Reddit reviews Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting
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Grand Central Publishing
Goldman wrote - Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting.
I recommend it.
Very much worth reading his book, Adventures of the Screen Trade - http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Screen-Trade-Hollywood-Screenwriting/dp/0446391174
Some interesting (and often funny) insights into the films he wrote and the process involved.
I certainly won't discourage you from learning the craft of screenwriting. There are a ton of great resources available to you that will help you understand the format, the structure, the art, and the industry including:
... as well as the other books and script databases suggested by redactors in other comments in this thread.
However, I suggest you finish writing your story as a novel before you dive into the screenplay version.
You see, even though you have an outline, you may learn new things about your characters and story as you write it out.
Additionally, you say that you "haven't had much motivation" to finish the book. What makes you think that you'll have the motivation to both start and complete a screenplay, then? Please please please trust me when I say that writing is 0% having the best idea in the world and 100% working your ass off to shape that idea and build it into a story. It takes creativity, sure. But it also takes a shit-ton of determination and hard work. It takes the will to work even when you don't feel like working, even when you're lacking inspiration, even when you've just worked a 10 hour shift, your girlfriend broke up with you, your dog puked on the carpet and all you want to do is get drunk with your buddies and play MarioKart.
And when you've finally finished your story, you'll look back on everything you sacrificed for your art and understand how beautiful it really is to create something.
(Then you'll realize that you need to do a rewrite and you'll want to shoot yourself!)
Most importantly -- at least in my opinion -- a book is a finished product, while a screenplay is a blueprint for an expensive, difficult production and post-production process.
If you have a book, you can self-publish it. You can send it to literary agents and publishing houses. You can put it up on iTunes or Amazon and throw a few hundred dollars against some internet advertising to drive readers to it. You can give it to friends and family as a holiday/birthday gift.
If you have a screenplay, you can ... uh ... well, it's going to be tough. Yes, you can still submit it to agents and production companies. Or you can try to produce it yourself, which will take a cast and crew and most likely a lot of money and time. And yeah, it's totally valuable to dive into that world, but producing is a completely different skill that will take you years and years and years to master.
But if you've completed that book and experience some success with the story you've told, it will make it a LOT easier for people to see the value in investing in your story. And, having already completed telling your story in prose, you may find it a lot easier to translate your book into a screenplay.
That's a month's worth of reading, at least.
He's also written a pair of non fiction books about screenwriting in Hollywood. Both are great reads.
Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting
Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade
Here are some resources I’ve found interesting and/or useful.
Books
There are over 10,000 results for “screenwriting” when you search for books on Amazon.com, and at least one new screenwriting book is published every week.
Here are some “how to” books I recommend:
There are also good books about the screenwriting life. Some of my favorites are:
Software
Some of the most popular screenwriting format programs include:
More options are discussed here, and you can find about 40 screenwriting programs at The Writer’s Store.
Most programs have free trials, so you can see which one you like best before you commit.
Having screenwriting software is necessary (IMHO) but not sufficient to write a properly formatted screenplay. The software will let you designate dialogue as V.O. (voice over) or O.S. (off-screen), but it won’t explain when you use which. For that, and for many other things, you need to read something that gets into the details of formatting, like The Screenwriter’s Bible.
Many format programs have lots of bells and whistles including:
There are also specialized software programs that supposedly help with plotting and structure, character development, etc., but I’ve never used any.
Screenplays
You can often find screenplays for produced movies by googling the name of the movie along with “PDF.”
Scott Myers has collected a list of 100+ scripts made available by studios and production companies here.
Scripts often appear online around awards season (roughly the three months before the Oscars) but they may disappear later. So if you find a copy of a script you really want to study, it’s a good idea to download and save it.
You can also try Simply Scripts, The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb), and Drew’s Script-O-Rama.
Many libraries and bookstores carry published scripts, but often the format will be somewhat different from the original version.
Alright dude, here's some good books I've come up with for you:
First, Rebel Without a Crew and Either You're in or You're in the Way which are both books about young unknowns scraping together their resources and getting a movie produced and released. Robert Rodriguez (Rebel) is pretty famous, if you haven't heard of him he did the Mariachi Trilogy, Predators, Spy Kids, Machete, and a few other big ones. The Miller Brothers (Either You're in) pretty much just did their one movie, and it was only okay, but the book is a great read.
What They Don't Teach You in Film School is a great book about the production side of things
as is Make Your Movie
Shaking the Money Tree is a hugely popular book about fundraising for filmmaking
and The Digital Filmmaking Handbook is good for some modern production techniques (I don't remember how technical it gets though, a lot of it could be outdated but it's still a solid read)
The next two books aren't so much about production but just the way the industry works in general, and I highly recommend them-- they're really entertaining
Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell? are both by William Goldman (Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid) and have a lot of great, hilarious insight into the industry
Definitely check out your library before you pick any of these up though. Good luck!
