Writing Love: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors II

This should make a lot of people here deliriously happy: the second Screenwriting Tricks book is up now - just $2.99 for any format.

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE



Now, let me be clear. This is not a book on writing romance.

What it is is a greatly expanded follow-up to Screenwriting Tricks For Authors - with a special focus on the key story elements and structure tricks used in writing love (including love subplots). The ten story breakdowns in this book are all romantic comedy, romantic adventure, period romance and romantic suspense. (I'm going to have to save urban fantasy and paranormal for another, darker book).

I started the book as a general revision of STFA, to incorporate all of the new discoveries I've been making from writing my own novels, from teaching workshops, and from interfacing with my workshop students and all of you here about your story problems and discoveries. One of the things I most wanted to do, at the requests of quite a few of you (you know who you are), was include more examples from love stories and comedies. Yes, I'm a thriller writer, and most of you are aware that my teaching examples can run toward the - um, homicidal.

But as I was reviewing a lot of romantic comedies and romantic suspense for great and teachable examples of key story elements and other points I'm always trying to make, it dawned on me how much more useful it would be to let the first workbook stand as is and move forward by concentrating the new material in this book, and each subsequent book, on just one genre at a time.

One thing I love about this new book is that it really demonstrates that idea I'm always trying to get across about working with a Master List, that Top Ten list of your own favorite stories in your specific genre. So it made sense for me to organize this new book by making my own list of ten love stories and analyzing those in-depth, looking closely at how these films handle key elements, both of general storytelling and those elements specific to love stories.

So yes, it should be very useful to romance writers, but I hope writers of all genres will be able to get almost or just as much out of it, too.

There are ten full story breakdowns in this book:

While You Were Sleeping
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Sense and Sensibility
Groundhog Day
Sea of Love
The Proposal
New In Town
Leap Year
Notting Hill
Romancing the Stone

(And if you ask me, that alone is worth the price of the book, no matter what genre you're working in!)

As I worked my way through the list I was finding patterns and elements of love stories that I'd never been consciously aware of before, but after my third or fourth story breakdown I realized how very common certain elements are to love stories of all kinds, and how helpful it is to know and name those elements every time you start out to write a love story — or love subplot. And that goes for ANY genre you happen to be working in.

I know some people are going to ask - "Which book should I get?"

Why oh why do people ask these things of authors? You should get BOTH, of course, you can have them both for less than the price of a paperback. Plus, then I can eat. My cat will thank you, too.

But if you want to know which to START with, well, it depends. If you're writing romance or anything close to it, then definitely get Writing Love for all the love story examples. If you're writing the darker genres, you will want to have the first Screenwriting Tricks for the darker examples. If you are brand new to this blog or to writing, and not particularly writing love, then you will probably want to read the shorter STFA first; there is so much more material in Writing Love that it might be overwhelming. When you're just starting out, less is often more.

If you've been reading the blog for a long time, and/or if you already have STFA I, then you definitely want Writing Love - it's twice as much material and twice as many breakdowns.

Please let me know what you think. The great thing about e publishing is that it's all so alterable!

- Alex

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- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)