Three Books to Put you on Track

A lifetime's insight into practical writing

Film

Scriptwriting Updated: New and Conventional Ways to Write for the Screen
(Published in Australia as Scriptwriting Updated)

Winner of the Australian Award for Excellence in Academic Publishing, this book is an internationally recognised desktop reference guide and do-it-yourself script doctor to help writers consolidate their skills in traditional narrative and grasp the mechanics of the new.

Screenwriting Updated is the first book to provide practical guidelines not only for conventional narrative, for non-linear forms like flashback, multiple protagonist and multiple time frames.

It has quickly become an important text for professionals and in institutions like NYU, Columbia, Yale, USC and Berkley, in the USA, as well UK institutions like Goldsmiths, London College of Communications, and Metropolitan University Film School in the UK.

Increasingly is is also being used by game writers and novelists interested in how to structure multiple narratives. Highly recommended for the new Australian Secondary English syllabus.

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Television

Television Writing: The Ground Rules of Series, Serials and Sitcom

Television is a voracious medium consuming thousands of hours of scripts each year, but how do you crack the market?

The restrictions governing the development and writing of TV drama series, serials and sitcom are a surprise to the newcomer and a challenge to the veteran.

Indespensible for any would be television writer, great for teaching old dogs new tricks too!

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Help for secondary students

Writing with Imagination

Designed especially to help with writing tasks on school sylabuses and public exams. Writing with Imagination is designed to be used across thirteen lessons, not necessarily in a block. It is the first book to give secondary students access to new and traditional creativity-enhancing techniques used by professional writers. These methods work not only to open out the individual imagination but also to provide specific tactics for coping with writing to order and under pressure of time.

Writing with Imagination is structured as a step-by-step introduction to writing stories to order, featuring a range of group and individual exercises to develop skills and confidence and tackle specific syllabus demands. Highly recommended not only for teachers but for parents wh want to help kids who hate (or love!) writing stories and poems.

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