Learn the inside thinking behind 23 highly successful, classic, low-budget movies and discover techniques for making a little go a long way. Includes in-depth interviews with screenwriters with such credits as the Academy Award-nominated films You Can Count on Me, Metropolitan, and Capote - plus such classics as Repo Man, Re-Animator, Paris, Texas, Living in Oblivion, Suburbia, Hester Street, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and Eve's Bayou.

Learn the mystery of character, character dictating plot, character information, biographies, real characters vs. fictional characters, writing a franchise character, rules to break and not to break. Subjects covered include: Who should be your protagonist? Does plot or character come first? How do you find the right characters to suit your needs? How do you get a character to do what you want? How to you get your characters to do what they want?

"When an aspiring L.A. scriptwriter falls head-over-heels for a bossy and beautiful movie star after a devastating break-up, the two take a risk on love and cast themselves as the leading ladies of their own star-struck romance in this sweet and spirited love story from critically-acclaimed writer Amy Spalding in her adult debut"--

"With years of experience with every major film studio and network, and dozens of successful screenplays, Andy knows the business. He's here to debunk the big screen and teach you how to write a blockbuster screenplay and, equally important, how to sell it. Andy has worked with the best: Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg to name a few. He has filled this book with real-life examples to learn from, including contracts, screenplays,...

Alessio Rinaldi, a 25-year-old director, is commissioned by a producer to write the script of his first movie with Ubaldo Terzani, a well-known horror novelist. Alessio moves into Terzani's house to start this collaboration, and a strange relationship of psychological dependence grows between them: Ubaldo Terzani unveils his dark side, and Alessio falls into a state of insanity ruled by the script they are creating and the nightmares he has because...

In this hilarious and heartfelt debut novel, an aspiring screenwriter learns sometimes love has its own script. Harry wants nothing more than to write Hollywood screenplays. He knows the first step toward achieving that goal is winning a screenwriting competition that will seal his admission into the college of his dreams, so he's determined to spend his summer free of distractions--also known as boys--and finish his script. After last year, Harry...

L.A. screenwriter, performance artist, and author takes to the streets to meet the folks advertising their cheap wares in the local "PennySaver" classifieds shopper. Their stories are humorous, intriguing, and sometimes moving, and ultimately, surprisingly helpful in shaping the film she is trying to complete.

Pablo, a failed Argentine novelist-turned-screenwriter, has been kidnapped by the greatest Latin American film director of all time and is kept in a basement where he works, day after day, on what he is told must at all costs be a great, world-changing screenplay. Every night, after finishing work on the script, Pablo writes in his notebook and every morning he crosses out what he wrote the night before.

Can you fall in love like they do in the movies? Its Evie Summerss job to find out. Because if she cant convince her film agencys biggest client, Ezra Chester, to write the romantic-comedy screenplay he owes producers, her career will be over. The catch? He thinks rom-coms are unrealisticand hell only put pen to paper if Evie shows him that its possible to meet a man in real life the way it happens on the big screen. Cynical Evie might not believe...

"The untold story of Hollywood's most powerful female writer-producer of the 1940s, Joan Harrison, who grew from being the worst secretary Alfred Hitchcock ever had to one of his closest collaborators, critically shaping his brand as the "Master of Suspense.""--