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ScriptWriter magazine

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Our new review section deals specifically with magazines for writers.

 

Cover - ScriptWriter

 

 

'ScriptWriter takes a serious approach to developing and refining your script-writing techniques, providing a series of substantial articles to help you work on this.'





 

 

 

 

 

 

"Scriptwriting is about the unsaid… I have to allow the characters to live and breathe and allow the actors to do their jobs rather than be prescriptive and tell them what they’re supposed to say."





 

 

 

 

 

 

'So if you’re serious about writing scripts and want a thoughtful magazine which will help you achieve your goal - whilst providing food for thought and some wide-ranging and interesting articles - this magazine could be the one for you.'

Our magazine review section deals specifically with magazines for writers. These are not those which feature writers’ work, but the ones that are directed at writers themselves, to help them improve their writing and get published. We hope this series might help you decide which one might suit you, before you opt for a year’s subscription.

 

ScriptWriter magazine has been going for over four years and appears to be steadily building its subscription base.  It comes out six times a year but carries relatively little advertising. The editor is Julian Friedmann, who is well-known in the London publishing world as the co-founder of the Blake Friedmann literary agency

ScriptWriter takes a serious approach to developing and refining your script-writing techniques, providing a series of substantial articles to help you work on this. In the May 2006 issue there was a thoughtful opening piece entitled Who are you writing for? followed by a light-hearted article on procrastination.

Julian Friedmann interviewed the highly successful British novelist and screenwriter Deborah Moggach, who had some very interesting things to say about the process of turning books, her own and other people’s, into scripts. Her insights into the difference between scriptwriting and writing fiction was particularly interesting: ‘Scriptwriting is about the unsaid… I have to allow the characters to live and breathe and allow the actors to do their jobs rather than be prescriptive and tell them what they’re supposed to say.’

Other articles covered voiceover, showing how subtle use of it could enhance a film; what playwrights can teach scriptwriters; and acting for writers, on whether acting experience will make a good writer into a better one. Some articles, such as one on the lyrical intention in cinema and another on the horror genre, take something of a ‘film studies’ approach to scriptwriting. Others take a pragmatic angle in providing workmanlike guidelines for how scriptwriters can improve their work.

A new series on BAFTA’s (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award-winning scripts of the last five years has just started with the French hit Amelie as its first subject.

But the articles which seemed most immediately useful to writers were a comprehensive look at film budgets and an excellent pointer on how to get your work taken on. Jim Clarken explained that ideas, not scripts, are what sells. Aspiring scriptwriters need to focus on coming up with a good log line – the two sentences encapsulating the idea which will sell your script.

ScriptWriter is at the serious end of the spectrum and does not offer short market-oriented snippets of news, or indeed much news at all. It does however provide a great deal of useful information for the aspiring writer on the art of scriptwriting. So if you’re serious about writing scripts and want a thoughtful magazine which will help you achieve your goal - whilst providing food for thought and some wide-ranging and interesting articles - this magazine could be the one for you.

 

ScriptWriter website

 

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Magazine review index

 

© Chris HolifieldManaging director of WritersServices; spent working life in publishing,employed by everything from global corporations to start-ups; track record includes: editorial director of Sphere Books, publishing director of The Bodley Head, publishing director for start-up of upmarket book club, The Softback Preview, editorial director of Britain’s biggest book club group, BCA, and, most recently, deputy MD and publisher of Cassell & Co. She is also currently the Director of the Poetry Book Society; During all of this time aware of problems faced by writers, as publishing changed from idiosyncratic cottage industry, 'occupation for gentlemen', into corporate business of today. Writers encountered increasing difficulty in getting books edited or published. Authors create the books which are the raw material for the whole business. She believes it is time to bring them back to centre stage. 2006