Rewrite

Customer Reviews

• You wrote a screenplay, now what?

  After writing my first screenplay I wanted to know how to make it better. I bought several books on how to write a good story. This one was the best of the lot.
  During each chapter you'll be given an exercise to do with your story. The info I was able to glean from this is really tightening things up and making it shine.
  This book will help you write action and dialogue better. It will strengthen your characters and plot.
  

• Same old, but still good

  I picked up this book hoping to find some new strategies as I rewrite my current script. While there's nothing groundbreaking on the craft the book does a good job focusing the writer back on the fundamentals in the rewrite process. The basics of structure, character, description, dialogue etc. covered in most screenwriting books are all here. The author simply gives it a new spin by putting it all under the context of a rewrite. As a rewrite guide it fulfills its purpose. Screenwriter's with a good story frustrated with problems they may not be able to pinpoint will find this quick read beneficial. The author knows the craft and gets us immediately into the process by turning our brains back to inciting incidents, midpoints and protagonist's flaws and goals.
  
  This book won't help a bad script, but it will help a writer with a good story elevate it to something great, with a lot of hard work. The exercises are helpful and the information is spot on, if not a retread. This is a five star book for the beginner who hasn't read much else on the craft, and three to four stars for those who have already dipped into the canon of screenwriting books.

• To Do: Make your script better!

  First drafts tend to happen in a series of spontaneous bursts. Rewrites, however, require a completely different mode of working. Good rewrites happen in a series of carefully focused layers. Chitlik's book does an excellent job of helping the writer slow down, focus and tackle these layers one at a time. Each chapter reviews a key concept of screenwriting. It then assigns a "To Do" Exercise which will help the writer examine how this key concept plays out in his own script. When a writer finds a weakness in his work, he does a focused rewrite to address that one problem. As a result, the writer can tackle his rewrites in manageable chunks (rather than trying to solve all problems at the same time). Chitlik thoughtfully arranges the chapters so that rewrites start with the largest, most fundamental issues and then move forward to the smallest polishes. In order, they are:
  
  Big Picture:
  - Clarifying Story Structure
  - Clarifying/Enhancing the Protagonist
  - Clarifying/Enhancing the Antagonist
  
  Scene Rewrites:
  - Ensuring Dynamic Scenes
  - Improving your scene descriptions
  - Examining Supporting Characters
  
  Editing
  - Cutting unnecessary stuff & combining redundant stuff
  
  Reviewing
  - A final checklist to make sure you have addressed all of the script's problems
  
  Polishing
  - Professional Formatting
  
  The book includes a helpful Appendix which reviews how concepts play out in existing scripts. It also includes an example of one of Chitlik's own rewrites, so that you can see how the rewrite process plays out over several drafts.
  
  One caveat: Chitlik does an excellent job reviewing screenwriting fundamentals, but you will find this book most helpful if you have already familiarized yourself with basic screenwriting concepts. This is a book on REwriting so, at some level, it presumes that you already know something about writing. If you are truly a beginner, and you've never read anything about screenwriting, then I would suggest that you check out Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need and The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 3rd Edition before you read this book.
  

• Not Meaty Enough

  This book is barely 100 pages of actual advice with over 60 pages of filler (including showing five barely different drafts of the author's terrible Olsen Twins script, no less!). Don't get me wrong, there is good advice here but it tends to be buried among information rehashed from the dozen or so other screenwriting books sitting on my shelf.
  
  The author, like so many others I've read, makes painfully obvious errors when using Star Trek or Star Wars as examples, almost as if they've never actually watched the films in question (even Chris Vogler in The Writer's Journey does this). In the case of Rewrite, Mr. Spock is confused with '60s parenting expert Dr. Spock, and incorrect dialogue is put into Luke Skywalker's mouth upon first viewing the Death Star. A big deal? Perhaps not, as the author still manages to get his point across, but it is sloppy research (as in none!) and damages their credibility. Think about it: If the author can't be bothered to get their facts right, it sheds doubt on the integrity of the entire work and on the publisher for not bothering to catch these easy-to-spot errors prior to publication.
  
  The author also assumes you're familiar with Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing (1942) and does not bother to explain who he is or why his theories are so important even to this day. While I've read Egri, it is folly to assume most newbie screenwriters have. All the other screenwriting books I've read that mention Egri (and most of them do), are always careful to put him in context and explain why you should read The Art of Dramatic Writing. Rewrite doesn't bother to do this. It is not only a disservice to Egri (the godfather of the modern screenplay) but it is a mistake that could have easily been corrected by inserting a brief line or two.
  
  For such a slim volume, I found it difficult to find the info I wanted by skimming. For example, the paragraph headers and "to do" lists should have been called out in a larger, bold typeface so they don't get lost when you're skimming through the book on subsequent reads.
  
  I don't regret this purchase as there was some good advice here (particularly on cutting the heads and tails off your scenes and then cutting them 10% more) but I'm not exactly raving about Rewrite either. I bought it used and confess I would have felt cheated if I'd paid full price.
  
  Publisher Michael Wiese Productions puts out a ton of filmmaking books and I suppose not all of them can be as useful or fun as The Writer's Journey, Save The Cat! or Directing Actors.

• Extremely helpful and thorough, for serious screenwriters

  After finishing the first draft of a screenplay, I was stuck. Where should I go next? So I bought this book and read it and was magically unstuck.
  
  Chitlik is a wizard when it comes to asking all the right questions that will get your creative juices flowing again. The book has such a personalized tone, you feel it was written specifically for you and your own set of issues. It's almost like taking a master course in rewriting, minus the huge tuition fee!
  
  I highly recommend this book, I know I will go back to it again and again.