Advanced Screenwriting: Taking Your Writing to the Academy Award Level

After reading some of the "reviews", I'm wondering if the "reviewers" are actually critiquing the content of the book or simply making remarks about the author. I read ADVANCED SCREENWRITING & felt it addressed the emergence of alternative structure, which at the time this book was published, hadn't really been mentioned much. I certainly did not get the feeling that Seger was turning her back on the classic 3-act structure, but was merely informing writers that occasionally, writers are able to push the envelope & come up with alternative story structures that work well. Heard she has a new book coming out which actually details the Oscar-winning movie CRASH, which is an example of creative structuring that works. When all is said & done, most stories still have a beginning, middle & end. ADVANCED SCREENWRITING seems a worthy & apt follow-up to MAKING A GOOD SCRIPT GREAT & I found it to be very informative & most useful.

A tremendous resource. But don't start here--as the title suggests, this book is meant for those who have already developed the basic and intermediate skills set forth in Dr. Seger's prior screenwriting how to's. As a professional screenwriter, I have used the techniques put forth in Advanced Screenwriting on many occasions and multiple scripts. I highly recommend it.

In my Script Consultating sessions with clients who have written three or four screenplay I always refer them to Dr. Linda Seger's Advanced Screenwriting as the go-to textbook. This accessible book teaches many ways to dimensionalize and deepen your script and to continue engaging the reader. Absorbing and using the information in this book will improve a writer's chances in the marketplace. Script Consultant Karen Folger Jacobs, Ph.D.

Linda Seger is unquestionably one of the brightest and most precise screenwriting consultants and teachers in the business. ADVANCED SCREENWRITING fine-tunes the practically perfect path so carefully defined and so well marked by Linda in her other essential books on screenwriting, MAKING A GOOD SCRIPT GREAT, THE ART OF ADAPTATION and CREATING UNFORGETABLE CHARACTERS... leading us even deeper into the enchanted forest of excellent screenwriting. Seasoned screenwriters will do well to be reminded of those almost mystical elements that inhabit well-crafted films and beginners will find it a finishing course--though having been a big fan, student, and professional who has benefited by Linda's script consultation on more than one major film I urge newcomers to get the entire Seger Screenwriting Library to insure they get the most from ADVANCED SCREENWRITING. When writers submit material to our production company we ask whether they've read Linda Seger. If they say "no" we urge them to, "go back, read her books, re-write their script and then resubmit." That way we know we won't be wasting our time reading a script that needs more work and structural discipline and the writer can be confident that they are giving us their absulut best shot.

Advanced screenwriting is a tremendous tool for any experienced screenwriter. It's true that the book does not pay heed some of the basic advice given in many beginning books. As a matter of fact the author doesn't even pay heed to much of her advice from her earlier works. But that does not detract from the material she presents to us the reader in this work. For example many beginning books talk about the 3-act structure and the number of scenes that should be present in each act. Seger knows we know that already and gives us a glorious chapter on the wide diversity of scenes, we the writer can create. Like the Love scene, the Pay-off scene or the Reflection scene. She goes into over 15 different types of scenes. This is not lip service to the 3-act structure this is fully building on it. This book is filled with material that builds on our prior knowledge. And even though this book is not meant as a primer on how to start a screen play, I found her advice extremely helpful in crafting a (hopefully) sound treatment. Basically, after reading this book it made me envious I wasn't in a position to hand my scripts over to her for a go over. One thing that may be off putting to some is that this work seemed very personal. And some of her asides may detract from the material presented, for some readers. I, on the other hand enjoyed her personal insights and felt it added a lot to the book.