Screenwriting Down to the Atoms: Digging Deeper Into the Craft of Cinematic Storytelling

Book excerpt: Many books on screenwriting claim to have all the answers. Yet, quite often, the more an aspiring writer reads, the more confused they become by contradictory statements, incomplete perspectives, and methods that fail to do more than scratch the surface. Screenwriting Down to the Atoms was written to end the confusion. It picks up where the best leave off and makes up where the rest fall short by looking closer and digging deeper to reveal the true principles behind great cinematic storytelling. Screenwriting Down to the Atoms takes the basics far beyond the basics. Rather than the superficial approaches found in many guides, Screenwriting Down to the Atoms explores screencraft from the inside-out. It boils the craft down to its simplest elements, and then builds upon those fundamentals in a step-by-step manner clear enough for anyone to understand. Most importantly, rather than command writers to imitate WHAT tends to work in this or that movie, Atoms explains HOW movie structures work and WHY they are so effective, revealing flexible principles that may be applied to any story. Structure should adapt to the needs of the story, not the other way around. Whether you are working on your first screenplay or your fifteenth, Screenwriting Down to the Atoms provides knowledge found in no other source. You will discover storytelling’s “golden key,” an elegantly-simple structure residing behind all other structures. You will learn to satisfy viewers by fulfilling their wants, needs, and expectations. You will understand how the most entertaining story experience arises from the creative control of information. Most writers toil for years to learn these principles. With Atoms, you may take a giant leap forward from the very start. Why remain stuck in the dusty, short-sighted methods of the past century? Screenwriting Down to the Atoms offers the next-generation screenwriting guide for the next generation of screenwriters.