The Incorporated Screenwriter

Gary Maynard, a writer/director and talent agency president, and a group of students sit around a conference table and basically read Maynard's notes in Story/Writer, the opening volume in this four part series on the creative and business sides of the screenwriting trade. While Maynard occasionally fleshes out his non sequitur notes, many are simply read without explication. He touches on some of the reasons for writing a screenplay (artistic and monetary), runs through a rote list of definitions of terms (which takes up a good portion of the hour), and talks about writing a synopsis and treatment preparatory to writing the actual screenplay. The other three volumes in the series are Format/Reader, Promotion/Agent, and Acquisition/Producer. The manual, while containing much useful information, also has some pretty blatant errors: Umberto Eco's book Foucault's Pendulum is referred to as "Fucos Pendellum" by "Umberto Echo." Aspiring screenwriters would want to see this (they would also be happy to read notes scribbled on napkins if they thought it would teach them the secrets to writing multi-million dollar screenplays), but this is just not a well-done series. Not recommended. Writing and Selling Your First Screenplay (VL-3/92) is a much better and far less expensive choice. (R. Pitman)