William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade is a great read on the subject and details some massive flops (and successes) Goldman was involved with as a screenwriter. Goldman is a great writer and its a fun and easy read.
Making Movies by Sidney Lumet predictably focuses more on the director's side of film production and has a good amount of "what it's like."
Possibly (and I personally have issues with his attitude and viewpoints on filmmaking) but that's beside the point. The point is a lot of young filmmakers found/find this book inspiring and empowering, even though it's probably outdated for the Youtube generation.
And to be fair to my housemate (he's a screenwriter, which is what the OP is interested in), it took him a while to come up with a book that he can recommend and at the same time not too technical, after I shot down a couple of other titles (like this, this and this.)
Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman
Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez
Unfortunately, nothing I say can make this decision any easier for you... I can't tell you what you should do, or how things may work out. I'm sorry man, it's going to be tough for you one way or another. The movie business is notoriously difficult to break into, and it really doesn't get any easier once you're in. ADs, aspiring writer-directors and basically anyone who is looking for a break will not be paid anything more than a token amount of money. Certainly not enough to survive in Bombay and support a family. The stark reality is that you do need to have a certain degree of financial stability before you even think about working full time in this line. As someone who's spent the past eight years working here, my advice to most people is "don't". It's tougher than you can possibly imagine. I've seen so many people get chewed up and spit out. It's heartbreaking. I wouldn't advise any friend of mine to give it a go; I wouldn't want them to face the disappointments that come with the territory.
That being said, I know what it's like to love the movie business, and want nothing more than to be a part of it. If you really, truly feel that you want it badly enough to take the risk, the first thing to do is to learn how to make movies. No offence to you, but everybody thinks they can write a script. There is a technique to it, there are rules. Not everybody can go to film school, that's ok. Read scripts online, read books on movie making, understand how it's done. Spend the next six months really, truly understanding how it all works. Read this book to get an insider's perspective. If you still want to go through with it, you'll have a better idea of how to get started.
People here have mostly the right idea. Lots of times people look past the writers because so often the director/actors/producers use their influence to change the script. They say what needs to be re-written, they give suggestions, they put in their own lines and jokes, and might even add or remove major plot points. Depending on the fame of everyone involved, these can be anything from suggestions to requirements.
This type of stuff can work if the people doing them really know their stuff, but people should remember that writing is a craft, and there are professional writers for a reason. Not everyone can do it well, even if they're really good at other aspects of film, but it's one of those things that almost everyone thinks they can do.
In Hollywood, a lot of writing is adapting to and rolling with the demands you're issued, even if they're stupid. Unfortunately, often having to listen to the demands of others means writers are too easily looked over when the writing turns out well, and often blamed when the writing turns out poorly. Obviously there are tons of exceptions to this, though. Every film is its own case study, and ultimately what it comes down to is that films are collaborative efforts. Sometimes films burn through dozens of writers, other times the writing's bad and the director salvages it, and sometimes the actor threatens to leave the production if the ending where their character dies is kept in tact.
Highly recommend Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman (Butch Cassidy, The Princess Bride, All the President's Men, etc) on the subject.
Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman
Amazon Link
Adventures in the Screen Trade
Page 163-165 -
"Cliff Robertson got me into the movie business, in late 1963."
TL;dr: he was blocked writing Boys and Girls Together, came across the Boston Strangler story, thought what if there were two, then threw it together as an experiment in fast writing while he worked on B&GT. It was published and Robertson approached him about the treatment, mistaking the brief style of the book for a rough screenplay form.
"None of this is important, except to note that I entered the movie business on a total misconception." pg 165
Which Lie Did I Tell
Apologies; he describes himself as the world's greatest spit-baller, but a mediocre pitcher. (pg 161 -162):
"But what I do better than anyone else on Earth is spitball."
Which is like half of all pitching.
Good luck on getting accepted. I teach an intro to film history class at a University, so I can give you some pointers.
I'd start off with this: Hulu has an excellent 15 part documentary called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. I have my students watch an episode every week, and take a quiz on it.
But, there is no better way to understand the history of film than watching a lot of movies, and then researching them and reading about them.
One good way to start is to watch all of the movies on the [AFI 100] (http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies.aspx). That will give you a very broad picture of the history of American movies. But its not enough just to watch them. Try to find out WHY each movie is revered as it is. After watching it, then read as much as you can about it. Read Roger Ebert's review, read it's entry on Filmsite.org, and start trying to contextualize each movie in its place in cinema history.
After that, I suggest watching the BFI Sight and Sound Top 50. That will give you a more broad understanding of foreign film as well.
As for books, I suggest reading these:
Who the Devil Made It
Hitchcock
What Is Cinema?
The American Cinema
Adventures in the Screen Trade
Good luck, and let me know if you get accepted!