Summary of Syd Field's Screenplay

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Sample Book Insights:

#1 The author made a picture of what would happen if a pretty stenographer entered your office. She took off her gloves, opened her purse, and dumped it out on the table. She had two dimes and a nickel, and a cardboard match box. She left the nickel on the desk, put the two dimes back into her purse, and took her black gloves to the stove.

#2 F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, was a novelist who wrote screenplays for movies. He was always searching for the answer to what made a good screenplay. He was never sure what a screenplay was, and he wondered whether he was doing it right.

#3 The opening section of Fitzgerald’s novel, which focuses on how Rosemary saw the Divers, is more cinematic than novelistic. It’s a great cinematic opening, setting up the characters as others see them, like an establishing shot.

#4 A screenplay is not a novel, a play, or a diagram. It is a story told with pictures, in dialogue and description, and placed within the context of dramatic structure.