Great Book for Writers
Let’s face it, there is no void in the category of writing tutorials, and there are plenty of titles that your writing friends tell you is the 'Bible’ of writing/screenwriting how to books. You have some of those titles on your shelves: Trottier, Field, Mamet, King, Vogler, that cat one…my favorite is William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade. I've even got that Lajos Egri one that I will always wonder if I’m pronouncing right, and there's a good chance that I've just spelled wrong…
The point is that there are a lot of books, and as writers, we can’t read them all (well we could, but who wants to…) Still, there are times when we need a quick refresher, or even a fresh perspective on organizing our writing journey, and Bill Martell fills that bill.
Martell offers nothing really new here, in fact, he emphasizes that there’s nothing really new with any of the writing how to's out there, and I tend to agree. So, what he's done in this book in particular is to focus on why an outlining process is important and how defining a theme helps bring it all together. He eventually breaks down the film Ghost to work through the idea of a theme.
He also mentions a lot of those other books and he emphasizes that what's important is to find the method that works for you. He packs a lot of information into this little book—it's down and dirty, and the occasional typo proves it. But it's valuable information. It's a fantastic substitute for the struggling writer on a budget, and I highly recommend it.
You can find William Martell's books at Amazon.
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