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Thursday, May 19, 2011

Nonfiction: The Woman in the Story



I bought this book on the advice of a friend from the screenwriting class I took last summer. When my first draft of my screenplay sort of fell apart and I decided I should restructure it with one of my female characters in the lead, I decided it would be a good idea to look The Woman in the Story over.

I have to admit, I had a bit of a hard time getting through this. Yes, I got some good ideas for some things to consider when reimagining my screenplay. But the book seemed to really drag on with lots of lists and parallel lists. And even though I'm not normally bothered by the odd awkward phrase in a book, I found a few too many that they really started to annoy me. Maybe it's the fact that I've been marking papers for a few years. Or maybe I just expect better proofreading from a published book. But either way, if this book is ever republished in a second edition, I hope it's better edited.

My honest opinion is that this is a good book to peruse if you are interested in screenwriting. You should definitely look it over if you want to write heroines. Informative but a bit dense, this is a hard book to read from cover to cover.

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