afternoon, Presumed Innocent, and A Star is Born
About the Author:
David Howard is an
internationally known American screenwriter, script doctor/consultant
and educator. He taught at USC's School of Cinematic Arts for 24
years and was the founding director of its Graduate Screenwriting
Program. He has led screenwriting workshops around the world: from
nearly every country in Western Europe to Korea, New Zealand, Brazil,
Indonesia, Mexico and Cuba. He has worked as a professional script
doctor and story consultant on dozens of produced projects for film,
television and other media around the world.
Edward Mabley (1906-1984) was
an American playwright and television director. He wrote radio and
television plays, had two plays produced on Broadway, and directed
for CBS-TV from 1952 to 1969. He also taught at the New School for
Social Research and was the author of Dramatic Construction.
Frank Daniel (1926-1996) was
a Czech-American screenwriter, film director and teacher. He is known
for developing the sequence paradigm of screenwriting. He was Dean of
FAMU, the Czech film school, during the 1960s Prague Spring. He was
the first dean of the Center for Advanced Film Studies at the
American Film Institute. He went on to become the first dean of the
newly expanded USC School of Cinema-Television. He was also an
Artistic Director of Sundance Institute.