In honor of April’s ScriptFrenzy, I wanted to share two of my favorite screenwriting books.

I love anything by Syd Field, but this one is my favorite. SCREENPLAY: THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCREENWRITING has something for everyone whether you’re a beginner or expert screenwriter. There are lots of examples and Syd’s format of teaching is easy to follow.

The second book, ELEMENTS OF STYLE FOR SCREENWRITERS, teach writers the nuts and bolts of formatting a screenplay. Since style is so, so important this book is a must-have. Agents are rumored to toss ill-formatted screenplays in the trash, so get that format down! 🙂

Last summer, at FSU, I had one elective left. I signed up for screenwriting (exciting!) and was thrilled to be enrolled in the class. Imagine three hours twice a week of screenwriting. Ah. Then, scheduling changed and the course ended up at the same time of one of my required lit seminars. Boo. I’m still dying to try a screenwriting class and will probably do so online, but I just don’t have time right now. I’ve been looking at UCLA Extension and Gotham. For now, however, I’m learning the format when I’m taking a break from book writing and articles. It’s a completely new field and quite fun.

I read in the June Writer’s Digest that Hollywood bigwigs view novels as a “dry run” for writing episodic TV and if that’s true, cool!

Anyone else have screenwriting aspirations?

Hopefully, I’ll have new author photos to share with you guys tomorrow or over the weekend.