The Three Stages of Screenwriting

Hello, dear LetsSchmooze readers. I alerted you it would be coming a few weeks ago, and now it’s here. My book on screenwriting, The Three Stages of Screenwriting is now available in print (from Amazon) and ebook (from Smashwords). More retailers should be carrying it shortly. I have spent more than two years working on this book, and I’m very proud of it.

If you’d like to read an excerpt of the book, one is available here. If you’d like to find out more about the book, please visit the ScreenMaster Books website.

I divided the book into three parts to reflect the three stages of the screenwriting process (hence the title). The sections cover the following topics:

Stage One – Developing the Story covers choosing a viable feature film idea, developing that idea into the best version, structuring the plot, developing the characters, crafting a step outline, and using various narrative devices.

Stage Two – Writing the First Draft covers scene construction, writing action and description, writing dialogue, the opening of the script, maintaining forward momentum, and using suspense, surprise, mystery.

Stage Three – Rewriting covers techniques for structural revisions, techniques for character revisions, troubleshooting tips for common problems, revising scenes, and polishing.

I hope you’ll consider giving it a look. And if you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to drop me a line here. I’ll likely cover some of them in a “Mailbag” post in a few weeks.

I need to thank several people who gave me feedback and suggestions on The Three Stages of Screenwriting: Cindy Davis, Paul Guay, Ken Aguado, Pavan Ojha, Bill Gladstone, Lisa Kors, Robert Watson, and Kat Smith. They helped me improve it immeasurably.

I also want to say thank you at this point for all of you who have offered kind words, questions, or suggestions about this blog. It’s very gratifying to hear how useful people find it.
I hope you'll forgive me that this week's post is a little short (and self-serving!) I've been rather busy with the book release, as you might imagine. Over the next few weeks, I plan to do two or three posts about how I broke into the industry, how I sold the Sweet Home Alabama spec screenplay, and maybe some of my experiences seeing the film made. I'm also considering doing a series of analyses of the WGA's top 10 screenplay list (two of which – The Godfather and Some Like It Hot I use as examples in the book).

Doug