How to Write a Movie in 21 Days: The Inner Movie Method!

In this classic bestselling screenwriting guide--now revised and updated--author and film consultant Viki King helps students go from blank page to completed manuscript through a series of clever and simple questions, ingenious writing exercises, and easy, effective new skills.

Viki King's Inner Movie Method is a specific step-by-step process designed to get the story in your heart onto the page. This method doesn't just show how to craft a classic three-act story but also delves into how to clarify the idea you don't quite have yet, how to tell if your idea is really a movie, and how to stop getting ready and start. Once you know what to write, the Inner Movie Method will show you how to write it.

How to Write a Movie in 21 Days, first published in 1987, has been translated in many languages around the world and has become an industry-standard guide for filmmakers both in Hollywood and internationally.

BREAKFAST WITH SHARKS: A Screenwriter's Guide to Getting the Meeting, Nailing the Pitch, Signing the Deal, and Navigating the Murky Waters of Hollywood!

By Michael Lent

 

Publisher: Three Rivers Press (May 2004)

 

Breakfast with Sharks gives a rough, broad overview of the business of screenwriting. The author, Michael Lent, spends a good portion of the book speaking about how a career is born, discussing such topics as the pros and cons of relocating to Los Angeles, and the various positions that can be held at the bottom of the industry totem pole that still allow time for writing. Lent also describes the business of spec and assignment work, offers advice on handling rejection, and recommends the best places to network, but writes mostly about how to deal with executives, agents, managers, producers, actors, and directors without really detailing how meetings with said important individuals are ever acquired or how to perform in these meetings once they are scheduled.

 

Summary of the Book:

 

What They Didn't Teach You in Your Screenwriting Course

Screenwriters, listen up! Breakfast with Sharks is not a book about the craft of screenwriting. This is a book about the business of managing your screenwriting career, from advice on choosing an agent to tips on juggling three deal-making breakfasts a day. Prescriptive and useful, Breakfast with Sharks is a real guide to navigating the murky waters of the Hollywood system.

Unlike most of the screenwriting books available, here's one that tells you what to do after you've finished your surefire-hit screenplay. Written from the perspective of Michael Lent, an in-the-trenches working screenwriter in Hollywood, this is a real-world look into the script-to-screen business as it is practiced today.

Breakfast with Sharks is filled with useful advice on everything from the ins and outs of moving to Los Angeles to understanding terms like "spec," "option," and "assignment." Here you'll learn what to expect from agents and managers and who does what in the studio hierarchy. And most important, Breakfast with Sharks will help you nail your pitch so the studio exec can't say no.

Rounded out with a Q&A section and resource lists of script competitions, film festivals, trade associations, industry publications, and more, Breakfast with Sharks is chock-full of "take this and use it right now" information for screenwriters at any stage of their careers.

The Script-Selling Game, A Hollywood Insider's Look at Getting Your Script Sold and Produced!

By Kathie Fong Yoneda

 

The essential guide to landing your script in Hollywood.

 

This revised and updated edition includes a new chapter on animation, another on using the Internet to market yourself, plus an expansive section on submitting for television and cable.

 

"Once again, Kathie draws on her wide experience of how the movie and TV game works, sharing the secret language and inner processes of The Biz." - Christopher Vogler, story consultant and author of The Writer's Journey

 

"Kathie shares her insider's knowledge on developing your screenplay and marketing it - including the exciting new market of the Internet." - Pamela Wallace, writer/producer and Academy Award-winning co-writer of Witness

 

"Thorough, essential, invaluable, and necessary. Kathie knows how the business works, how buyers think, and what writers have to know to get the script sold. Her insightful, encouraging style makes the impossible seem possible!" - Dr. Linda Seger, author of Making a Good Script Great

 

Kathie Fong Yoneda has worked in film and television for more than 30 years. She has held executive positions at Disney, Touchstone, Disney TV Animation, Paramount Pictures Television, and Island Pictures, specializing in development and story analysis of both live-action and animation projects. Kathie has presented seminars throughout the world.

 

By Michael Wiese Productions

Selling your Story in 60 Seconds by Michael Hauge!

 The Guaranteed Way to Get your Screenplay or Novel Read!

• How to design, perfect and present the 60-second pitch
• The 10 key components of a commercial story
• The 8 steps to a powerful pitch
• Targeting your buyers
• "The best pitch I ever heard," exclusive advice from 40 major screenwriters, novelists, agents, and film and publishing executives
• And much more, including pitching templates for every genre

"...Higher praise I cannot give." - Terry Rossio, Co-writer, Pirates of the Caribbean 1, 2 & 3; Shrek; Aladdin, The Mask of Zorro; Deja Vu

"When I pick up the phone for help, Michael Hauge is the call I make." - Shane Black, Screenwriter, Lethal Weapon 1 & 2, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight; Screenwriter/Director, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

"...I wish this excellent book had been around when we were starting out..." - Bob Fisher, Co-writer, Wedding Crashers, We're the Millers

"A wonderful book. An absolute MUST for every screenwriter who wants to sell a script." - Dr. Linda Seger, Script Consultant; Seminar Leader; Author, Making A Good Script Great, Advanced Screenwriting

"...everything you need to know about packaging and presenting your stories..." - Christopher Vogler, Author, The Writer's Journey; Mythic Structure for Writers

Michael Hauge is the author of the best-selling Writing Screenplays That Sell, now in its 30th printing. He has presented his seminars and lectures to more than 30.000 writers and filmmakers worldwide. He has coached hundreds of screenwriters and producers on their screenplays and pitches, and has consulted on projects for (among many others) Warners, Disney, Columbia, New Line, CBS, Lifetime, Julia Roberts, Val Kilmer, Jennifer Lopez, Kirsten Dunst, and Morgan Freeman.

Michael Wiese Productions