Learn the rules of scriptwriting, and then how to successfully break them.Unlike other screenwriting books, this unique guide pushes you to challenge yourself and break free of tired, formulaic writing--bending or breaking the rules of storytelling as we know them. Like the best-selling previous editions, seasoned authors Dancyger and Rush explore alternative approaches to the traditional three-act story structure, going beyond teaching you "how to tell a story" by teaching you how to write against conventional formulas to produce original, exciting material. The pages are filled with an international range of contemporary and classic cinema examples to inspire and instruct. New to this edition. New chapter on the newly popular genres of feature documentary, long-form television serials, non-linear stories, satire, fable, and docudrama. New chapter on multiple-threaded long form, serial television scripts. New chapter on genre and a new chapter on how genre’s very form is flexible to a narrative. New chapter on character development. New case studies, including an in-depth case study of the dark side of the fable, focusing on The Wizard of Oz and Pan’s Labyrinth.

Alternative Scriptwriting 4E is an insightful and inspiring book on screenwriting concerned with challenging you to take creative risks with genre, tone, character, and structure. Concerned with exploring alternative approaches beyond the traditional three-act structure, Alternative Scriptwriting first defines conventional approach, suggests alternatives, then provides case studies. These contemporary examples and case studies demonstrate what works, what doesn't, and why. Because the film industry as well as the public demand greater and greater creativity, one must go beyond the traditional three-act restorative and predictable plot to test your limits and break new creative ground. Rather than teaching writing in a tired formulaic manner, this book elevates the subject and provides inspiration to reach new creative heights.

Going beyond the conventional three-act structure and exploring more inventive approaches, this text aims to challenge readers to take creative risks with genre, tone, character and structure.

The world in which we live and work today has created new working conditions where storytellers, screenwriters and filmmakers collaborate with colleagues from other countries and cultures. This involves new challenges regarding the practice of transcultural screenwriting and the study of writing screenplays in a multi-cultural environment. Globalisation and its imperatives have seen the film co-production emerge as a means of sharing production costs and creating stories that reach transnational audiences. Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World provides an interdisciplinary approach to the study of screenwriting as a creative process by integrating the fields of film and TV production studies, screenwriting studies, narrative studies, rhetorics, transnational cinema studies, and intercultural communication studies. The book applies the emerging theoretical lens of ‘transcultural studies’ to open new perspectives in the debate around notions of transnationalism, imperialism and globalisation, particularly in the screenwriting context, and to build stronger links across academic disciplines. This volume combines methods for studying, as well as methods for doing. It draws on case studies and testimonials from writers from all over the globe including South America, Europe and Asia. Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World is characterised by its scope, broad relevance, and emphasis on key aspects of screenwriting in an international environment.

Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect, Fourth Edition stands alone among screenwriting books by emphasizing that human connection, though often overlooked, is as essential to writing effective screenplays as conflict. This groundbreaking book will show you how to advance and deepen your screenwriting skills, increasing your ability to write richer, more resonant short screenplays that will connect with your audience. With her candid, conversational style, award-winning writer and director Claudia Hunter Johnson teaches you the all-important basics of dramatic technique and guides you through the challenging craft of writing short screenplays with carefully focused exercises of increasing length and complexity. In completing these exercises and applying Claudia’s techniques and insights to your own work, you will learn how to think more deeply about the screenwriter’s purpose, craft effective patterns of human change, and strengthen your storytelling skills. This new edition has been expanded and updated to include: A companion website (www.focalpress.com/cw/johnson) with ten award-winning short films featured in the book, including two outstanding, all-new short films—Intercambios and the Student-Emmy-Award-winning Underground A new chapter on scene and structure that will help you find the right structure for your short screenplay A new chapter on crafting effective dialogue and subtext that will teach you to make the most of every word and add further depth to your script

Alternative Scriptwriting 4E is an insightful and inspiring book on screenwriting concerned with challenging you to take creative risks with genre, tone, character, and structure. Concerned with exploring alternative approaches beyond the traditional three-act structure, Alternative Scriptwriting first defines conventional approach, suggests alternatives, then provides case studies. These contemporary examples and case studies demonstrate what works, what doesn't, and why. Because the film industry as well as the public demand greater and greater creativity, one must go beyond the traditional three-act restorative and predictable plot to test your limits and break new creative ground. Rather than teaching writing in a tired formulaic manner, this book elevates the subject and provides inspiration to reach new creative heights. Alternative Scriptwriting 4E covers: * The melodrama and the thriller * Adaptations from contemporary literature * Writing non-fictional narratives for the feature documentary * An in-depth exploration of point-of-view and perspective as expressive of the film writer's voice * Voice-oriented genres--docudrama, the fable and experimental narrative * Non-linear storytelling-the narrative strategies that are necessary to make an open-architecture story work * Considerations for writing for DV that speak to the flexibility and improvisation this medium allows

Working across contemporary histories of film and screenwriting, and US screenwriting manuals from the 1910s and 1920s, this volume breaks new ground in thinking about the nature of scripting, and how screenwriting took shape as a particular kind of practice.