Grow a Screenplay the Natural Way
- Book Review,
by George Perez
Book Description
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 an actor, writer and artist, and lives in Bellingham, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. He was born in Havana, Cuba and moved to the U.S. as a child, after Castro took over Cuba, when he was sent to Miami, Florida, to live with his sister and her family. George is also a certified English/Spanish interpreter and translator. He is a shaman and spiritual warrior, loves animals and the great outdoors.
Excerpted from Grow a Screenplay the Natural Way by George Perez. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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 do want to write 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 even tells you the difference between Direction and Dialogue in a screenplay. Maybe you've already purchased one of those scriptwriting programs for your computer. No doubt you've learned from those formatting books that you need a Hero/Heroine, perhaps in the role of Underdog, Lost Soul, Universal Human, Idol; that you need Connection, Plot, Structure, a Dramatic Center and Theme, Positive and Negative Space. So you have your idea, and your format book and/or software. Now what? How do you write the script? And perhaps you also came across a little book that tells you how to write your movie in three weeks. Now you think you're getting some place! Why you've discovered 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; on page 30 an event will occur that lands the hero or heroine into hot water. In Act II is where she/he 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. 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 materials that would take me, step by step, through the creation, development, and completion of a motion picture screenplay. Then inspiration hit me! I thought, Why don't I take a story, one I have already written, and simply go through it, sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph. Basically, it would be a matter of adapting the story to the format of a screenplay. I gathered my several books on the subject of screenplay formats, and set about the task. I was amazed at how simple it was to go from story to screenplay, once I understood how a screenplay was constructed. Happily, a couple of months later, I had completed my first motion picture screenplay! All I did was take a short story and format it to the guidelines gathered from those script-formatting manuals. In the process, I became a scriptwriter. Now I want to share with you what I think is the very best and easiest method for someone, with little to no script-writing experience, to take a story--any story--and turn it into a screenplay. You want to write a movie? This is how you do it! The prerequisite for growing your screenplay the natural way 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 story. There are plenty of stories already written that you could 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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