A Story Is a Promise: Good Things to Know Before You Write That Screenplay, Novel, or Play
by Bill Johnson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bill JohnsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-09
ISBN: 0936085614
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Blue Heron Publishing
Book Reviews of A Story Is a Promise: Good Things to Know Before You Write That Screenplay, Novel, or Play
Book Review: Story is a Promise
Summary: 5 Stars
Bill is an excellent instructor and this book is a testimony of his many years of quality teaching and writing. If you want to fly through this book, you won't. It's not a quick read. It's laid out like a college textbook,(which isn't bad.) This is a guide for the person who wants to learn the nuts and bolts of writing screenplays and fiction, and is well-worth the read. After finishing this book, and applying it's advice to my own writing, my second screenplay was immediately accepted by a Hollywood agent as was my first novel. The book guided me through the development and essential basics of the craft and elevated my work to a professional level. Overall, the book is well thought-out, consistent, and filled with the wisdom of over thirty years of Mr. Johnson's writing. I have many books on my writing bookshelf, and this is one that stands out. Don't miss an opportunity to explore a unique concept in the history of fiction writing.
Doc Macomber, Author of the Jack Vu series...
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Summary of A Story Is a Promise: Good Things to Know Before You Write That Screenplay, Novel, or Play
A Story is a Promise offers a fresh new model for mastering the elusive art of writing dramatic and engaging stories. In order to illustrate its major principles, the book includes reviews and analyses of over a dozen popular films, novels, and plays. Complete with prompts and questions at the end of each chapter, A Story is a Promise can be used as a workbook to help writers internalize the principle that underlies all well-told stories: that a story should be a promise and that a promise should be kept. The inclusion of familiar examples makes this book accessible and useful to all writers of fiction, plays, and screenplays.Bill Johnson has been using the manuscript of A Story is a Promise in his workshops for years. Many editors also use the workbook to teach blossoming writers the craft of storytelling.
In A Story Is a Promise, Bill Johnson posits that a well-designed story "promises dramatic fulfillment of our needs." Too often, says Johnson, writers embark on projects without first identifying the dramatic issue that is at the heart of their story. These writers--novelists, playwrights, and, clearly closest to Johnson's heart, screenwriters--would do much better, and save a lot of time otherwise spent writing in circles, by first identifying their key dramatic issue, Johnson says. Once they have identified a premise, which can be easily summed up (for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Johnson offers "overcoming a shared catastrophe leads to renewal"), they can measure every word they write against it. Ask yourself, says Johnson, whether you can determine if "every character issue, event, line of dialogue, and scene description serves to dramatically advance the story." If the answer is "no," that event, dialogue, or description doesn't belong. If you find the concept unclear, don't worry--apparently, a lot of Johnson's students do, too. But once you understand what's at stake in your story, you will be better equipped to make all the decisions you need to make along the way concerning characterization, plot development, dialogue, conflict, and the like. With workshoplike questions at the end of each chapter aimed at the writer-in-process. --Jane Steinberg
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