Screenwriting Book - Screenwriting Behind Enemy Lines

Screenwriting Book - Screenwriting Behind Enemy Lines
By John Schimmel
Michael Wiese Productions
2014

This book is written by a man who has spend many hours reading other people's scripts for a living. It focuses on the principles of what make a good story a good story. Some parts focus on making a professional script while other parts focus on what makes an audience relate to the script and what makes the story interesting interesting.

What makes this book fantastic is how it shares my view on Michael Bay's travesty of cinema that is Transformers.

“look for a script that creates characters who carry burdens we share or live out fantasies we’d like to share; that takes those characters on compelling, near-impossible journeys to release that burden or live that fantasy.”

What this book taught me:-

It taught me some useful pieces of information like the importance of professional presentation of your script. This was before I read The Hollywood Standard so it was the foundation of my learning on the matter. It helped be to better understand how to think about characters in terms of their struggle and journey. Simple things like a film being entertaining will always have some redeemable features even if it's a terrible movie with no moral substance but a film with moral substance without being entertaining is a boring film you don't want to watch. 

“The audience’s expectation of truth is respected, characters are pushed to the ends of their endurance and then redeemed or at least understood.”

Should you buy it?
It was definitely a good book, don't get me wrong. I came out of the end of the book with more knowledge than before I started and had fun reading it. I can't help but feel that it wasn't necessary for me to read this book when there are other books out there that deal with the same kind of thing. Would I recommend it? Yeah, I think I would. It's a good book. It is incredible? Sadly, not in my opinion, but it's worth checking out if you like reading books to advance your craft.  


“If you know the rules you can bend them so long as you hit the vital points.” 

Link to buy: (Copy&Paste)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Screenwriting-Behind-Enemy-Lines-Lessons/dp/1615931678/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421169051&sr=8-1&keywords=screenwriting+behind+enemy+lines